Mapping Spanish in Iceland

• Main Authors: Erlendsdóttir, Erla, Garðarsdóttir, Hólmfríður, Jiménez, Núria Frías
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Milli Mála 2022
• Subjects: Demolinguistics; Spanish in Europe; Spanish in Iceland; lýðfræðimálvísindi; spænska í Evrópu; spænska á Ísland; Cervantes; Drög; Fernandez; Moreno; Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/millimala/article/view/3680

In this article the preliminary results on Spanish language competence in Iceland are presented, as part of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project called Spanish in Europe (s. El español en Europa), directed by scholars at the Heidelburg Center for Iberic-American Studies and the University of Zurich. The project brings together over 30 scholars from across Europe, where the Icelandic participants join forces and collaborate with colleagues from Denmark, Finland,Norway and Sweden. The aim of the project is to map proficiency levels and the use of Spanish in Europe by focusing on the dynamics of migration, demography and education. The Cervantes Institute in Madrid is responsible for the publication of the results in a series of reports, initiated in 2020 with a volume on Spanish language in Germany. The volumes on Switzerland and Portugal are scheduled to be published later this year. The results from the Nordic countries will be published together in a special volume the following year. The project falls within the field of demolinguistics, an approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative data, applying methods used in sociolinguistics and demography. The article describes a methodology (Moreno Fernandez & Otero Roth 1998, 2006, 2007; Moreno Fernandez 2014) by which speakers are counted and categorized according to their level of competence into three groups: thefirst includes native speakers of the subject language, the second comprises those individuals with limited competence due to several factors (e.g., second- or third-generation heritage language speakers) and the third group is composed by learners of Spanish in different educational stages. Examples and data from those specific groups in Iceland are provided. Such methodology shared by all research teams enable the comparison of results between the Nordic countries and the rest of the European continent.Keywords: Demolinguistics, Spanish in Europe, Spanish in Iceland Í greininni er sagt frá samevrópsku rannsóknarverkefni sem ...