Free-D

The streets of Salamanca will now echo with the unmistakeable sound of a Southern Carolina twang, a Texan drawl, a NewYork banter, an LA whine or San Franciscan chatter, because, now the summer’s come, Salamanca belongs to the good ol’ US of A – or at least it seems that way. Now, you have to remember, that I’m British and being British I suffer from this ambivalent attitude towards Americans (Americans being from the US and not Latin Americans, or Canadians or anyone else from that great continent). There is an inverted snobbery and a grudging envy of the race that we still often refer to as our colonial cousins, even if it is in jest. We feel somehow more sophisticated, more culturally aware and of course, more historically enriched and yet, at the same time, we cannot ignore that without them, neither our language nor any of our various cultural exports would have such a great impact on the world. Let’s face it, people don’t learn English because they love Shakespeare; they love English because Bill Gates and a massive proportion of the internet highway uses English…

And if English is a linguistic equivalent of Windows, and maybe Spanish is Mackintosh, far more efficient and less liable to crash through incompatibility but seeing English dominate the market because of its relative simplicity at preliminary stages and overwhelming prevalence (all they need to do is invent a linguistic version of the i-pod and they’ll be laughing). The University’s new governing body has staked a large part of its manifesto on converting Salamanca into a Spanish version of Cambridge – that citadel of English and reference for the marketing of languages worldwide. But let’s face it, with such a formidable ally across the Atlantic, Cambridge has a very good headstart and there’s certainly a lot of catching up still to do.  But in the meantime, within the US itself, there is an interesting development which may serve to overturn the dominance of English yet. As the crowds of North American students testify, Spanish is increasingly becoming the second language of choice there, far surpassing French. More importantly, for large proportions of the population it is already the first language. Last week I was sent a link, and could scarcely believe my eyes… some of Hollywood’s finest – Forest Whitaker, William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver – are starring in a Sony Pictures production called Vantage Point. As far as I can ascertain, the film deals with the assassination of the president of the US (or is it his double?) and the political shannanigans that ensue. Pretty standard stuff… except that the film takes place in none other than the Plaza Mayor (OK, so most of it seems to be CGI recreation but unmistakeably, the Plaza). It’s not like Salamanca hasn’t seen Hollywood  come to town before, but now it almost appears that Salamanca has become the star of the show. What does this mean? Well, probably not a lot, except that now, when I tell people where I live,  they’ll know exacly where I’m talking about.