Special Issue: Teaching, Promotion, and Learning of Spanish as an Additional Language in Colombia

Abstract

Spanish is spoken in Colombia, but not just any Spanish, a Spanish crossed by more than 60 indigenous, gypsy, Creole and sign languages (Espejo, 2007; Landaburu, 2004). The contact between multiple languages makes Colombian Spanish as varied and plural as the universes of its more than 50 million inhabitants. This Spanish is in turn learned, decoded or, at times, imposed for many national and international audiences: indigenous, deaf, foreign, deaf-blind, among others (Areiza & Flórez, 2016; Londoño & Ospina, 2016). The above positions the country not only as a reference for the teaching-learning of Spanish, but also for the promotion, mediation and linguistic adaptation for people who, seen from the outside, relate to the language of Gabriel García Márquez in very different ways from those who speak it as their first language. The supplement that we present to the community of researchers, teachers, promoters and mediators of Spanish is a reflection of the essence that underlies the Spanish that is spoken and taught in Colombia: a language of all and for all, a code, seen from the inside, that is rooted (-inherited), that provokes and exoticizes (-foreign), that complements and mestizes (-second), that integrates (-inserted), or that simply unites us in the interest of understanding its particularities and pluralities.