Journalists say use of Spanish growing in U.S.

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Madrid, May 3 (EFE).- Leading U.S. Hispanic journalists say the use of Spanish is established and growing in the United States and that Latino media professionals must strive to promote the proper use of their language.

Expressing this view to EFE were the executive copyeditor of CNN en EspaDol, Enrique Durand, and the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Veronica VillafaDe. Both will take part in a seminar on Spanish in the U.S. media that is to begin Thursday in San Millan de la Cogolla, a town in the La Rioja region of northern Spain.

The three-day gathering of media professionals is organized by the San Millan de la Cogolla Foundation in conjunction with Fundeu, a non-profit group dedicated to promoting the proper use of Spanish, whose sponsors include Spain's international news agency EFE.

Durand said that Spanish now has "a place in the United States and is going to have a future (there). The impact of the mass of immigrants is so great that despite their tendency to assimilate with the United States, the Spanish language will remain strong."

He noted that the 41 million Hispanics living in the United States now constitute the country's largest minority, equivalent to 14 percent of the total population.

CNN en EspaDol, which reaches 3.5 million households in the United States and another 14 million in Latin America, prides itself on using a Spanish that Durand describes as not neutral - "because no such thing exists" - but rather as "global, universal."

The news network aims to make its broadcasts equally intelligible to Cubans in Miami, Mexicans in Los Angeles and Puerto Ricans in New York, he said.

VillafaDe, head of the main organization of U.S. Latino journalists, said that Spanish-language media "should flee from anglicisms" and try to ensure the correct use of the Iberian tongue.

She acknowledged, however, that some "contamination" from English is all but inevitable when working in the United States. EFE

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