Bilingual teaching improves Spanish

Study followed 244 students from four bilingual schools in Andalucía

ANDALUCÍA -- The headline is not a mistake. System Magazine, the International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, recently published an article in which it reported that it had followed written and spoken work by 244 13- to 17-year-old students for three years. The report concluded that being taught in English not only doesn't harm their usage of Spanish but does improve the development of their academic expressiveness. The study followed the development of the students' linguistic structure in one language (complex syntaxes and textual cohesion mechanisms) through three academic years, using the textual analysis system called Synlex. The data collected reflect the harmonious development of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) that appear in English texts. which are then put to use in Spanish. These conclusions contradict the extended opinion that developing profficiency in language hurts the development of others.

Updated official Spanish dictionary now accepts tuit, hacker, chat, SMS, 'bloguero', 'USB' and more

MADRID -- Not everyone is ecstatic at the invasion of new words, particularly from the English, worming their way into Spain's official dictionary. But that always happens at the Real Academia Española de la Lengua, defender to the death of the Spanish language ('to the death' because you're honoured with membership until you die). It's taken thirteen years for the new version to appear with almost 5,000 new entries and over 22,000 modifications to existing ones. This, the 23rd edition, appeared in its paper version on Thursday, October 16, and was presented to King Felipe VI on the following day.//The Academy's greatest challenge was to get up to date with the language of computers, IT and the Internet -- most of which are originally English, of course. This after all, is the only Spanish-speaking country that uses the word ordenador instead of computadora for 'computer'. Computadora was first used for 'calculator'. But then, there are very many Spanish words used almost exclusively in Latin America (some 19,000). Here are some of the new words accepted by the RAE (with a daring bit of translation or interpretation):

Why do exclamation and question marks go at the beginning and at the end in Spanish?

MADRID – We got the question in the headline some time back - our answer at the time was, "'Cos they just are!", which was neither polite nor elucidating. While our answer may be right and factual, there is a correct usage. According to the Real Academia de la Lengua Española (The Royal Academy of the Spanish language), question (¿?) and exclamation (¡!) marks represent speech expressions in writing with appropriate intonations for questions and exclamations respectively. In Spanish, they are called double marks, opening and closing a phrase and are obligatory, although there are a few exceptions. Some correct usage indications are:

What is the catastro?

MADRID (+Opinion) – If you own a property in Spain it must be registered at the Catastro that belongs to the province where the property is located. The word itself (aside from the fact that it is the beginning of another one: catastrophe or catastrofe in Spanish, which describes it pretty well for most of the country) is translated as cadastre in English, but it is not something you hear about much in the UK, I’m told. So what is a cadastre?

Language curiosity: a friendly foot will hold up your house

JIMENA (Cádiz) My house needs a pie de amigo with some urgency, or I might wake up in the chicken run next door one morning…  Yes, it needs a ‘friendly foot’, or ‘the foot of a friend’. You won’t find it easily in an ordinary dictionary (not even in my technical one, which had thus far never failed me), unless you know to look it up under contrafuerte, which translates to ‘abutment’, ‘buttress’ and even ‘stiffener’. On consultation, Jimena’s Town Architect, Juan Luis Callejo, said that pie de amigo has long been used with ‘lay people’ as an easy way to explain the thing. I like the idea of a friendly foot holding me up. 

All stressed out

What is the difference between por qué and porque? Again, notice the accent on the e in the first word. The accent (or tilde) is to show the letter that is stressed. It is only applicable to an article (a, e, i, o, u). By the way, one of the reasons Spanish is easier to learn to speak than, say, English or French, is that there is only one way to pronounce those letters, no matter what letter comes before or after, with only a few exceptions. On the old JimenaPulse we had a series that taught you how to correctly pronounce each letter in the Spanish alphabet. (Yes it’s only slightly different, but it is different.) We will be reviving it for the new site and/or NewCampoPulse. Okay, so what's the difference? The first example means WHY and the second, BECAUSE. Why? Don´t ask, it´s just because...