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Country: Spain
Subproject: 9 (Dictionaries)
Member of Scientific Committe: Francisco A. Marcos-Marín
Corresponding Members: José María Becerra Hiraldo and María Teresa Cabré Castellví
Spanish is spoken by more than five hundred million people in the world. More than four hundred have it as both their official and mother tongue, in twenty one countries, mostly in America. European Spanish, officially called castellano "Castilian", but mostly referred to as español, is the official language of Spain, spoken by nearly forty million people in the Iberian Peninsula, the two North African Autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the Balears and Canary Islands. It is remarkable that only one country in the world, Equatorial Guinea, in Africa, has the Castilian variety as its only standard. The Castilian variety is not the only standard in Spain, where it coexists with the Andalusian or Atlantic standard, closer to the norm of Spanish America. Another three languages are also official in Spain, in the framework of the Autonomous Communities that constitute the Kingdom of Spain: Basque (600,000 speakers in Euskadi and Navarre), Catalan (7 Mi. in Calatonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands), and Galician (3Mi in Galicia). There are not monolingual speakers of Basque, Catalan or Galician in Spain. Basque is also spoken in Southwest France, Catalan in Southeast France and parts of Sardinia. Language planning activities in Spain refer mostly to the languages of the Autonomous Communities, whilst there are not special activities for Castilian. There exist other Latin dialects, too, Astur-Leonese and Aragonese being the remains of older medieval variants, as well as modern dialects of Castilian, Catalan (particularly Valencian), and Galician. The standard Basque language is the result of language planning, euskera batua "unified Basque", the traditionally called Basque dialects being frequently mutually unintelligible. Basque is an unrelated language, non Indo-European, strongly Latinised though, and is considered the oldest language in Europe. The other languages of the Iberian Peninsula, including Portuguese, are of Latin ascent, called Romance Languages, therefore. A particular case is that of gipsy language or Romaní, spoken by a small number of speakers, related to Indo-European Indo-Arian languages.
There are forty eight public universities in Spain, and an increasing number of private universities, more than twelve at the beginning of the academic year 1998-99. All universities are autonomous, but two of them are explicitly called Universidad Autónoma, in Madrid (38,000 students) and Barcelona (35,000) respectively. The cost of education in public universities is almost nominal, although it varies depending on the "experimental" or "non experimental" character of the studies. "Experimental" meaning more expensive. There are three levels of studies or degrees, called "Diplomatura" (2 years), "Licenciatura" (two years more) and "Doctorado" (four years more). The length of the studies is not the same for all careers, Medicine has a six years system, and it is not the only Faculty that has stronger requirements. Students enter the university after a selective exam, common for all students and all types of studies. The most populated universities in Spain are public: UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) 131,738 students, Complutense (Madrid) 122,203, Sevilla 76,967, Barcelona 67,953, País Vasco 64,117, Valencia 62,888, Granada 59,693. The largest private universities are Deusto, in Bilbao, 14,973 and Navarre, in Pamplona, 12,796. The fact that Madrid has seven public universities, with a total of more than 250,000 students, adds some flavor to the picture. Barcelona offers a parallel situation, with slight differences.
Some universities have a Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, that corresponds roughly to the Arts Faculty, some have a separated Faculty of Philology. A common core of studies for each degree is approved by the Council of Rectors (Chancellors), the universities add other compulsory, optative or optional courses to the curriculum. Depending on the universities and the departments, the students are given different degrees of freedom to choose their courses. The Department of English is becoming the largest in the Arts Faculties, because of the increasing social demand of graduates with a knowledge of the English language. Compared to English, other Modern Languages are almost non taught in Spanish Primary or Secondary Education (with the exception of the language of the Autonomous Community, well understood). There is an increasing movement in favor of a second European Language at school, which means in fact three languages for children in the bilingual parts of the Kingdom. Latin and Greek are almost nonexistent in Modern Spain. A bunch of excellent classicists fight desperately to hold the position.
Foreign Language Teaching offers the widest possible variation. From computer assisted teaching and learning, multimedia rooms and services to the most traditional methods, all of them referred mostly to English. The knowledge of this language has improved noticeably among the students of other disciplines in Spain.
The degrees offered in the field of Languages by Spanish Universities as a whole are Linguistics, Spanish Philology, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Slavic Languages, Arabic, Hebrew, Biblical Philology, Latin and Greek. Other languages can be learned as part of several curricula, as it is the case for Chinese, Japanese, Sumerian or Akkadian for a degree in Linguistics in the Autonomous University in Madrid, Iranian and Turkish in the departments of Semitic Languages, etc.
Translation and interpreting are studied as second degree or as special courses after finishing the studies of the second and even third degree. They are called Master Courses in Spain, not to be confounded with a Master Degree, called in Spanish Licenciatura.
Computer facilities at Spanish universities are generally better than the European average, which does not mean that they are sufficient. Libraries databases are linked in the national system, access is provided to several sources of information. Internet access and e-mail is free for staff and students. The academic network is a part of the research and education network, called Red Iris "Iris network". Resources are available at the URL http://donde.uji.es/.
Lexicography and Terminology are not taught as separated degrees, but some universities include them in their curricula, either as a part of Applied Linguistics, or as individual courses. It depends widely on the university and its curriculum. In Granada, for instance, undergraduates are given the choice among Arabic Lexicography, Lexical Analysis of the English Language, English Lexicography and Lexicology, Grecolatin origins of the scientific vocabulary, French Lexicology and Lexicography, The Spanish Lexis: structure and use, History of the Spanish Lexicography. Origins of the Spanish Lexis, and more at the graduate level. Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona is second best in this offer, it develops several lines in Terminology and Lexicography, however. Compared to them, even universities concerned about those subjects, as the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, offer but a few courses.
Dictionary use, as well as its methodological implications for Primary School, receives particular attention in universities, such as La Laguna, in the Canary Islands, where a thread of research and teaching has been established for several years. Departments of Arabic, Latin and Greek have been dealing with dictionary use, for reasons easy to understand, and also linked to particular projects in the field of dictionaries. Some publishers have also contributed to this field, which shows an increasing concern.
Lexicography is a traditional art in Spain, as well as in the Spanish speaking America. The oldest European bilingual dictionaries were compiled by Alonso de Palencia and Elio Antonio de Nebrija. Bilingual lexicography flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries following the path of the Spanish Empire. Particularly noteworthy are the dictionaries of the American Indian languages. The 18th century saw the publication of remarkable pieces of lexicographic art such as the Diccionario de Autoridades, the first dictionary of the recently founded (1713) Royal Spanish Academy (six volumes, 1726-1739) or the Diccionario de Terreros. For many years then, the quality did not increase. Spanish lexicography became more and more dependent on production abroad. The Academy dictionary, compared to its origins, became poorer and poorer. After the civil war (1936-1939) several projects were interrupted and many scholars suffered internal or external exile. Although the situation improved after 1946, at the end of II World War, it took a long time until the restarting of the new production.
New dictionaries include the etymological dictionaries by Vicente García de Diego (one volume) and Joan Corominas (4 volumes, then 6, with José Antonio Pascual), concept or onomasiological dictionaries, such as that by Julio Casares, the dictionary of use by Maria Moliner, the Vox dictionary by Manuel Alvar Ezquerra, and many others, in Spain, Latinamerica and the United States. A novelty are the scholarly dictionaries, some of them particularly adapt to the new requirements of Elementary and Secondary School. In the bilingual field the offer increases, because of the broader participation of publishers from many countries. Less "well-sold" languages such as Classical Greek, Arabic and Chinese have received a tremendous lexicographic impulse thanks to new dictionaries written by Spanish scholars and published in Spain. Modern languages, particularly English, French and German are dependent on publishers abroad. Technical dictionaries, monolingual and plurilingual, are now common, showing the participation of public institutions, such the Academy of Sciences, and private publishers, mostly in the fields of Telecommunications, Economy and Law.
The effort in the field of Latinamerican Spanish deserves a special mention. The main resorts ares located in the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, in Colombia, near Bogotá, and in Augsburg, Germany. El Colegio de México is also devoted to several issues of Lexicography in Mexico, both in the general and the dialectal domains. As a result, several dictionaries, for Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, and Uruguay have been published in a short period of time, under common or similar methodological requirements.
Electronic publications have invaded the lexicographic field, including the Enciclopedia Universal by Micronet S.A., a very serious attempt in the line of Britannica, which witnesses the strength of Spanish electronic publishers. The main dictionaries are offered in the traditional format and on CD-Rom.
Most of the projects referred to above require an enormous amount of effort and dedication, mostly considering that several of them are the result of a life's work by an individual person. Metalexicography has only been properly developed in the last half century. After classical works by Rufino José Cuervo and Ramón Menéndez Pidal, followed by scholars such as Julio Casares, Samuel Gili i Gaya, Tomás Navarro Tomás, Américo Castro and Rafael Lapesa, "younger" lexicographers, such as Manuel Seco, Günther Haensch, Francisco R. Adrados or Germán Colón (all of them already retired, albeit productive) open the way to the youngest generation, formed by the late Julio Fernández Sevilla, Manuel Alvar Ezquerra, Humberto Hernández Hernández and Álvaro Porto Dapena. Terminography and Terminology have been partially objects of study in connection with computer assisted research, standards and encoding, in the case of Francisco Marcos-Marín. With a broader perspective and with deeper dedication those disciplines are the core in the works by Teresa Cabré. Claudio Chuchuy and Reinhold Werner lead the path for the Latinamerican dictionaries.
A paragraph must be devoted to electronic dictionaries, the research field of two institutions with the same name and located in the same type of university: Laboratorio de Lingüística Informática at the Universidad Autónoma, in Madrid and Barcelona. Carlos Subirats in the latter and Fernando Sánchez León in the former are the working heads for those projects. The list of names is unfair, because there are many scholars now working in those fields, including the members of the Instituto de Lexicografía de la Real Academia Española, who can not be quoted in this synthesis report. See Spanish: New Issues for a more comprehensive bibliography.
- Make capacities/strength/importance of lexicographers/terminographers more widely known (at schools/ by the general public / in industry) so that the profiles of lexicographers and terminographers become more visible and attractive.
- Develop generic, multifunctional infrastructure such as a reference lexicon or a lexical database for Spanish which can function in several 'dictionary environments', including learner's dictionaries, NLP-dictionaries, collocational dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, etc., so that more, better and more diversified dictionaries can be made at lower cost.
- Develop tools with which to populate, check and update the reference lexicon as mentioned above (e.g. by 'importing' lexical knowledge from corpora).
- Help Spanish publishers who are developing new models for dictionaries and dictionary use, particularly multimedia dictionaries and encyclopedia, but also electronic word translators and virtual dictionaries.
- Develop a consistent policy (material/immaterial infrastructure) with regard to terminology so that the 'terminology boom' can be kept track of.
- Insist on the new opening for the job market offered by techniques such as encoding, transcription, tagging, database architecture and computers in the humanities, in general.