Introduction of Spanish Language and Spanish Language in India

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SPANISH IN INDIA

Brief introduction

The establishment of centres for the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in India can be traced back to the year 1958 with the founding of the School of Foreign Languages under the agies of the Ministry of Defence, in New Delhi and also at the National Defence Academy in Khadagwasala; both of the said Institutions had limited accessibility as they were mainly for Government and Defence Officials. Much later in the 60s, the University of Delhi started to offer beginners’ level of Spanish for Indian students.

However, with the foundation of the Center of Spanish Studies (renamed in 2004 as Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies) in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in the year 1971, for the first time Graduate and Masters programme in Spanish was offered to Indian students with due approval of the University Grants Commission. Expansion of this disciple got momentum in late 1990s after the liberalization of Indian economy which generated huge employment opportunities to Indian students and kindled greater interest amongst Indian students. Therefore, many Governmental Universities, Colleges and Institutes started offering courses in Spanish Language and moreover, many private Institutes started regular and business module courses across India.

Apart from Government and private institutions, many foreign institutions also established their institutes in India like the Instituto Cervantes (Spain) and several diplomatic missions started beginners’ level Spanish courses in India like the Embassy of Peru in India. Recently the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and Indra Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi have introduced Spanish courses. Many more are formulating the courses which are to be launched.

SPANISH C0URSES IN INDIA

Spanish Language

Brief introduction

Today, Spanish is the world's second most-spoken language by native speakers (after Mandarin Chinese) and more than 300 million people speaks Spanish as a first language and as a second language by millions of people. It is official language of Spain and 19 Latin American nations. In USA it is the native language of over 15 million people and is one of the official languages of the UN since inception.

Spanish belongs to the Romance languages and are a branch of the Indo-European language family. The language originated in northern Spain and gradually spread and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. The Spanish language uses the Roman alphabet, to which the symbols have been added and vocabulary is basically of Latin origin, although it has been enriched by many loan/borrowed words from other languages, mainly Arabic, French, Italian, and various indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America. The oldest in existence written records of Spanish date from the middle of the 10th century AD. One of the interesting features of Spanish is that there are two forms of the verb “ser” and “estar”. Another peculiarity of Spanish is the use of an inverted question mark (¿) at the beginning of a question and of an inverted exclamation point (¡) at the beginning of an exclamation. Orthography accent marks (eg. é ň) used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed syllable in words.

The standard Spanish language is also called “Castilian”. Up to the 15th century the language is customarily called Old Spanish. From the 16th century (approximately), it is called Modern Spanish. The 16th and 17th centuries Spanish is sometimes called "classical" Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period.

The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso-X of Castile, known as Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise). He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian. “Antonio de Nebrija” wrote the first grammar of Spanish called "Gramática de la lengua castellana" and presented it to Queen Isabella in 1492. The Spanish Royal Academy now known as “Real Academia Española RAE” was founded in 1713 with the objective of preserving the "purity" of the language. The (“Royal Spanish Academy”), published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739 and it continues to produce new editions from time to time. Each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951.

The list of Nobel laureates in Literature:

(1904)	José Echegaray
(1922)	Jacinto Benavente
(1945)	Gabriela Mistral
(1956)	Juan Ramón Jiménez
(1967)	Miguel Ángel Asturias
(1971)	Pablo Neruda
(1977)	Vicente Aleixandre
(1982)	Gabriel García Márquez
(1989)	Camilo José Cela
(1990)	Octavio Paz

Spanish speaking countries

Reading list:

Books

» Campbell, Lyle. 1998. Historical linguistics: An introduction (Edinburgh).

» Crowley, Terry. 1992. An introduction to historical linguistics (Oxford).

» Hickey, Raymond, 2003. Motives for Language Change (Cambridge)

» Lapesa, R., 1980. Historia de la lengua española (Madrid).

» Lodares, Juan Ramón, 2001. Gente de Cervantes. Historia humana del idioma español (Madrid: Taurus).

» Pountain, Christopher J., 2001. A History of the Spanish Language through Texts (London: Routledge).

» Elcock, W.D., 1960. The Romance Languages (London: Faber).

» Harris, M.B. & Vincent, N.B. (eds), 1987. The Romance Languages (London: Croom Helm).

» Wright, R.H.P., 1982. Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France (Liverpool: Francis Cairns).

» Mar-Molinero, Clare, 1997. The Spanish-Speaking World (London: Routledge).

» Saxena, Rajiv. 2008 La enseñanza de español como lengua extranjera en la India: desarrollo y desafíos (JNU, New Delhi)

Updated : 07 September 2009

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