QCOSTARICA — Officially the language of Costa Rica is Spanish and the law calls for protection of indigenous languages.
Article 76 of the Constitution establishes: “Spanish is the official language of the Nation. However, the State will ensure the maintaining and cultivation of national indigenous languages”.
However, for cultural or economic reasons there are other languages in use and which now legal recognition is also being sought for.
These are English and Limón Creole (Inglés an Criollo Limonense).
The language of the Caribbean
The recognition initiative is led by the Partido Liberiación Nacional (PLN) legislator Rosaura Méndez.
The text of the initiative points out that it is a language. “Limón Creole has its own structural characteristics that make it a language in its entirety, just like any other language,”
It adds that discrimination has blurred their identity and its speakers even avoided it to prevent discrimination.
“As a defense mechanism, speakers of the Limón Creole language further relegate its use, with the consequent danger of extinction. Another defense mechanism against stigmatization that some speakers of the Limón Creole language have adopted is to deny their Creole linguistic identity and maintain that it is a variant of English,” reads the text.
The English language
The other proposal is to enhance the teaching of English and allow people to benefit from bilingualism.
The proposals is to add a paragraph to the Constitution that would read like this:
“The English language will be promoted and adopted as a second language of national use according to the implementation parameters that will be developed by special law.”
With constitutional status, the draft highlights, people could demand that right to training.
“This condition of constituting access to bilingualism in a subjective right, recognized at the constitutional level, will constitute a strong incentive to overcome the odious gap that is increasingly created between public and private education. In this issue of mastery of a foreign language it is particularly evident,” reads the text.
The initiative is also proposed by the PLN, headed by legislator Andrea Álvarez.
