• The border of the language. The 'Spanglish' of Puerto Rico
  • The controversy of 'Roma'. "Spanish is surprisingly united"

The first, a relief for Beatriz Luengo, who is a kind and intelligent person and speaks a Spanish without impostures, with a Madrid accent and a slight Andalusian echo. However, last week a video was broadcast and celebrated with derision in which the actress and singer expressed herself with a melody that did not sound Spanish or Mexican or anywhere and that seemed forced. Why complain? Luengo lives in Miami and his case is no different from that of the Galician actor who, when doing a career in Madrid, emerges from his accent .

Actually, the interesting thing is that the neutral Spanish that is heard on televisions and pop music throughout America is no longer alien to the Spaniards. There are already Spaniards who, at least for the public, speak as they speak in the Emmy and on the Miami cable. Will that neutral Spanish sound on the streets one day? In those of Spain?

«So far, that does not happen. Not even in the United States, where Spanish is different according to the city. In Los Angeles, he is Chicano. In Miami, it is Caribbean. In New York you hear all the accents ... ». And if a Chilean couple has a child in Los Angeles, what will the kid sound like? « With the dominant accent in his city ».

Who speaks is Antonio Martín, philologist and partner of the school of edition and translation Cálamo & Cran. Martín also offers a story of that neutral Spanish who was born in a dubbing studio. At first, Hollywood had casts of Cuban, Spanish, Mexican, Argentine actors ... who made Spanish versions of the films, but the public rejected the diversity of accents and the formula was expensive. The studies were dubbed and entrusted to Mexican companies that, in order not to repeat mistakes, banned idioms. No one's Spanish was born.

Spain was left out of that process. The public did not accept Latin American voices and Madrid had its own dubbing industry, although with cracks. For example: cartoons sounded American for decades. "There was a time, in the 60s and 70s, when Puerto Rico was a power. All the Don Gato and Yogi Bear we saw were Puerto Rican, " says Martín.

The data is relevant because neutral Spanish, if it sounds like something, is a mixture of Mexican without chicha and Puerto Rican without erres velar (those that sound like eles), plus the Cuban of Miami, the capital of Latin entertainment.

With what else can we compare neutral Spanish? With English from Los Angeles, which is also a non-accent linked to entertainment. “More than a neutral English, I would speak of a neutral American, because an Englishman will never see him as his own. And I wouldn't say it's a California accent either. In any case it is a variety of social class, rather than a regional variety. It is a sociolect of the media », explains Gaston Dorren, a writer dedicated to studying languages ​​(his latest book is Babel , edited by Turner).

Is neutral Spanish another elitist sociolect? Perhaps you are on that path: An example: Mona , the new novel by Argentina's Pola Oloixarac (Random House). Her protagonist, Mona, is a Peruvian twenties, educated between the US and Europe. Does he speak Lima? No. Mona doesn't sound like anything .

Basically, the question of Miami Spanish expresses an unusual novelty: after thousands of years in which languages ​​dissolved into each other, Spanish and other massive languages ​​may today tend to internal synthesis. Today, any Spanish recognizes the most Cuban and Argentine idioms than ever because they are on their screens, in their work, in their family . And I may use them, half kidding half seriously. "I see points of hybridization, but not of unification," says Martín. "But it's true: Spanglish is no longer the great obsession it was."

His colleague Dorren is Dutch. What happens today with the Dutch and flamenco of Belgium? «As informal language prevails, the two languages ​​separate. But, at the same time, it happens that the flamingos no longer study French and their language no longer has gallicisms, so that the written language converges ».

Anything else? Yes: the fear of insipidity of an accent without roots. “My partner Xosé Castro says that neutral Spanish is one that all speakers hate equally, ” says Martín.

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