How did Spanish get one grammar and one spelling for 22 countries?

One grammar and one spelling for 22 countries

La Nueva gramática (2009) y la Ortografía (2010) panhispánicas

2009–2011. At the end of the 20th century the academies changed their way of working.

Where: The whole Spanish-speaking world, Madrid, Mexico City, Spain

What happened

At the end of the 20th century the academies changed their way of working. The Ortografía of 1999 was the first text revised jointly by all of them, and from then on the Spanish norm has been 'panhispanic': decided by the 22 academies of the Spanish-speaking countries (23 since 2016), not by Madrid alone. The Nueva gramática de la lengua española, the first academic grammar since 1931, appeared in 2009 (morphology and syntax) and 2011 (phonetics and phonology); agreed by all the academies, its great novelty is the attention paid to how Spanish is used in each area, so Argentine voseo and Mexican usage are described, not condemned. The Ortografía of December 2010 completed the set: ch and ll are no longer letters, each letter has one recommended name, and some accents disappeared.

Say it

Desde 2010 el abecedario español tiene veintisiete letras.

Since 2010 the Spanish alphabet has twenty-seven letters.

Why it matters

Spanish is one of the few world languages with a single, jointly agreed standard that still respects national varieties: a learner's grammar in Bogotá and Madrid teaches the same rules.

Read about it

Connected

Sources

  1. Política panhispánica — ASALE
  2. Nueva gramática de la lengua española — ASALE
  3. Últimos cambios en las normas académicas de la ortografía (Instituto Cervantes Manila, 2011) — Centro Virtual Cervantes
  4. Ortografía (obras académicas) — ASALE
  5. La Asociación: presentación — ASALE