hidden pixel

Real Academia Española Information

Don't speak Spanish? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.

Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be and removed. (October 2009)
Royal Spanish Academy
Abbreviation RAE
Motto Limpia, fija y da esplendor
Formation 1713
Headquarters Madrid, Spain
Region served Spain
Official languages Spanish
Director José Manuel Blecua Perdices
Main organ Junta de Gobierno
Affiliations Association of Spanish Language Academies
Website www.rae.es
Real Academia Española
Native name: Spanish: Real Academia Española
Location: Madrid, Spain
Coordinates: 40°24′54″N 3°41′28″W / 40.41492°N 3.691173°W Coordinates: 40°24′54″N 3°41′28″W / 40.41492°N 3.691173°W
Spanish Property of Cultural Interest
Official name: Real Academia Española
Type: Non-movable
Criteria: Monument
Designated: 1998[1]
Reference #: RI-51-0010191
Location of Real Academia Española in Spain

The Royal Spanish Academy (Spanish: Real Academia Española, RAE) is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone (Spanish-speaking) nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies. The RAE's emblem is a fiery crucible, and its motto is "Limpia, fija y da esplendor" ("[It] cleans, sets, and casts splendour").

The RAE is a major publisher of dictionaries and grammars, and has a formal procedure for admitting words to its publications. Its website includes an online dictionary and other resources, all in Spanish. Its most famous publication is the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española (Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy), the "DRAE".

Contents

History

Title page of Fundación y estatútos de la Real Académia Españóla (Foundation and statutes of the Royal Spanish Academy) (1715)

The Real Academia Española was founded in 1713, modelled after the Italian Accademia della Crusca (1582) and the French Académie française (1635), with the purpose "to fix the voices and vocabularies of the Castilian language with propriety, elegance, and purity". King Philip V approved its constitution on 3 October 1714, placing it under the Crown's protection.

Its aristocratic founder, Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, Marquis of Villena and Duke of Escalona, described its aims as "to assure that Spanish speakers will always be able to read Cervantes" – by exercising a progressive up-to-date maintenance of the formal language.

The RAE began establishing rules for the orthography of Spanish beginning in 1741 with the first edition of the Ortographía (spelled Ortografía from the second edition onwards). The proposals of the Academy became the official norm in Spain by royal decree in 1844, and they were also gradually adopted by the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America.

Several reforms were introduced in the Nuevas Normas de Prosodia y Ortografía (1959), and since then the rules have undergone continued adjustment, in consultation with the other national language academies. The current rules and practical recommendations are presented in the latest edition of the Ortografía (1999).[2]

In 1994, the RAE ruled that the Spanish consonants "CH" (ché) and "LL" (elle) would hence be alphabetized under "C" and under "L", respectively, and not as separate, discrete letters, as in the past. The RAE eliminated monosyllabic accented vowels where the accent did not serve in changing the word's meaning, examples include: "dio" ("gave"), "vio" ("saw"), both had an acutely-accented vowel "ó"; yet the monosyllabic word "sé" ("I know", the first person, singular, present of "saber", "to know"; and the singular imperative of "ser", "to be") retains its acutely-accented vowel in order to differentiate it from the reflexive pronoun "se".

Criticisms of the Academy

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.
This section contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. (October 2009)

The Royal Academy has, especially in the Spanish-speaking Americas, been criticized for being excessively conservative and slow to change; for excessively concentrating upon linguistic usages of the region of Castile, while dismissing variant usages from other parts of Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries; and for being slow in revising its authoritative Diccionario de la Lengua Española have acknowledged, however, that recent editions of the Diccionario de la Lengua Española de la Real Academia Española (the 20th, 21st, and current 22nd editions) show distinct improvement. One innovation was its publication of a paperback edition in 1992. Partnerships with companies such as Telefónica, IBM, and Microsoft, enabled the RAE to update and adapt to the current information-technology era, offering a free on-line version of its Diccionario, which may be consulted free of charge at its website.

Composition

Main article: List of members of the Real Academia Española

Members of the Academy are known as Académicos de número (English: Academic Numerary), chosen from among prestigious persons in the arts and sciences, including several Spanish-language authors, known as Los Inmortales (English: the Immortals), similarly to their Académie Française counterparts. The Números are elected for life by the other academicians. Each academician holds a seat labeled with a letter from the Spanish alphabet; upper- and lower-case letters are separate seats.

Current members

As of 2008[update], sorted by date of induction:

Notable past academicians

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Publications

Joint publications of the RAE and the Association of Spanish Language Academies

See also

Spain portal
Language portal

References

  1. ^ Database of protected buildings (movable and non-movable) of the Ministry of Culture of Spain.
  2. ^ Real Academia Española (1999) (in Spanish) (PDF). Ortografía de la Lengua Española. pp. v–viii. ISBN 84-239-9250-0. http://www.rae.es/rae/gestores/gespub000015.nsf/(voanexos)/arch7E8694F9D6446133C12571640039A189/$FILE/Ortografia.pdf. Retrieved 2009-02-07.
  3. ^ "El diccionario de americanismos incluye setenta mil entradas", Diario ABC (27 de febrero de 2010), 2010, http://www.abc.es/20100227/cultura-/diccionario-americanismos-incluye-setenta-201002271302.html
  4. ^ "La Real Academia Española y la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española presentan la Nueva gramática de la lengua española.", Real Academia Española, 2010, http://www.rae.es/rae/gestores/gespub000016.nsf/voTodosporId/879EEE3982B5EBAFC12571640038E4E2?OpenDocument

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Real Academia Española
Links to related articles
Spanish Royal Academies. Institute of Spain
Royal Spanish Academy Royal Academy of Fine Arts of St Ferdinand Royal Academy of History Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences Royal National Academy of Medicine Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation Royal Academy of Pharmacy
Association of Spanish Language Academies

Argentina · Bolivia · Chile · Colombia · Costa Rica · Cuba · Dominican Republic · Ecuador · El Salvador · Guatemala · Honduras · Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama · Paraguay · Peru · Philippines · Puerto Rico · Spain · United States · Uruguay · Venezuela

Categories:

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Sun Apr 22 13:15:23 2012.
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.