A Sociolinguistic Panorama of Central and South America 

This is the third volume in a series of seven which attempts to cover the main aspects of the multilingual panorama in the world according to regions. The same format is used here as in the other volumes of the series, the details of which were explained in Volume 1 and are here summarized in the Preface. 

The present volume covers sociolinguistic problems of Latin America and the Caribbean area. The colonial territories which are today in the hands of the United States (Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal Zone), as well as the situation of Latin American immigrants living in North America have already been treated in Volume 2. Nevertheless in this Introduction we will refer occasionally to these groups, since they constitute part of the linguistic problems existing on the subcontinent. 

As was explained in the Introduction to Volume 1, only a minimal part of the above problems has been dealt with here principally the more quantitative aspects of linguistic demography, but beyond this the CIRB/ICRB is gathering data in the sociolinguistic field on a much broader scope including detailed information regarding use, levels of prestige, bibliographical and academic sources and many other types of data for each language. We hope that in the future it will be feasible to present all this additional information to the public, at least for the most representative languages. Since it cannot be included at this stage, the reader runs the risk of not realizing all the implicit richness of the figures and of the short comments which form the bulk of this volume. The present Introduction tries to avoid this difficulty to the degree that is possible, by presenting a general picture of the linguistic or more precisely the sociolinguistic problems of the regions covered in this volume. It is hoped that this will permit the reader to get a broader interpretation of the bare data on the different languages. 

1. The Global Problems of the Subcontinent 

When comparing the panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean area with that of North America, the subject of the previous volume we find remarkable contrasts both on the level of our present knowledge and on that of reality itself, which at least in its general lines, is already sufficiently understood. With reference to the level of knowledge, we are initially confronted with a major difficulty. In the case of the United States and Canada, we possess a large quantity of data, from the decennial censuses which in some cases go back to the last century to numerous specialized studies on an infinite number of linguistic and sociolinguistic problems of which the most fundamental proof is a long list of articles and other publications on the subject. Difficulties arise not so much due to the lack of data, but rather to possible ambiguities which can arise when interpreting the existing data. On the contrary, the main problem for Central and South America is the lack of data. We can only guess at the main problems but we cannot know them exactly. They can be described qualitatively but can only be quantified with estimated figures. 

In the South, the censuses are much less frequent than in the North. Some countries facing important linguistic problems, (for example, Ecuador), have simply omitted questions relating to language in the last censuses. In other cases, it is difficult to interpret the results, due to the fact that the questions themselves were formulated imprecisely or in a different way from one census to the next. 

Among the countries included in this volume, Mexico is probably the country presenting the most complete census data. We are all familiar with the difficulties inherent in obtaining census data, especially when information is sought on languages of low social prestige (these figures tend to be lower than what is actually the case) or when one tries to better describe the dynamic situation of the language, the degree of bilingualism, the sometimes significant dialectal vark,tions or other aspects which, if they happen to be included in the census, are in a very precarious situation and subject to many possible interpretations. However, censuses are still the principal source of data for language information. Lieberson (1967) among others, and also the general Introduction of the series in Volume 1 indicate different approaches which enable us to reach rather refined analyses through the existing census data. 

But in many cases such data are not even available. In spite of the remarkable effort on the part of the United Nations to implant a decennial census system in all countries of the area, in accordance with some minimum standards of precision and comparability, there are many countries which have not yet succeeded in systematizing this type of information. As a result, the figures, including the official data, are merely estimates or projections and are much more subject to error. We are therefore forced to begin with these figures or other non-official estimates, the degrees of accuracy of which are very different in each
case. Only when they come directly from research specialists working in a particular region and with sociolinguistic perspective is it likely that the figures are nearly correct. This occurs more readily with small minority languages for which special studies have been undertaken. But when we deal with estimates coming from very large compilations on a continental or even worldwide level, each specialist discovers notable degrees of error In the corresponding figures for the languages with which he is most familiar. This is often the case in the present volume, for example, with very valuable and in some cases pioneering efforts such as Rosenblat (1954) or the volume La Poblaciffn Indigena de América of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (1964). Since we do not include here long critical comments on the variety of sources for each country and language, we inevitably fall into the same problem. But for the moment little can be done but present objectively the source and leave it up to the reader to draw his own conclusions taking into consideration the criteria which we have just mentioned. 

With regard to other more complex aspects which require more specialized studies than just demographic figures, our level of knowledge with regard to the subcontinent is still low, at least at the quantitative level. The list of sources mentions a great number of studies up to 1975. In this Introduction some other more representative supplemental sources have also been added which could help to round out the data of sociolinguistic problems in a broader sense. 

Concerning strictly linguistic data, the following compilations are useful: those in the volumes dedicated to linguistics in the somewhat outdated Handbook of South American Indians (Washington: Smithsonian, 1945), those in the Handbook of Midd/e American Indians (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967) and in Volume 4 of Current Trends In Lmguistics (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), dedicated to Ibero-America and the Caribbean area. 

We can therefore say that the sources provide a relatively adequate global understanding, but not a very exact or precise knowledge. On another level, of attitudes, of ethno-linguistic synthesis, of semantics, and naturally of the linguistic description of many minority languages, our knowledge is even smaller, which leaves much room for research in the future. On the whole, we could say that less data and fewer academic studies are available in this field for the subcontinent, not only in comparison to the First and Second Worlds but also to certain regions of the Third World, such as India. 

Nevertheless, it is feasible to make a series of generalizations as to the main sociolinguistic typologies which we find in this region of the world. On the level of objective reality, there are obvious contrasts with the northern region covered in Volume 2. In Latin America the main sociolinguistic problem stems from the existence of numerous autochthonous lanquaqes of Amerindian origin spoken by some 20 mllllon persons who live together with Spanish speaking people, and on a smaller scale with the Portuguese speakers. In the Caribbean area - in non-lberian America - the problem is Comparable, although here it is due not only to the presence of indigenous languages but also and even mainly to the wide variety of non-standard forms of a Creole type and lingua franca derived both from an African and native subtratum and from the language of the European conquerers (English, French, Dutch and Spanish). This reflects the agitated social history of each island plantation. Only as a third point and much further removed from the two previous factors, comes the problem related to the immigrants from Europe, who together with their belongings, brought along their languages as well. It is well to remember that this was the main sociolinguistic factor in North America. To these three factors already noted, a fourth one could be added which is common to them all: the relation between all these languages with their popular variants and the few official languages in the region (Spanish, Portuguese, and to a somewhat lesser extent French, English and Dutch) and all the problems which come from these language contact situations: stratification according to linguistic prestige, linguistic and pedagogical aspects, ethno-cultural demands, etc. 

The following pages present a typology based mainly on subregional zones which linguistically are most similar. This typology permits us to get an overview of the most characteristic problems within the area covered in this volume. 

2. Can we speak of an Idyllic Bilingualism in Paraguay? 

Paraguay in itself presents a unique case within the continent and probably within the modern world as well. Some national and foreign authors have described the situation of this country as being very near to perfect bilingualism and consequently a society where the two cultures, of colonial origin on one hand and of autochthonous origin on the other, continue to coexist in a harmonious way. Fortunately, we now have various studies at our disposal among which are the outstanding works by Bartomeu Meiia, which help us to understand the situation in the past as well as in the present. 

Various historical events have helped create the present situation. Upon the arrival of the Spanish, the Guarani who had just previously arrived in migrating waves from the present Brazilian coast, did not have any strong political organization similar to a government; this was different from the case, for example, of the Incas and the Aztecs. For the same reason, there was initially no strong resistance from the natives when the colony was established. Immediately a quick process of biological crossing started with the relatively abundant native population. As in other areas, the intermixture occurred especially between a Spanish man and an Indian woman. Since the father was often absent from home, the mother stayed with her children at home and brought them up in her mother tongue in the most literal sense of the word. During the 1 7th and 1 8th centuries, Paraguay was also the centre of the famous Jesuit Christian Indian villages, within which, under the protection of the missionaries, a large part of the Guarani population formed its own society with a certain autonomy and with its own vitality in contrast to the colonial Spanish society. Later on, in the Republican period and particularly during the presidential period of Francia, Paraguay was also the country which made the most serious efforts on the continent for an autonomous development apart from the
network of international economic ties. In the Triple Alliance War (1864-1870) and in later decades during the Chaco War (1932-1935), Paraguayan soldiers received orders to speak in Guarani for tactical reasons, so the familiar language also became a prestigious sign of nationality. 

The result of all these circumstances would seem to be a countrv with a hiqh bioloqical and cultural intermixture. Linguistic correlations would seem to indicate a much higher level of bilingualism than in the other countries of the continent. Many Paraguayan authors have drawn from these facts conclusions of a somewhat idyllic character and have idealized the situation. This was to be a model of conviviality between the language of the intimate and familiar on one hand, and the language of public communication on the other. The two languages, Guarani and Spanish would be used throughout the length and breadth of the whole country and by all classes in the Paraguayan society. However, recent research studies somewhat more lucid and objective, have proven that this "idealized bilingualism" does not exist in reality and that it is rather an ideological position which attempts to hide the situation of domination of which the majority of Guarani speakers is victim, in contrast to the dominating Spanish minority. 

It is certain that the percentage of Spanish monolinguals is minimal in the whole country. According to the 1962 census, this group represented only 4.4% of the total population of the country, and even for the capital Asuncion, the percentage reached only 14.7%. The rest of the population spoke Guarani and more than half of them spoke Spanish as well, thus giving a proportion of 76% bilinguals for the total population of Asuncion. On the whole, Guarani is spoken by more than two million persons, especially in Paraguay, and for Paraguayan emigrants to Argentina, Guarani is the second Amerindian language in numerical importance and the first in status. All this data shows the undeniable uniqueness of the Paraguayan situation. It does not, however, prove that the idyllic situation exists. A more profound analysis shows that we cannot speak of a peaceful or egalitarian union as the result of the above mentioned biological and cultural intermixture. Among the peculiarities of the Paraguayan case, it is true that Spanish is the predominant language In urban life (41% of the population of Asunci6n usually speak Spanish at home and 49% speak Spanish and Guarani), while Guarani is still the predominant language n rural areas (74% usually speak Guaranl and 23% speak Guarani and Spanish; see Pla and Melia, 1975). Even more significant is the fact that in Paraguay the Spanish language monopolizes almost exclusively the main national instrument of socialization, the school system and through it, also monopolizes the major part of the printed word, the mass media and the most significant aspects of public life. The small concessions made to Guarani in the field of literature, mainly in poetry or as a subject matter in the schools of Asunci6n or even in some symbolic TV program, do not succeed in changing fundamentally this situation. Behind the apparent equality measures are taken so that this obviously unequal situation will last forever. In spite of the demystification just mentioned, the Paraguayan situation continues to be unique and as such, has been the subject of numerous studies, which have revealed several peculiarities characterizing this situation. We shall cite the following points because of their special signifiance: 

a) The dominant and dominated Guarani: The generalization made up to now shows a Guarani "dominated" by the omnipotent presence of Spanish through a dominant minority. However, Paraguayan history, especially through the already mentioned Jesuit Indian villages, provided the opportunity for a relatively autonomous development of the language in a cultural and social context that was also relatively autonomous. It is a unique case within colonial America and as such has not yet received proper attention on the part of linguistic historians with the exception of Melia (1969). At present we can hardly speak of a
dominant Guarani except in a very limited way, namely in the case of the few independent tribal groups which still exist in Paraguay. 

b) Urban Guarani or the "third language . The ordinary expectation is that Amerindian languages inevitably lose out when they enter into close contact with the urban world and throuqh it with industrial society. In Paraguay, however, this has not been the case as we have seen in giving the figures for Asunci6n. There is a major tendency towards Spanish but not a definitive switch The same can be said regarding the hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans established in the biq metropolis of Buenos Aires who continue to maintain their linguistic identity (a practically forgotten aspect in the contemporary sociolinguistic literature). As a result of all these facts, a "third language" is emerging which bases its prestige and attractiveness on the adoption of specified loans from Spanish but which does not give up its proper identity: this is called Jopara (literally: "mixture"), a speech of great flexibility according to circumstances capable of change and dynamism. It is condemned by purists and feared by rigid analysts. but is growing continuously. In 1956, Garvin and Mathiot spoke of a clear process of "standardization" of the Guarani language. What would they think 20 years later, if they saw the growing importance of this variety called Jopara? 

c) Guarani outside Paraguay. There exists a double situation each having very different characteristics. The first, already very old, is one of small groups living in rural forest areas in the peripheral regions of Paraguay, with some in Brazil but still more in the Argentinian and Bolivian Chaco (Chiriguanos). This situation is not greatly different from the one to which so many other minority groups belong and which we describe in Section 5. In conclusion, these groups suffer much more from the pressure of the dominant Spanish groups than those in Paraguay. The other situation is relatively new, and has its origin in the massive migration of rural and urban Paraguayans, chlefly to Argentina and in many cases directly to the big city of Buenos Aires, and more recently as well to Brazil, although on a much smaller scale. The official estimate of 230,000 Paraguayans in Argentina, practically all of them Guarani speakers, is in reality much too low, since many immigrants hide their true origin because they are not legal residents. Private Argentine agencies working for immigrants do not contest the actual figure of over 1 million which at the moment represents the principal migrating movement to the Argentine Republic. Language loyalty is a peculiarity
of this group, which sticks to its language partly because it is easy to maintain contact with its place of origin. In spite of what has been said, there does not yet exist any sociolinguistic study on the subject. 

3. The Challenge of Multilingualism in the Andes 

This title is inspired by a book published by Alberto Escobar in Peru in 1972 which turned out to be a "best seller". Shortly afterwards, the revolutionary government of Velasco Alvarado made Quechua an official language of the country. A series of academic publications on Quechua and Aymara followed and even a newspaper was started with a weekly edition in Quechua. Escobar and others (1975) published a second book on the officialization of the language but it had already become difficult to sell it. Later, under a new political regime, Velasco was overthrown by another military leader, his laws remained only on paper and everything went back to the previous "order", both on the socio-economic as well as on the cultural and
linguistic levels. This meant a return to the domination of the oppressed Andean languages by Spanish which was a reflection of the persisting relationship between the social groups represented by these languages. This account of contemporary Andean history helps one to understand the restrictions and possibilities of the plurilingual situation that ex sts in the Andean region, mainly in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, in that order of importance. 

Quechua and to a lesser degree Aymara have, like Guarani, a long sociolinguistic prehistory and constitute together with Guarani a triumvirate of the three principal indigenous languages on the continent. Quechua, with its 6 to 8 million speakers dispersed from Ecuador to Argentina, is today the most widely spoken indigenous language in all America. Aymara is spoken by approximately 1,500,000 persons, of which more than 1 million live in Bolivia and more than 300,000 in southern Peru. Aymara represents the third most important Amerindian language after Quechua and Guarani. 

Centuries ago, in colonial times, Aymara was spoken in a much more extensive area as waves of semi-imperialist peoples advanced from numerous enclaves in the Andes. It was only during the last colonial period, the Inca, that Runa simi or Quechua started to impose itself as the imperial language, a trend which was immediately completed by the missionaries of the new colonial Spanish Empire. Their reasoning that it was better to preach to the Indians in a "natural" language (although it was not the language of certain indigenous groups) together with other socio-economic factors helped to reduce the numerous ethnic Andean groups to the point where they formed a single and uniform "Indian" social class of Quechua speakers. This applied to a lesser degree to Aymara, with which a dual structure was built up based on the domination of the creole minority group over the large autochthonous majority. 

From the XVlth century onwards, neither Quechua nor Aymara have had the opportunity to develop with a certain autonomy as was the case with Guarani in the Jesuit Indian villages in Paraguay. Since the first appearance of Pizarro on the continent, Quechua and Aymara were in a clear position of dominated and oppressed languages because of the colonial structure which offered no major economic, political or cultural possibilities. The only force of the former language was based on numerical strength, since it represented from 60% to 90% or more of the total population of several mountainous Andean regions
extending from Imbabura in Ecuador to southern Bolivia and even into Argentina. This was largely due to the conversions by missionaries as already mentioned but also to the recent emigration of perhaps half a million Bolivian Quechua speakers to Argentina. 

However, because of their position within the structure of the colonial society, from the 16th century up to the present, both languages have remained relegated to a position of low prestige and to a continuous and increasing dependence upon the Spanish language spoken by the dominating minorities. With some exceptions regarding the main nucleus of indigenous cultures, as in the case of Cuzco and Ayacucho for Quechua or of Lake Titicaca for Aymara, this situation has resulted in the stagnation of the vocabulary, the gradual loss of certain semantic fields and even of some grammatical structures, and at the same time an ever-increasing dependence upon Spanish, expressed by the form and direction of borrowings and linguistic
interference and also in the general trend of bilingualism: much more from Quechua and Aymara to Spanish than vice versa. What has been said for Guarani is even more valid for Quechua and Aymara without even referring to the fiction of an "idyllic" relationship. 

As in the case of Guarani, but even more so, Quechua and Aymara have been excluded from the schools and as a result of this, also from the world of writing, the official sphere and public life of high social prestige. 

Especially in the case of Quechua, its geographical dispersion caused by numerous natural mountainous barriers and other geographical factors has resulted in a new negative element which is greater than all the rest: its strong dialectal fragmentation. Some linguists have even compared the existing fragmentation within the Quechua language with what happened, for example, among some Romance languages: the many dialects of the Quechua family could actually be regrouped into two or more "languages" based on somewhat more solid linguistic affinities than those which separate for example, Spanish from Portuguese
or Flemish (Dutch) from German. But in this case, the low social and political status of those speaking such dialect-languages has not produced the artificial formation of fragmented standard norms in accordance with the process which Kloss has designated as Ausbau (see Introduction to Volume 1). What is more if the efforts toward making Quechua official were successful, it would be much more desirab!e to arrive at a unique standard norm which would be sufficiently flexible to make room for regional variants, thus consolidating a strong "Pan-Quechuan" group feeling. This represents another example of the importance that social and political factors play in fields which apparently are so "technical", as to determine what a language and/or a simple dialectal variation is. What is certain is that at present, mutual intelligibility in some cases is difficult between speakers of certain dialectal groups of Quechua mainly between the so-called Quechua I (which is spoken in the center of Peru, linguistically the most fragmented area) and Quechua ll (spoken in other areas, both in and outside of Peru, in Bolivia and in Ecuador as well). For these reasons, it will be very difficult to arrive at a standardized form of speech, as fragmentation also facilitates the perpetuation of a social situation of low prestige and this situation, as noted by Escobar, Matos and Alberti (1975), in turn, fortifies the fragmentation which in other circumstances would probably be relatively easy to overcome. 

In spite of all that has been said up to now, Quechua and Aymara continue to enjoy a relatively high vitality which in certain respects is even higher than that of Guarani. This is due not only to their numerical strength but also to the growing social importance of their speakers. It is not a coincidence that the prestige and the subsequent vitality of these two Andean languages is much lower along the coast, where they had already succumbed centuries ago to submersion by the mercantile and industrial-capitalist forces, this despite timid efforts toward recuperation throuqh the recent massive migration from the mountainous regions to the capital and its surroundings. Neither is it a coincidence that the prestige of Ecuadorian "Quichua" continues to be inferior to Peruvian and Bolivian Quechua, where agrarian reforms and the acceptance of certain political and social rights have taken place for the majority of the rural population. 

As in so many other regions of the continent and also of the globe, a first acknowledgement and support of the Andean autochthonous languages came from the different religious groups, first from Catholic missionaries at the beginning of the colonial period, some of whose linguistic works have become classics and have not yet been surpassed. Later on, from the end of the 19th century and especially during the last 30 years support came from Bible societies and other Protestant organizations. Lately, the influence of linguists and anthropologists has made itself felt along the same lines as well. However, none of these religious or academic influences have been of a very profound nature, because they were foreign as were their motivations. More serious has been the recovery brought about by tne agrarian reforms in Bolivia (1953) and Peru (1969). The rise in economic standards and the greater social participation of the rural population, nearly all of Quechua and Aymara origin, had a double linguistic effect. On one hand, as was initially hoped, it resulted in accelerating the introduction of the official Spanish world into the rural regions, the multiplication of rural schools and increasing contacts of all kinds between town and country thus increased the Castilianization of the rural world. On the other, this Castilianization did not necessarily imply
the definite loss of Quechua or Aymara, although on the whole, there is a definite loss, chiefly beginning with the second generation of immigrants to the city. Furthermore, this persistence of indigenous languages was not just a passive remnant due to the overall imperfection of the introduced socio-economic change but had positive aspects of recovery. When the economic, political and social power of the Quechua and Aymara speaking farmers increased, the status and the global prestige of the language spoken by these social groups grew as well. Their language even entered some levels of political and public life. The nearly simultaneous proliferation of the transistor radio completed the process. It became a paying proposition
on the commercial political and/or religious proselytization levels to speak on the radio to a market of possible consumers or followers in their own language. Quechua and Aymara entered the radio world and this in turn increased the prestige of the language in the eyes of its speakers and oi others as well. For all these reasons, small elite groups have emerge;i. especially among immigrants living in the cities who have remained more exposed to the dominant culture before abandoning their own and who have subsequently revalorized and now support Quechua or Aymara. On the other hand, the migration movements have extended the linguistic borders of both languages, in the cities as well as in the newly settled regions. 

This double trend has resulted in the most paradoxical situations in Peru, where formerly the disintegrating factors had a stronger effect. According to the censuses which always try to favour the language enjoying the greatest national prestige, between 1940 and 1972, the number of Quechua and Aymara speakers diminished from 51% to 28% and monolinguals of indigenous languages from 3% to 12%. However, it was precisely at this point that in 1975 the law for the officialization of Quechua was passed. This officialization was notwithstanding, on a much lower scale than that in other countries, (such as the officialization of Flemish in Belgium) and in the moment of truth, remained as we have already shown largely on paper. But the mere fact of being put down on paper is already a notable step when compared to the past four centuries. In Bolivia, the social force of the indigenous languages is more solidly established. However, this has never come to be explicitly recognized officially, in spite of the fact that during the past few years the subject has been discussed openly, and there is talk of a possible decree. Surprisingly, Aymara has a greater social force than does Quechua although the latter is more widely spoken (34% of the totai population) than Aymara (25% of the total population). This is probably due to the fact that the Aymara speakers literally stick to the capital city, La Paz, which is situated in the heart of the Aymara speaking area. The influence of Aymara in the capital has not only come to be felt as far as its outskirts but also from within through the 200,000 to 300,000 immigrants, who were originally Aymara speaking peasants, among a population of 650,000 inhabitants. The city has five radio stations which use the Aymara language almost exclusively and some of them directly for commercial purposes, with reference particularly to this already urban population. This is not the case in any other place, neither for Quechua nor for Guarani, although the use of these three languages on the radio is frequent in many places during early morning and mid-afternoon hours (Albo, 1974). 

In several regions where Quechua and Aymara are spoken, the social stratification between these two languages varies according to the social importance of their speakers. In Oruro, for example, Quechua which is spoken by miners and merchants, enjoys greater prestige than Aymara, spoken by peasant farmers. On the other hand, in the North of La Paz, the merchants are Aymara speakers and use their social importance to impose their language upon the Quechua speaking peasant farmers. 

In Ecuador, this kind of partial recovery of the language has not taken place. Quichua (there the term "Quechua" is not used) continues to have low prestige compared to the situation in Peru and Bolivia. Quichua remains the language of the majority in two densely populated provinces: Chimborazo and Imbabura and is spoken by approximately one million people along the Sierra and the eastern jungle region. The latest censuses regrettably omitted questions relating to language because of a highly questionable criterion of resolving problems by ignoring them. Therefore it is impossible to give precise figures. But it is obvious that Quichua is losing ground more and more in favour of Spanish. There are several regions in the Sierra where only Spanish is spoken today but where Quichua was still the common language in recent times. 

Quichua in reality was never in a very secure position in this part of South America. Local ethnic groups spoke other languages. Although Torero (in Escobar, ed., 1972) pointed out signs of a possible pre-lncan presence of Quichua in southern Ecuador, the language only imposed itself later on during the Inca Empire and in a climate of growing tension between this area and the more southern regions of the Empire. The colony and the republic have maintained this tension which even led to wars and territorial divisions, and Quichua has continued to be in a somewhat remote position and is tolerated only as the language of the most despised native regions without any ancestral ties, which would militate against its revalorization for creating a more or less symbolic national conscience (different from Peru or Mexico). The only possible recovery could come mainly from external factors such as missionary efforts, which were especially strong at the end of the 19th century, and starting with the last decade from the influence of some linguists and educators supporting the so-called bilingual approach. There is a lack of dynamism among the Quichua speakers regarding their language, except as a relatively secondary element in a somewhat political indigenous movement which is more directly oriented to more substantial goals such as the acquisition of land. There is a relationship between this situation and the fact that unlike Peru and Bolivia, Ecuador did not have a real agrarian reform but only skirmishes and caricatures of reform. Once again the socio-economic factor explains the sociolinguistic situation . 

As we saw in the case of Guarani-Jopara there exists in Quechua (much more than in the case of Aymara) the phenomenon of a "third language" formation which has already been called "Quechuanol" by some people. This occurs mainly in those more peripherally located regions where Spanish is fast imposing itself (for example, in Santiago Quechua of northern Argentina) and in other areas as well like Huancayo (Peru) and Cochabamba (Bolivia) where there is intensive interaction between different social groups and where a very generalized bilingualism is imposing itself. Here Quechua is continuously adopting Spanish words in a conscious effort to enter the world of the dominant groups and to gain prestige. At the same time, the Spanish spoken by the more popular sections of the population continues to show traces of Quechua mainly in the unconscious use of certain phonological and grammatical structures which betray the origin of some emerging groups, whose members or whose members' grandparents made the effort to switch over to the language of the dorr,inating group in order to increase their social prestige. 

The disadvantageous position and growing loss of strength of Quechua, Aymara and Guarani are evident in what we have seen above when compared to the position of the Spanish of the dominant groups and to communication on the level of national and continental society. But at the same time, these same three languages provide the cases where a relatively long-lasting resistance and even a recovery of the autochthonous language together with Spanish (and not "instead of") is still conceivable, mainly in the direction of an increasingly global bilingualism where mother tongue and international language each finds its functional specialization within the whole. 

4. The Central American Mosaic 

Based on a first comparison with the Andean region, one expects to find a similar situation in Central America. Here as in the Andes, there flourished highly important and developed pre-Hispanic civilizations which in some aspects were even superior to those of the Incan Empire. Later, during the colonial period, the history was relatively comparable to that of the Andean region. Consequently, one would suppose that the sociolinguistic panorama of the Central American and Andean regions could be placed under the same heading. There are certainly many similarities, but these are mainly to be found on the more global level
of the economic, social and cultural dualism between natives and those of Spanish or white origin. However, in the linguistic and sociolinguistic field properly speaking, the panorama is sufficiently different as to justify and even necessitate a separate treatment. On a closer examination we find that this difference also reflects a history and a prehistory which are rather different from those of the Andean region. 

On the whole, the ethno-linguistic situation of Central America is much more complex than that of Paraguay and of the Andean region. Estimates give about 260 languages for the total area (Wolf 1959) of which at least a hundred still enjoy a certain vitality. However, their distribution is unequal. The highest concentration is found in the south, in the area of the ancient Maya civilization, a precolonial civilization which compared to the whole continent, arrived at a high degree of intellectual development, including both writing and advanced mathematics. Today this area covers the greater part of Guatemala, especially in the higher regions, and also the Yucatan peninsula, as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. We are not dealing,
however, with an area where a uniform Maya language prevails. In fact, there are numerous languages derived mainly from the Maya language but these are extremely diversified. Only in Guatemala, a small country of some 100,000 km2 with some 5,000,000 inhabitants do we find some 20 different languages, each one of which is spoken by at least 20,000 persons; of these only 4 are spoken by more than 100,000 persons and only Quiché has 600,000 speakers. 

In Mexico, especially in the southern part already mentioned, and to a lesser extent in some other regions, notably in Oaxaca state, there still exists a relatively important concentration of indigenous populations, of which a varying percentage still speaks an Amerindian language. However, the situation here is even more complex than in Guatemala. The Instituto Nacional Indigenista de México estimates that there are some 60 languages spoken today in the country. In the precolonial period, it is probable that 125 languages existed (Heath, 1972). According to the official data of 1970 published in this volume, none of these languages has arrived at the figure of one million speakers. Those that are closest are . Seuls les parlants nahuatl (800,000) et les Nahuatl (800,000) and Yucatan Maya (450,000), that is to say, the languages of the former Aztec and Maya civilizations. But their vitality today cannot be compared with what they were centuries ago. Nahuatl, for example was the official imperial language and at the beginning of the colony became the "general language" for purposes of evangelization, as was the case with Quechua in the south. However, hundreds of thousands of present-day speakers have great difficulty resisting the intense pressure of the Spanish language: one need only refer to the fact that in Mexico City, situated on the ancient Aztec capital, there live 7 million people who are nearly all Spanish speakers. For many of them, Nahuatl survives only in a multitude of terms in the local vocabulary and in the typical intonation which characterizes Mexicans. Seven other languages are spoken by at least 100,000 persons, but none of these arrive at the figure of 300,000. The remaining speakers are divided among a great number of minor languages. According to the same census of 1970, the whole country had a total of 3,200,000 inhabitants speaking Amerindian languages, representing 8% of the total population. However, according to the 1940 census, 2,500,000 speakers represented 15% of the  total population. The real figures must be somewhat higher, since
censuses have the tendancy to underestimate languages of low prestige. In 1970, only in Yucatan state were the majority of those counted in the census (56%) Amerindian speakers. In Oaxaca state the flgure was 40%, while in Chiapas and Hidalgo states it exceeded 20% (Heath, 1972). If a map were drawn, we would be confronted with a highly complicated mixture of Amerindian speaking island-like areas, surrounded by Spanish speaking sea. The situation is becoming more and more like that of other ethnic minorities living in enclaves and other protected areas. This is especially the case In the North of the country and in the region belonging formerly to Mexico, which now forms part of the Unlted States. 

This high degree of linguistic fragmentation, found even in the most important enclaves of ancient civilizations and in the most densely populated areas, has important sociolinguistic correlations. In many cases, there is no mutual intelligibility which renders communication among ethnic groups extremely difficult. A result of this is, for example, that becoming part of the radio world, at least in an important and massive way, is less viable, because it is more expensive and less efficient. Despite the lesser importance of such factors, it is evident that they too have an influence, in this case a negative one, on the consolidation of
group identification and on the increase in prestige of the indigenous culture. Through other processes of a more fundamental character as, for example, the Mexican Agrarian Reform and other structural changes the prestige and participation of the indigenous population has increased, whereas in the past, nearly the only way to social and cultural promotion which presented itself was that of adopting Spanish. Complementary processes of consolidating the native language such as those mentioned for Peru and Bollvla, are not likely to occur nowadays. No doubt, there are some movements in favor of ethnic groups - for example, the so-called "Catholic Action" group, working among indigenous populations of Guatemala. But for these groups,
aspects such as the language and the indigenous culture play only a secondary role in contrast to their role in religious movements found among Aymara speakers in Bolivia. 

The Spanish colonial status had a very similar development both in Central America and in the Andean region. For this reason, there evolved in both areas, a society having a dual character, with a dominating creole Spanish minority and a dominated indigenous majority, each with its own languages and cultures and in addition an expanding intermediate group of metis. But precoloniai and to some extent postcolonial history have developed differently in these two regions and here lies the key to many differences explained above. 

The Aztec and Maya civilizations in Central America were relatively different from that of the Inca civilization and probably from other pre-lnca civilizations as well. On one hand, parallels can be found between Andean and Roman civilizations and on the other, between the Maya-Aztec and Greek civilizations. As magnificently illustrated by Katz (1969), the Andean civilizations were militaristic and tried to establish a Pan-lnca society. This facilitated the expansion of a single language over very vast territories. Due to the short duration of the Incan Empire, this objective could not be reached, but this trend was later pursued and consolidated by the Spanish, that is, mainly by missionaries as we have already seen. On the other hand, first the Maya civilization and then the Aztec stressed rather the concept of a sort of federalism which facilitated commercial exchanges and the collection of tributes but failed to establish a very strong and uniform empire. Thus each group easily developed its own cultural expression, an aspect which developed more in this area than in the Andean region (as was the case in Ancient Greece). This factor also facilitated linguistic fragmentation. Although missionaries in Central America tried to favour everywhere the use of Nahuatl for evangelization purposes, the effort was not as successful as in the case of the Incas, due to a greater linguistic complexity. In the postcolonial period, capitalistic type development was also stronger in the north of Central America than in the mountainous enclave of the Andean region. This can be partly explained by the influence of the northern giant the United States. The growth of the metropolis, Mexico City, is a result of this development. With this came the transition from an ethnic identification to a more "proletarian" one, based on the economic terms of the socially lower class. In Mexico each year, the percentage of the ''indigenous" group or those that identify themselves as such, drops sharply. Factors such as these can explain why indigenous groups, who formerly were the majority now find themselves in the minority and dispersed throughout different geographical areas. Similar explanations are probably also applicable to other Central American countries such as Honduras, the country of the United Fruit Company, although here the initial group of the indigenous population was never so important. Basically we are dealing here with the same cause which explained the important decrease and finally even the extinction of the indigenous languages in the coastal Andean region, even as early as the colonial Spanish period: with a greater and more direct involvement in the socio-economic system of the metropolitan centers of power went a greater urban concentration and a growing acceptance of the language and culture of the dominating society. The kind of innovating activities required by the economic and social conditions in these most exposed regions make the maintenance of a dual and diglossic (in the literal sense of the word) system less functional.  

An aspect of minor importance but pertinent and partly related to this strong influence of the United States in the Central American region and especially in Mexico is that there is also a notable abundance of modern linguistic studies on the native languages of the area, undertaken by North American linguists or by those closely connected to North American linguistics. It was here that the Summer Institute of Linguistics was founded, along with glottochronology and one of the main linguistic classifications. The first ethno-linguistic studies done south of the Bravo river dealt with Mexico, although subsequent sociolinguistic development in the region has not been very noteworthy in comparison with the Andean and Guarani speaking areas, which is probably due to the same fragmentation already mentioned and which in turn somehow decreases the importance of these studies. Mexico is also the first country on the continent for which a detailed political linguistic history was published covering the period from its origin until the present day (Heath, 1972). Finally, Mexico was the place of origin of all "indigenous" educational movements but this is no longer the case, because they have spread over many countries of the continent during the last decades. 

5. The Hopeless Situation of Other Indigenous Linguistic Minorities 

Here we refer above all to the well-known situation of innumerable jungle groups which are dispersed over the lowlands of the continent, especially those in the river basins of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. We include as well various isolated groups which are found here and there in various mountain regions, for example, the relatively numerous group of the Mapuche (500,000) in the Chilean and Argentinian Araucanian region, the 60,000 Paez of the Popayan area (Colombia) or the remains of greatly reduced groups such as the Uru-Chipayas among the Aymaras in Bolivia or the Jaqaru (linguistically close to the
Aymaras) among the Castilianized Quechuas of the Lima Andean region. As already pointed out, many of the Mexican indigenous groups today share a fate similar to other minorities hemmed in, in ever diminishing circles, by a dominant language.  

On the linguistic level properly speaking, existing studies are numerous and often based on misslonary or anthropological writings. There is, however, still much to be done. Relatively complete linguistic descriptions deal only with a handful of languages. For many, we do not have more than references and outlines which are more or less incomplete and often already outdated. For the same reason, there exist many doubts and gaps in philological classifications by groups and families. Even such basic data as the number of languages is still partly unknown. Brazil is a good example of this fact. An estimate of as many
as 250 languages has been given, and was even made in the general introduction of this series of volumes. However, in the present volume in which precise figures are claimed to be given for each language, it has been possible to enumerate only 169 languages, including many which today are no longer spoken. Furthermore for all those languages spoken in the jungle both within and outside of Brazil, one has to deal also with another difficulty, the frequently encountered phenomenon that different authors use different names for the same language or ethnic group. 

All these reasons suggest an inherent weakness in any effort to add up demographic data. When jungle languages are concerned, the demographic data, if they exist, are limited to mere estimates. And the different estimates, either official or private, differ remarkably. In Colombia, for example estimates made around 1970 varied from 120,000 to 250,000 speakers of indigenous languages. The most adequate data usually comes from ethnographers, who discuss those groups which they have studied in detail and for which they have personally tried to establish their own census counts. In this sense, although still incomplete and local, the small documents which are published periodically by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) with its headquarters in Copenhagen, represent one of the most appropriate sources we dispose of today. With reference to minority groups on the continental level, apart from the sources taken from the present volume, the compilation by the Ethnoloqical Institute in Bern and the World Council of Churches (Dostal, ed. 1972) could be useful for covering the indigenous population of lowland (non-Andean) regions of South America. 

Concerning sociolinguistic problems, nearly all these groups are in the hopeless situation of having to face the overwhelming force of the dominating official language, either Spanish or Portuguese (Aymara in the case of the Chipaya). The possibility of increasing the prestige of the language as a factor of social self-identification is almost nil. In many cases there is even the question of the survival of the language and the cultural identity of the group. If a certain group has increasing contact w:th the surrounding world, the acquisition of the dominant language and its adoption after one or more generations is one of the most
desirable signs of social advancement. If the situation is that of a relatively rigid status quo within the contact situation, the indigenous language continues to be spoken in the family but the use of the dominant language is indispensable for communication purposes outside the home and the community. Only those more isolated jungle groups which have hardly any permanent contact with the outside world will tenaciously stick to their language. But it can be predicted that when they inevitably come into contact with the nationally dominant groups, they will undergo the same process. 

The main exceptions are due to the influence of missionary groups which value the native language as a more efficient means of preaching and in some cases, even prepare materials in these languages. In the concrete case of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, this preoccupation has resulted in a massive training of missionary linguists who have prepared vocabularies, grammars (nearly all within the tagmemic Pike school), biblical texts and reading materials. But their effort toward revalorization usually ends at this point. There is normally a paradoxical contrast between this linguistic revalorization (in the last instance for the at times mechanical transmission of the "word of God") and a strong rejection of other cultural values which are only considered to be pagan customs. The institute tries to maintain good public relations with the different governments presenting itself as part of a united effort towards the integration of the indigenous jungle-dwelling populations in the respective countries. However, during the last few years, different discussions on this subject have taken place because of its intimate ties to foreign interests. In any case, from the sociolinguistic point of view, the efforts do not go beyond those mentioned above. 

The most remarkable case of linguistic and cultural revalorisation of a minority group is probably that of the Shuars living in the Ecuadorian jungle. A few years ago, this group was called "Jivaro" and only known as a "wild" group of head hunters and head Shrinkers. Presently, thanks to the work of a Salesian missionary group, the Shuars constitute a solidly organized ethnic group highly conscious of their identity and have already become part of the modern economy without renouncing thelr own denbty. Various publications have appeared, some on linguistics, of which the main authors are of Shuar origin.  

Several organizations on the national and continental level, have also been formed which group together ethnic mlnorities, with the aim of mutually defending their threatened interests, principally their territorial rights. The revalorization of the language and culture is included In their programs It is a sign,ficant fact that the principal leaders of these groups are precisely persons who are most exposed to external contacts and who are for the most part bilingual. Several groups of anthropologists such as those who organized a meeting in Barbados and special symposia during the latest conferences of Americanists, have supported this type of movement of a more ethno-political nature. These movements do not always make a clear distinction between the different situations and problems of minority groups, as analysed in this section, and those of larger groups, as mentioned in prevlous sections, which actually need a somewhat dlfferent approach, especially on the level of strategy and pracbcal action. 

6. The Caribbean Area and Non-lberian America 

In this area of cyclones, the linguistic panorama seems to be rather in upheaval as well, particularly in those regions which escaped Spanish colonization. 

Alleyne (1974) described the region in the following terms: 

"The Caribbean area, including the coastal regions of South and Central America bordering on the Caribbean Sea, brings together nearly all types of linguistic phenomena and nearly all the important languages existing in the world. In the Caribbean area are found jargons used for commercial purposes; so-called Creole dialects or languages; ethnic vernaculars, that is languages which were spoken by our ancestors and which are still used today for religious purposes including Latin and Yoruba; regional and social dialects, international standard languages; regional standard languages. Among the important
languages, perhaps the only ones which are not found here are Swahili and surprisingly enough Portuguese. However French, Spanish, English, Chinese, Hindi and Urdu are all represented." 

An initial clarification of this somewhat confused situation can be obtained by separating from the rest those regions which were colonized by the Spanish. Spanish monolingualism prevails strongly, both on the Spanish speaking continent as well as in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, with exceptions found mainly in Central America in cases of contacts of this language with a few indigenous groups which have maintained their Amerindian languages: the Cuna and Guaymi in Panama, the Miskito in Nicaragua and Honduras, and, in the case of Central America, especially the groups already mentioned, which in the case of the Maya of Yucatan represent the majority. Apart from these exceptions, however, a kind of Standard Spanish is spoken in this area without any other variation than the usual regional and social dialects which are found everywhere. These matters will be analysed in the following section. 

On the other hand, when speaking of non-Spanish America, the situation becomes complex. The different islands and some coastal regions were colonized by several powerful states: France (Haiti, French Guiana and several small Antillean islands), England (Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad-Tobago, Belize, Bahamas and many other small islands), Holland (Surinam and several small islands near Venezuela) and recently also the United States (Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal Zone - both regions with a Spanish linguistic and colonial background). Some of these possessions have changed masters over the years. The type of economy prevailing resulted in massive migrations either from nearby places (as in the case of Jamaicans who built the Panama Canal) or from far away areas as the numerous black African slaves or the Hindus and Indonesians who came from other colonies with their English or Dutch masters. As a result, each island, colony or ex-colony has its language, its languages or its sometimes complex combinations of dialects which reflect the peculiar zigzag histories of these lands where industries of sugar cane and cotton, etc. flourished but demanded such an interchange of human masses. Out of this painful history of the Caribbean area has developed a unique laboratory for linguists as another by-product of the colonial plantation economy. 

A second clarification can be made within this turbulent area by differentiating, on one hand, the countries where the variation between the standard language (French, English) and its varieties called Creoles constitutes the main linguistic problem and on the other, the countries where the problem of bilingualism or multilingualism exists as well. 

Haiti, for French, Jamaica for English and to a lesser degree other French or English territories as well form the first group which we could call "Creole". In all these places there exists a continuum which extends from the minority use of an international language-in its standard form to the use of increasingly diversified local varieties. The use of one or the other variety reflects the social stratification of the region. If this stratification in multilingual countries leads to a lack of "language" status for the language of low prestige, it is not surprising that the same has happened and is still partly happening with the French or English Creole variants. But from a linguist's point of view, the existence of these Creole variants has put to the test
the validity of many linguistic principles and theories which had emerged in other socially very different spheres. The investigation of the Caribbean area and some regions in Melanesia and New Guinea has stimulated the birth of this new specialized field which is known as the study of "Pidgin" and "Creole" languages. The rigidity of many axioms of synchronic linguistics both structural and descriptive has given way when confronted with a situation of too many "free" alternatives. Only an historical reconsideration within a broader sociolinguistic framework has helped to understand the phenomenon in its proper terms. At this point, linguists have begun to understand that the so-called Creole dialects are, in reality, the result of
convergence between languages (European, African and Amerindian) and not mere simplified corruptions of the language brought from the colonial metropolis. In this process of convergence, the vocabulary of the language belonging to the French or English colonizer imposed itself, but many elements of other languages persisted on the syntactic level, often giving the result an isolated rather than inflected character. In the last instance the process is similar to that already observed in the case of "Jopara" or the "third language" of Paraguay, or "Quechuañol" in the Andean region, but here in the Caribbean area, the process has gone much further due to the special social circumstances and the respective languages in contact. 

To the second group, where we deal as well with plurilingual situations, belong those regions which fell under Dutch dominabon (Surinam in the Guianas, Curaçao and other islands north of Venezuela), the Guianas (which, although situated more to the East, on the Atlantic, belong to the typology of this group), Trinidad, Belize (also called British Honduras in spite of its closer affiliation to Guatemala) and on a different level, also the Panama Canal Zone and Puerto Rico. With the exception of the last two, all regions of this group have the same problems as those mentioned for Creole languages which differ from the
international standard form. In the case of the Dutch Windward islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao), where the Papiamentu language was born, the origins of this language do not go back further than the end of the 17th century and its Afro-European components are hardly known, a fact which greatly intrigues linguists. Papiamentu is spoken today by all social classes and has increasingly been used by writers; however, the official language is still European Dutch, and the language many want to speak is either Spanish or Enqlish, which are the dominant languages of the neighbouring territories. In the Dutch Leeward islands (San Martin and others) which are surrounded by English speaking colonies, English has always been spoken and Dutch has only been introduced in recent years. In the possessions situated on the Atlantic: Trinidad, Surinam and British Guyana (Guyana), immigrants of Asiatic origin (from India and to a lesser extent China and Indonesia) form an important part (40- 50%) of the total population. With these immigrants came their languages and also variants of the colonial languages, English and Dutch, which are very different from those spoken already in the Caribbean area through contact with African or Amerindian languages. Finally - last and least - Amerindian languages mainly of the Carib family are spoken in several areas along the continental fringe. In the Panama Canal Zone and Puerto Rico, bilingualism exists due to the contact between a long Spanish tradition and the recent domination by the United States which, in the case of the Canal, also brought along a rather large contingent of English Creole speaking negro workers. 

The mere mention of these facts allows us to grasp the complexity and variation of the situation existing from one island to the other depending on the colonial possession. It is natural that this situation has drawn the attention of numerous linguists who are fascinated by this nearly unique but complex set-up. The 6th Interamerican Symposium of Linguistics of the PILEI which in 1971 took place precisely in Puerto Rico strongly emphasized this point and could be considered as an overall evaluation of the present state of our knowledge on the subject. The panorama is becoming clearer in its general lines especially concerning French Creole in Haiti, which has been one of the most studied cases. However, as was said at the above mentioned symposium, what has been done up to the present is no more than the opening of a few exploratory paths into a dense forest which is still largely unexplored . 

7. The Dominant Languages 

With the exception of those small countries which were marginal to Spanish and Portuguese colonialism, the languages of these countries were the official ones and apart from the case of Paraguay and several Andean and Central American regions already mentioned, they were the most widely spoken if not the only ones. 

Until recent decades. under the influence of the traditional philological schools of the mother country and the local branches of the Royal Language Academy, the greater part of linguistic studies concentrated on classical subjects such as American Spanish, regional variants such as the soft pronunciation in the lowlands, the "Yeismo" (y vs. //), or the affricate variants of "r" along the Andean mountain range. The following names belong to this classical epoch: Angel Rosenblat, Andres Bello, the two philologists Caro and Cuervo, as well as the institute of the same name. More recent investigations, such as the study of the
cultivated norm in the cities - a project presently under way - follow these same lines. Into this category also fall different studies which when analysing the local Spanish trace influences of substratum and adstratum languages mainly on the level of vocabulary and perhaps the odd idiomatic expression or local construction. 

Only during the last few years have studies been undertaken which investigate the more extensive dynamics of languages in contact or the social dimension of dialects. Trying to analyse complex linguistic phenomena without considering the socio-economic or extra-linguistic factors will sooner or later be unfruitful. 

Under the influence of the new science of sociolinguistics. several studies have been undertaken. Most have been dedicated entirely to analysing the problems of plurilingual countries, which were examined in the preceding sections. However, there are already some studies' especially on urban problems, which take North American sociolinguistic studies as a model. The cities of Panama, Buenos Aires, Lima, Valparaiso and to a lesser extent others, have been targets of investigation. But there still remains much to be done in this field. In several of these urban studies, the aspect of languages in contact should not be omitted, due to the massive migrating movements of Quechua, Aymara and Guarani speakers. But this is an aspect which
remains to be dealt with, except for two small studies undertaken in Lima and La Paz. Another field which has been dealt with in a recent study, is that of linguistic borders in contact areas, mainly between Uruguay (Spanish) and Brazil (Portuguese). The linguistic border between Paraguay and Brazil would also be worth studying because of the growing Brazilian expansion in an area where, in addition, a third majority language, Guarani, is spoken. 

It is worth mentioning that a subject on which much literature was produced in other countries, the social dialect of the Blacks has not been studied in this area of the world. Nor is there special reason for such a study, in spite of the fact that in the Caribbean area, in Brazil, and to a lesser extent in other regions of the continent a great number of Blacks are found. Here again, extra-linguistic factors are to be consldered. In the United States discrimination was practlced based on segregation, so that social interaction must have been intensive within the same social-ethnic group and much more Sporadic between groups. Thus, a special dialect known as Black English has emerged. In Central and also in South America racial discrimination has existed and still exists, but it is of a different character. more paternalistic and offering few possibilities to the Blacks, without however building a systematic barrier to communication and to interaction between socio-ethnic groups. Therefore, we cannot speak here of a Spanish or Portuguese dialect peculiar to the Blacks, except in highly secluded places as is the case in some "palenques" and "quilombos" of Bush Negroes who are runaway slaves. The Labn Amencan Blacks speak the same dialect as the Whites of the same soclal group. 

Although it falls outside the limits of the present volume, we should mention here another kind of problem which is partly related to the subject of our discussion: the Spanish in Puerto Rico which is exposed on all sides to the influence of the United States, the country to which it administratively belongs and, on another level, the languages and sociolinguistics of the populations of Puerto Rico Mexico (Chicanos), the Dominican Republic and Cuba, who have immigrated in great numbers to the United States. This is a research field which has been chosen by many linguists of that country, especially in connection with
educational programs. An important aspect of this latter problem is still the contrast between languages of high and low prestige, as a result of the local relationship of power and domination among those who speak English and those who speak Spanish. At this point, we can find similarities to some types of relations already mentioned, between Spanish and the indigenous languages. However, the roles change here: for these immigrants to the United States, Spanish becomes the dominated language of low social prestige, the object of discrimination in spite of the fact that it is backed by a whole continent where it is the official language and by a great cultural richness reaching over centuries and countries. 

In the previous volume of this series, the most important theme concerning the linguistic problems of North America had to do with the languages of the immigrants coming from Europe, including their evolution over generations. Everywhere in Latin America, we find a vast immigration movement of Spanish and Portuguese even after independence which, however, did not create new linguistic situations. Furthermore, since the Republican epoch, some regions have also absorbed relatively large contingents from other countries. The most well-known case is that of the Italian immigrants who number as many as 4.5 million in Argentina and one million in Brazil. It is also estimated that German is the mother tongue of one million persons in Brazil, of some 250,000 in Argentina and of many more minority but highly ethnocentric groups in other countries. The Polish also reach the figure of approximately 100,000 in these two countries. Brazil has absorbed some 130,000 Japanese who, with their children born there (nisel), now number more than 600,000, all of which shows that we find the same type of problem in Latin America. However, we do not know of any studies undertaken on this subject. In these countries, other language problems exist which are of greater importance from the linquistic, but primarily from the sociolinguistic and educational points of view. Furthermore, during the past decades, even in the- main countries admitting European immigrants, there has been an overflow from these sources. Today immigration comes more from surrounding countries. In Argentina, where this phenomenon is more noticeable, we find another sociolinguistic aspect which we have already mentioned: new contingents of Quechua and Guarani speakers are amving in the cotton and sugar cane areas in the North, in several outlying cities, as well as in the large urban agglomeration of Buenos Aires. 

8. Conclusion 

Such is the global panorama of the continent from the soclolinguistic polnt of view. As we have pointed out in each case, some of the aspects mentioned have been hardly studied and probably none have been analysed exhaustively. Nevertheless, the general outlines of the problems are sufficiently known in order to draw some kind of global conclusion. 

What we would like to stress here is above all of a methodological nature: the indispensable necessity of understanding linguistic phenomena within their overall socio-economic context. Our professional bias as linguists makes us forget all too often this aspect, which for the most part should be obvious to us. The effort to combine language and society, as we have done in this introduction, and as has been done throughout the whole volume and the whole series, has clearly shown that the most important direction of mutual influence is that which goes from the social structure to the language and not vice versa. It is certain that there is also an opposite influence from the language to the society, but this is of much less mportance and derives ultimately from the first. 

Furthermore, other types of influences, such as that put forward in the well-known Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, according to which the deepest structures of a language determine a particular world outlook need to be seriously revised when taking into consideration this much broader socio-economic approach. The above hypothesis, it will be recalled, was based on "linguistic" analyses of the deepest structure of Amerindian languages in contrast to European ones. If we try to apply this to a world outlook or simply to a semantic structure in its least restricted sense, it is possible that the hypothesis can be proved in ideal situations, between groups extremely isolated from each other and from the rest of the surrounding socio-economic structure which for this reason, puts them in an artificial laboratory-like situation. And even then, some important aspects of the deepest semantic structure (not exclusively linguistic) reflect, when all is considered, definite socioeconomic influences of the environment in which the speakers live. This is much more the case for languages spoken by groups which are in constant contact and which interact with each other, far from any ideal laboratory situation. Although both speak the same Spanish language, the deep semantic structure of a worker on an isolated ranch, like that of the famous Macondo of the novelist, is very
much different from that of the executive of a multinational company. Each of them will choose within the theoretically possible code of the same Spanish language those structures and frequencies which are most adequate to his own situation. 

When we enter into the kind of situation, so frequent for the countries covered in this volume, of unequal languages in contact, in which one is the dominant official language and the other or others are the dominated languages or variants of low prestige, the determining predominance of the socio-economic factors over the linquistic factors shows up still more clearly. What is more, they bypass the internal laws of linguistic change: the present evolution of the Quechuan phonological system, for example, is mainly the result of the ever-increasing domination by the Spanish, first regarding bilinguals and through them even
to many monolinguals; the laws of phonological change based on the internal structure of the language hardly have any time to exercise their slow transformative action. The same thing happens in the grammar and still more in the general structure of the lexical and semantic areas. In a situation of domination and oppression, the general evolution of the whole language depends not so much on its internal structure nor on a contrastive analysis limited to the respective structures of the two languages in contact. The really determining factor is the respective position of each language and the social groups who speak it within the
overall socio-economic structure, taking into account some of the differences which are distinct enough to lead to different results in each case. It is normal that in a contact situation, the language of the dominating group generously lends its vocabulary and thus brings about an increasing atrophy of the vocabulary of the language of the oppressed group or groups and even of some internal mechanisms of the language, for example, by notably reducing the frequency of formation of abstract structures. It is also normal that the participation of the oppressed language in the evolution of the dominant language, occurs mainly in
lexical loans on very familiar types (for example, food or local traditions) and phonological and grammatical variants which especially identify the substandard forms of the dominant language of low social prestige, which are mainly spoken by lower classes. These processes which in the final instance are a reflection on the linguistic level of a fundamentally economic and political domination, should lead us to speak of oppressing and oppressed languages, terms which are probably more explanatory than others in fashion, such as high or low prestige, official vs. indigenous and many others. This system effectively leads to the evolution, the expansion and the extinction of languages in a particular area. 

Thus the sociolinguistic mosaic of an area is a living museum of its economic and political history. The presence or absence of a certain language and the dialectal particularities which it presents are in many cases traces of invasions and conquests or of slow colonization or migratory movements due to war or job opportunities. The fact that Ecuadorian Quechua, for example, is structurally similar to that of Bolivia and northern Argentina, but is much different from the dialects of Central Peru, hides an historical key related to the formation and hislorical expansion of the Incan Empire and other subsequent events. Along with the
presentation and short discussion of the typology in this introduction, we have examined numerous examples; Paraguayan bilingualism has been linked with particular characteristics which the social organization of the Guarani speakers presented before the colonial period and later during such events as the creation of the Jesuit Indian villages. We compared the different sociolinguistic situations in the Andean and Central American regions where the two main pre-Hispanic civilizations were born and examined some possible roots of these in the respective political histories of these two areas. The Caribbean region
represented on the other hand, a completely different panorama, because different economic and political factors were at work: for example, Spanish and English colonialism led to very different sociolinguistic results in each case. The linguistic behaviour and the evolution of a social group are very different when they live in an isolated subsistent economy or when they suffer the feverish impact of the industrial economy. And so it goes. 

This is the fascinating world which is presented to us in this volume. The data and figures lead to more questions than they can answer in themselves: why have the indigenous languages in Colombia already disappeared despite the flourishing precolonial Chibcha civilization and why on the other hand, is Guarani so much stronger in Paraguay where no powerful colonial civilization existed? Why do the languages spoken by the Amazon jungle groups belong to such different linguistic families and show such capricious migratory movements? Why did the Uru practically disappear from the Andean region and why in turn did Aymara survive? What prehistoric mysteries are hidden by linguistic relationship between the Chipaya of the Bolivian plateau and the Yucatan Maya etc.? What is more, we must still pose questions concerning the sociolinguistic future of the continent. Unlike other countries such as India, Norway or Indonesia, there is no language planning properly speaklng in Latin Amenca. Here a de facto practice of the survival of the strongest prevails and at the most, if there is some planning, it is of a highly isolated and symbolic character. If we were to have language planning in the future, we would have to ask questions as to which direction it should take. In Latin American countries where Spanish is not the majority language, would a linguistic policy of a Napoleonic character be preferable, which would finally lead to a linguistic uniformity based on Spanish or would an option of linguistic pluralism be more advantageous? What conditions of viability would help us choose one or the other option? Does only one option exist for such different situations as those of Paraguay, Guatemala and the Caribbean islands? Each page raises new questions, and - such is at least our hope - also presents data and information for consideration, which will lead to the asking of the most pertinent questions and to a search for the best means to a solution. 
  
Xavier ALBO 
CIPCA, La Paz 
August, 1977 

  
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