Fundéu BBVA
The Fundéu BBVA (formerly The Foundation of Urgent Spanish) is a non-profit organization created in February 2005 in Madrid, Spain. The Foundation was created in collaboration with the Real Academia Española, and is founded under the Department of Urgent Spanish of Agencia EFE. It took its new name, Fundéu BBVA, in 2008.
Responsibilities
The foundation, in the words of its president, director of the Real Academia Española, Víctor García de la Concha, “is a fundamental step towards the unity of the language, it collaborates for the compliance of its objectives with all those institutions related to the defense of Spanish”. The main responsibility of the Foundation is to maintain the unity and “purity” of the Spanish language. Other primary main objectives of the Foundation include:
- To promote good usage of Spanish in all media, including, but not limited to, print, radio, television, and Internet
- To provide uniform criteria in the usage of Spanish
- To respond quickly to language questions through its inquiry service
- To devise linguistic reports on new difficulties that arise in the Spanish language and to broadcast them
- To publish and update the Manual of Urgent Spanish, which serves as a form of dictionary for the Agency EFE
- To issue Certificates of Linguistic Quality. These are offered to the publications that adhere to the recommendations of the Fundéu, and guarantee its idiomatic correction. Businesses, companies and institutions can hire the service of quality control of the foundation for its memories, pamphlets, instruction manuals, web pages or advertising backups.
- To edit specialized books about linguistic questions
- The Foundation has created and maintains a web page in which the elaborated materials by the foundation can be found.
The Manual of Urgent Spanish
The Manual of Urgent Spanish is an important tool in maintaining linguistic conservatism in Spanish. It is also responsible for clearing up any misunderstandings pertaining to the Spanish language. One of the latest preoccupations of the Manual has been to proscribe Spanglish words and phrases that have begun to influence the language.
Wikilengua
In 2008, The Foundation of Urgent Spanish launched Wikilengua, a wiki licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA, which serves as a resource tool of the recognized use of Spanish. With the contribution of the Spanish community, frequent doubts can be consulted and corrected by using the Wikilengua webpage. Being open and accessible to everyone, Wikilengua may also serve as a medium to reflect the diversity and richness of Spanish in its multiple varieties spoken in more than twenty-one countries.
Wikilengua is open and free of charge for reading and contributing. Wikilengua is constructed and grows around a community of authors, translators, editors, linguists, professors, students, journalists, and in general all people who are interested in Spanish, individually or as part of some entity, that would like to share their knowledge with hundreds of millions of other Spanish-speakers.
References
Morales, Humberto Lopez. Globalizacion del léxico hispánico. Madrid: Espasa Calpe Mexicana, S.A., 2007.
Senz Bueno, Silvia. "Fundéu-BBVA: el largo brazo de la RAE en los medios", Addenda et Corrigenda; from Senz, S., and Alberte, M. (eds): El dardo en la Academia. Esencia y vigencia de las academias de la lengua española, Barcelona: Melusina, 2011, p. 239-257.