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Loly Estévez

Beautiful, suggestive and brief, but not fleeting.This is how I perceive "Letra y spíritu", motto of the Cuban Academy of Language (ACUL). Founded in 1926, the institution celebrated its 90th anniversary with a program that included the presence in Havana of Doctor Darío Villanueva Prieto, director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and corresponding Spanish-speaking foreign academic of the ACUL.
For writer and professor Rogelio Rodríguez Coronel, director of the ACUL, the members of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE) have "the common desire to identify and preserve their respective national identities. Our language and manner of speaking constitute a trait of identity that we raise with great pride. "
Perhaps that is why Rodríguez Coronel was not disturbed by my question about the threat to the language of the fashions and modes of the new times. "Many think that the language is besieged by the words that come from other sciences, by words in English that are indispensable for the management of computer science, or by the impact that chatting, e-mails or SMS. But that has always happened. I do not have major concerns about it, the evolution in our language has been occurring from vulgar Latin. Language is always in that process. We do not talk the same with friends, in our homes or on public transport as we do during a job interview or an academic event. That is the speaker that we must train: the one who knows how to handle the different levels of the language according to their communicational situation ».
Let's share then, Spanish speakers of the planet, the healthy ninety years of the Cuban Academy of Language.