Abstract
Explore the validity of Lastra's bilingualism model through case studies in Paraguay, Belize, and the United States, revealing diverse language configurations and the complex dynamics of Spanish language use amidst indigenous languages, migration, and bilingualism. Discover how Spanish coexists with other languages, its role in state functions, media, and community communication, and the factors influencing its preservation and growth.
Extract
[...] Although the exact figures differ by source, the 2024 Annual Report of the Cervantes Institute cites that, globally, Spanish speakers reach 600 million for the first time; among them, around 500 million are native speakers. Regarding the United States, although the Annual Report does not provide a detailed breakdown in that edition for all states, it is reported, based on sources from the Spanish-speaking community in 2023, that 54% of Spanish speakers had been born in the US. For Lastra, this means that the analysis of Spanish from a sociolinguistic perspective must include those geographical scenarios "extra-latinoamericanos tradicionales", which constitute the framework of the language's own dynamics: emigration, minority languages, new bilingualism, new usage scenarios. [...]
[...] Another reliable source states that Spanish is the mother tongue of around 52.9% of the population and that Spanish-English or Spanish-Creole bilingualism is common. It is defended that the population of Belize in 2025 will approach 423,000 inhabitants. This profile shows how important Spanish is in a country that does not have it in its official language rules. In Lastra's words, we see a different situation here: Spanish is not an official language, but it is there as a language used by people, which leads to different dynamics in contact between people. [...]
[...] Therefore, the future sections of the chapter will be dedicated to the countries of the area and to study these different variables. In this sense, the author proposes that the comparison of languages focus on the number of people who are native speakers of Spanish, the presence of other languages, the degree of intergenerational transmission of the language, the degree of bilingualism, the official status of languages and language policy. With this introduction, the country-by-country analyses open up, in which the contrasts that Lastra aims to highlight are explicitly materialized. [...]
[...] United States The examination of Spanish in America cannot proceed without considering the United States as a destination for Hispanic migration and as a space for the projection of Spanish to the north. Although, it should be noted, Lastra is primarily concerned with Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, his model can be applied in its entirety to the American: Spanish as a community language, migration, bilingualism, intergenerational transmission, competition with English, the growing sociopolitical importance of the Spanish speaker. Lastra, implicitly, in what he says, comes to nuance that the expansion of the Spanish-speaking population outside the usual geographical territory complicates sociolinguistic research: Spanish in the United States is not an official language, it is, yes, a language with a gigantic mass of speakers, with an important demographic, cultural and economic weight. [...]
[...] As for the proportion of Spanish as a native language or exclusive use indicates that less than a third of the population uses it predominantly at home. This agrees with what Lastra has stated, in that in Paraguay Spanish is not the only language of social relevance. For the entire population of the country, according to recent estimates, the country would have around 7 million people (the calculations range from 6.9 to 7.4 million). For example, a newspaper refers to "around 6.9 million people" as a recent figure." From the edition made by the Instituto Cervantes, it has been recognized that in the countries where Spanish is officially spoken and recognized, the percentage of native Spanish speakers decreases in bilingual countries (Paraguay included), having placed the mentioned country among those where the percentage of native Spanish speakers does not exceed 85% of the population. [...]
