With his hands dirty from the earth, a hoe in hand to dig some tomatoes and shorts, José María Bermúdez de Castro (Madrid, 72 years old, co-director of the Atapuerca sites and RAE academic in chair K since October 2021) interrupts the act with which he takes vigor after an arduous day of excavation in the sites a few days before the exhibition is presented. Homo ancestor at the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos. Meanwhile, at the writer’s request, the scientist thinks about the evolution of language and, later, about human evolution and the species. Homo ancestorwhich he himself defined. And he answers: “The evolution of language and the evolution of species have a lot to do with each other” —he says with conviction and he says it for a reason.
His status as an academic and a scientist expert in human evolution makes him a rare reviews and, at the same time, a perfect interpreter of the evolution of language, which, like nature does with species, gradually stops using words and expressions until they fall into disuse and are forgotten (or the opposite). The role of the RAE and of academics is to make language something clear, that unites and is understood; to keep the common language agile, to make it more direct, to go further: “Clean, fix and give splendor” is written below the logo that the institution has maintained for three hundred years in its central headquarters, located in a small palace in the heart of Madrid, between El Retiro Park and the Prado Museum.
This is where academics meet every Thursday in different groups depending on the topic they are working on. Bermúdez de Castro deals with scientific words, life and species. Her medium: digging into language, comparing, contrasting, discussing. The academic committees discuss in every room, library or corner. For some reason language is the tool we use to understand each other and also think in common, but it is also the basis of any economic exchange, any political, personal or public decision; language is power and now language is more determined than ever by technology.
“Language is evolving very quickly due to communication technology. At the moment it is more technical and direct, but it is constantly changing. How does it evolve? Do you realise that the language that was considered vulgar in the Middle Ages is the one that is spoken today? At that time the educated language was Latin. The language we use today comes from what was vulgar language. What will the next one be like?” asks the scientist who this year will say goodbye to his job as co-director in charge of the sites and also in charge of a multidisciplinary team with whom he has collaborated for decades, which could also be a radical change for the scientific terms of our language that he deals with.
Time for clear language
He is not alone, there are more focuses of interest in the language; many more. To face what seem to be the two great challenges of Spanish, the RAE is preparing a guide to clear Spanish, and there is a work team focused on the language used by AI. These are the projects known as Pan-Hispanic guide in clear and accessible language and LEIA -Spanish Language and Artificial Intelligence- for the use of Spanish in the digital universe, respectively; both are the tip of the iceberg of a key goal: “The RAE’s job is to maintain the unity of the language. To do this, all the associations and academies collaborate, to do this we pool our work; we work in the same direction and in all the countries that speak our language, all the words are evaluated. Otherwise, the language we share would end up being different in each country. The goal is to respect the differences, but maintain unity. It is not a quick process.”
Now, late in the afternoon and before sunset, the air stirs the copious grass that has grown more strongly this year because it has not stopped raining, and the scientist’s voice transmits peace, calm; the effect of direct contact with the earth, despite the intense hustle and bustle that a day of campaigning at the sites entails. Even more so today, which has been the day on which the excavation in Gran Dolina has begun, the site to which Bermúdez de Castro is most closely linked, and the place where they discovered Homo ancestor thirty years ago, whose journey can be followed through an exhibition at the Museum of Evolution.
“To understand how much the evolution of languages and the evolution of species have in common, we must understand that, for example, species become different if they separate, as happens with language. A good example is what happened with Homo ancestorwhich reached the European peninsula. Here, a population of hominids became isolated and evolved on its own until it became a different species. The same thing happens with languages. On Earth there are about six thousand languages in constant evolution. There is an obvious parallel between what happens with species and what happens with languages,” says the academic.
The evolution of languages and the evolution of species have much in common. Species become different if they separate, as happens with language.
Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro
— Archaeologist and member of the RAE
Excavations at sites also have a lot in common with the search for words. In the first case, you first have to be a strategist and do research, then you have to go to the ground, search very carefully because sometimes fossils can be small but important, like teeth, and contain enough information to reconstruct the way of life of a human group or the ecosystem, or just be land. In the case of language, books are a good place to do research, but so is memory or hearing things on the street.
“You have to be aware of the real language, of the street. I keep up to date through my family, my children. For example, to find the ten most popular dinosaurs known, I received help from Alex, my youngest son, who is eleven years old and is passionate about dinosaurs. Alex took some time to compile the list with the names of the most well-known dinosaurs. (…) There are also many words that are no longer used; in others, the meanings need to be revised. (…) With the word race, for example, I made a proposal to write a new meaning more in line with what science tells us. But the process is very slow. The words I worked with when I arrived, two years ago, have not yet been included in the dictionary,” he explains.
Bermúdez de Castro breathes, sniffs the mountain range that, after the rains of June and early summer, is pure color, water; life explodes in Atapuerca. What there is around the Atapuerca sites is a source of inspiration for anyone, and clears the mind. As is the library that the RAE has with books that are jewels, like its oldest work, the Etymologies of San Isidoro from the 12th century, or the copies banned by the Inquisition and first editions of works that are pillars of Castilian. “In the language that will be spoken in a hundred years, many new words will have been introduced, and expressions will also change. The words will not be the same. Many will remain in the Historical Dictionary, others will disappear from the language because we live in change,” he adds about the words we use today, which are the result of the evolution of language, survivors of the burning of life itself, which leaves behind what is no longer useful in order to move forward.
Source: www.eldiario.es
