User:Rigley/Neutral Spanish

Neutral Spanish (Español Neutro, see also names) is a variety of the Spanish language that avoids distinctive features of the Spanish dialects.

Names
The name "Neutral Spanish" is the most common in the field of translation, although other terms exist for the same concept, including: "International Spanish" (Español Internacional), "Common Spanish" (Español Común). , and "Universal Spanish" (Español Universal). Also called "Total Spanish" (Español Total) by the Real Academia Española (RAE), Neutral Spanish is defined by its lack of regionalisms; like Españolismos from Peninsular Spanish, Mexicanismos from Mexican Spanish, or Chilenismos from Chilean Spanish.

Rationale
Concern about influence from English is a recurring theme in Spanish-language media which follow a language ideology of unity between Spanish-language speakers. The promotion of the Spanish as a second language teaching industry works as a counterbalance to International English and is part of the Foreign relations of Spain. Specialists in the field of medical translation have noted heavy borrowing from English in terms of anglicisms and Spanglish grammatical structures, resulting from a lack of awareness of Neutral Spanish.

Another pressure for the development of Neutral Spanish came from the need to reduce language localization costs by finding "neutral" words with which to market products to Spanish-speaking countries. For example, until 1990, Disney released dubs for its films in Neutral Spanish. Afterwards, it would release separate dubs for Spain and Latin America.

Features
The contrast between Neutral and parochial Spanish can be gleaned from differences between literature published by Spanish-speaking governments for internal and external consumption. For example, the city of Medellín, Colombia uses voseo (a regional second-person pronoun) in internal government documents, but addresses tourists with the more standard forms tú and usted.

Neutral Spanish vocabulary can be formed from a variety of methods:
 * Choose the Peninsular Spanish phrase: copia de seguridad for backup, instead of Copia de respaldo
 * Choose the Latin American Spanish phrase: presionar for key press, instead of pulsar
 * Combine Peninsular and Latin American: procesador de textos for word processor (Peninsular would use tratamiento; American would use palabras)
 * Calque a new phrase: tablón de anuncios electrónicos for bulletin board system

History
The Real Academia Española was established in 1713 on the model of the Académie française as the first language regulator for the Spanish language. In the wake of the Latin American wars of independence, in 1870 the Real Academia Española established contacts with intellectuals in Latin American countries in support of their establishment of their own Spanish language academies. In 1951, the Association of Spanish Language Academies (ASALE) was established in Mexico to unite these regulatory bodies and promote cross-country language standardization. In the 1960s, the Mexican film industry collaborated to create products in a "neutral Spanish" that it could export to a wide variety of Hispanophone markets.

In 1991, Spain started establishing Instituto Cervantes across the world to deliver Spanish-language teaching materials, host Hispanophone cultural events, and certify Spanish-language competency through granting DELE diplomas. In 1993, Microsoft published The Gui Guide: International Terminology for the Windows Interface, greatly standardizing technological terms in Spanish because of its market share. The RAE linguist Gregorio Salvador Caja published an article in 1994 arguing for the power of the cross-country consumption of Telenovelas to effect dialect levelling in Spanish. In February 2005, the RAE established the Fundéu BBVA (Foundation of Urgent Spanish) to suggest uniform criteria for correct Spanish language usage to media companies. In October of that same year, the Association of Spanish Language Academies endorsed the idea of a "pan-Hispanic educated norm" in the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (DPD).

Organizations
The standardization of Neutral Spanish is accomplished through agreements between businesses and media; the publication of dictionaries, grammars, and other linguistic references; and agreements between Spanish language regulators at the International Congress of the Spanish Language. For example, the Spanish media company Telefónica sponsored the DPD; and the Iberia airline includes guidelines on the usage of Spanish in its inflight magazine. Radio Exterior, Spain's equivalent to the BBC World Service, broadcast a daily program for an international audience on how to speak more Standard Spanish. The Fundéu BBVA awards "Certificates of Linguistic Quality" (Certificados de calidad lingüística) to businesses which it audits for compliance with its best-practices. Since the 1990s, the RAE has coordinated with ASALE to publish reference works that have a more descriptivist quality, like the Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española (NGLE), using more the language of Pan-Hispanic consensus, rather than "good" or "bad" usage.