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‘Because When Governments Speak, They Are Not Always Right’: National Construction And Orthographic Conflicts In Mid-Nineteenth Century Spain, Laura Villa Jan 2012

‘Because When Governments Speak, They Are Not Always Right’: National Construction And Orthographic Conflicts In Mid-Nineteenth Century Spain, Laura Villa

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper analyzes the polemics surrounding the discursive legitimation and political institutionalization of different spelling systems circulating in mid-nineteenth-century Spain. In 1843, teachers associated with Madrid's Literary and Scientific Academy of Primary Education developed a simplified orthography and began to implement it in schools. In response to this independent initiative, Queen Isabel II signed a Royal Decree in 1844 that mandated the exclusive use of Royal Spanish Academy's orthography in Spain's primary education. The Literary and Scientific Academy contested the imposition and took actions to oppose its implementation, by organizing meetings and publishing essays to defend both the simplified orthography …


Los Antecedentes De Á La Nación Española Sobre Reformas Ortográficas (1852) De Mariano Cubí. Estudio Y Contextualización De Sus Ideas Y Propuestas Sobre Simplificación De La Ortografía, Laura Villa Jan 2012

Los Antecedentes De Á La Nación Española Sobre Reformas Ortográficas (1852) De Mariano Cubí. Estudio Y Contextualización De Sus Ideas Y Propuestas Sobre Simplificación De La Ortografía, Laura Villa

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study analyzes the spelling reform initiative defended by Mariano Cubí y Soler during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This renowned Catalan phrenologist composed various writings addressing the need to simplify the Spanish alphabet in order to achieve a complete correspondence between phonemes and graphemes. The development of Cubí’s orthographic theory and model is examined in these pages through a description of several proposals appeared in Gramática de la lengua castellana (1824), Revista Bimestre Cubana (1831), Sistema completo de frenolojía (1843, 1844, 1846) and La Antorcha (1849). Some of these documents – which can be considered the origins …