Is the Internet destroying Spanish?
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Some say the jargon of technology is destroying Spanish, and some are worried, including Odon Betanzos, president of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language. Betanzos recently sent an open letter to the other 22 academies worldwide. The letter raised a harsh cry in defense of the Spanish tongue.
In the letter, Betanzos railed against the "deforming" effects of this "linguistic phenomenon."
"With the arrival of the Internet and e-mail," he wrote, "(U.S. Spanish speakers) have begun ... to adopt Spanish-ized terms for technical computer jargon: aplodear for 'upload,' chatear for 'chat,' printear for 'print,' and many others."
But this isn't only a problem in the United States. Technical jargon is steadily becoming common worldwide. Online versions of many Latin American newspapers and magazines already use English tech terms in place of their Spanish -- or Portuguese -- equivalents.
Who's to blame? According to Betanzos, both "young, ambitious university students lacking a solid foundation but who aspire to distinguish themselves" and those educators who teach these students incorrectly -- especially U.S. teachers who defend so-called "Spanglish."
"To encourage 'Spanglish' means imposing it, or at least insuring that it's widely adopted in the community," wrote Betanzos. "(This means) corrupting two universal languages that deserve the utmost respect: English and Spanish."
According to a U.S. Internet Council (USIC) report, there are now more than 300 million users on the Web -- a medium that is becoming increasingly "multicultural and multipolar."
What can be done to stem the spread of English-language terms? No doubt English has become the universal language of technology -- and the more the Net penetrates the non-English-speaking world, the more these terms will spread.
Betanzos asked in his letter, "What intellectual high ground will Spanish-language universities reflect if 'ghetto' English is taken as a model?"
In the United States alone there are now more than 40 million Spanish speakers, and that number is expected to swell to 60 million within 25 years. If this technological "Spanglish" continues to spread, wrote Betanzos, Spanish as such may not survive.
Translated by ZDNet News' Andrew Manson.
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