Mexican Academy of Language

The Mexican Language Academy is a cultural institution in Mexico City that cares for and promotes the proper use of the Spanish language. It held its first sessions on April 13 and September 11, 1875. Many of the most illustrious figures of Mexican letters and sciences have belonged to it.

This institution organized the I Congress of Academies of the Spanish Language, which was held in Mexico City in April 1951 and from which emerged, through its Permanent Commission, the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, confirmed during the II Congress, held in Madrid between April 22 and May 2, 1956.

Purpose

According to the provisions of its statutes, approved in a plenary session on December 2, 1931, and according to the provisions of the deed of incorporation as a civil association, of 1952, the purposes of the Academy are the following:

1. Ensure the conservation, purity and improvement of the Spanish language.
2. Maintain constant communication of a scientific or literary nature with academies and similar institutions.
3. Form and increase your library, especially with those scientific or literary works that best favor the fulfillment of the purposes of the academy.
4. Promote and propagate the study of the Spanish language by means of private periodic sessions; public meetings and conferences; congresses and any other acts of its institute, and may send delegates of its own to fill these purposes.
5. Resolve any inquiries made by the authorities or individuals.
6. Promote to the authorities or to particular institutions or individuals all that favors the preservation, purity and improvement of the Spanish language.

Composition and operation

In its beginnings, the Mexican Academy of Language consisted of twelve members, later rising to thirty-six in number and thirty-six corresponding outside of Mexico City. Exceptionally, it may include up to five honorary members, from Mexico or abroad.^{[citation required]}

The board of directors is made up of a director, a deputy director, a secretary, a deputy secretary, a statutory censor, a librarian-archivist and a treasurer, all elected from among the number of academics, by an absolute majority of votes of the academics who attend the session in which they are elected, in secret scrutiny.

The work of the academy is carried out in a meeting, which holds its sessions two or more times a month. Sessions are private or public; the former can be ordinary or extraordinary, and the public ones have the solemn character when the academy so agrees. The type of works that are analyzed and discussed within the board are of a lexicographical, linguistic and literary nature.^{[citation required]}

The Academy has a vast library, which bears the name of one of its most eminent members, Alberto María Carreño, whose consultation catalog is available online. Its initial fund comes from the acquisition of what was the library of the academic Alejandro Quijano. Over the years, the number of its works has increased with important contributions, such as that of the prestigious jurist and intellectual Alberto Vásquez del Mercado, who donated a valuable and extensive collection of historical and literary works to the institution. Deliveries of books published by academics have been added to shipments from the Royal Spanish Academy, Latin American academies, some publishing companies and bookstores, as well as official and private cultural entities.^{[ citation required]}

In compliance with its objectives, the Academy permanently carries out studies and activities related to matters within its competence, both in plenary session and through its respective specialized commissions. His studies are evidenced by his various publications, the most important being:

Activities and projects

Since its creation, the work of the academy has been reflected in the publication of Memoirs and a Yearbook. In the Memories appear the works read by the members of the Academy in the sessions and others, which, in their opinion, may deserve it. Each volume begins with a review of the most important events that have occurred since the publication of the previous one and with the indication of the number of attendances at the meetings that the academics have had, and concludes with general and alphabetical indexes. For its part, the Yearbook gives notice of the changes in the list of members of the academy.

He has also been concerned with research into the use of the Spanish language in Mexico, work that has crystallized in the publication of various reference works, among which the following stand out:

• The Universal geographical dictionary (1997), which collects the names in Spanish of various geographical entities of the world and their adjectives. For information, names are included in the language or languages of the country in question, if they are normally written with the Latin alphabet, as well as latinized if another writing system is used in its region.
• The Mexican counter (2004), which originates in an extensive project that the academy undertook on the occasion of the commemoration of its 125th anniversary. After a hard work, the Mexicanism Index (2000), an extensive collection of refranes used in Mexico since the beginning of the century XIX up to the present day and it has become an indispensable reference for the study of Spanish spoken in this country. From this Index two works were born: Short Mexicanism Dictionary (2001), with 6 200 lexicographic articles, including words, locustions and even several lexicon elements, by Guido Gómez de Silva; and Mexican counter, product of the research undertaken by numerous researchers of the academy.

• The Mexicanism Dictionary (2010), in co-edit with 21st Century Editors. The coordination was carried out by Concepción Company Company. He was presented on 21 November 2010 at the Manuel M. Ponce Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts and on 29 November at the International Book Fair of Guadalajara. It contains 11 400 voices and 18 700 perceptions of Mexican lexicon.
• The School dictionary (2012) was written by José G. Moreno de Alba, Felipe Garrido and Rocío Mandujano Servín. With the collaboration of the Ministry of Public Education and the National Commission for Free Text Books were published and distributed in its first edition 1 800 000 copies in paper and 400 000 in electronic support. This work was fully developed by the Mexican Academy of Language and made available to the sister academies of America to serve as a basis for the writing of dictionaries, regional or national, in the countries of Hispanic America.

In its vocation of constant adaptation to new technologies and in tune with the new communications society, the Mexican Academy of Language has included some of the previous works on its website so that they can be consulted interactively, as part of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language.

• The Diagnostic and Diachronic Corpus of the Spanish of America (CORDIAM) is a development project coordinated by Virginia Bertolotti (University of the Republic, Montevideo) and Concepción Company Company (Academia Mexicana de la Lengua / Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), whose objective is to gather non-literary texts in an electronic corpus that will allow to do diachronous and diatopic research on the Spanish of America at the different levels of the language. Abarca, chronologically, from 1496 to the end of the century XIXand geographically, the 19 Spanish-speaking countries of America, in addition to the United States (when they were part of New Spain), Jamaica, Haiti and Guyana. It's a corpus of free access. It will be available in November 2014.

Academics

Of number

The current members of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua are:

Correspondents

Nationals

Abroad

Member	Date of election	Correspondente en	Member	Date of election	Correspondente en
Antonio Muñoz Molina	11 February 2021	Madrid,SpainSpain	Juan Jesús Armas Marcelo	11 February 2021	Madrid,SpainSpain
Darius Jaramillo Agudelo	26 August 2021	Bogota,ColombiaColombia	Leonardo Padura	14 January 2021	Havana, CubaCuba
Elijah Trabulse	24 May 2001	San Diego, California, United States	Luce López-Baralt	24 June 2021	San Juan, Puerto RicoPuerto Rico
Francisco Moreno Fernández	24 May 2018	Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States	Robert A. Verdonk	25 June 2020	Antwerp, BelgiumBelgium
Guillermo Sheridan	27 March 2014	Seattle, Washington, United States	Roberto A. Galván	25 May 2006	San Marcos, Texas, United States
Ignatius	11 February 2021	Madrid,SpainSpain	Sergio Ramírez	14 January 2021	Managua, NicaraguaNicaragua
José Luis Ramírez Luengo	11 February 2021	Madrid,SpainSpain