As well as the Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española), there are distinct Spanish language academies in various countries, namely:
El Salvadoran Language Academy
Guatemalan Language Academy
Philippine Spanish Language Academy
Panamanian Language Academy
Paraguayan Spanish Language Academy
Uruguayan National Language Academy
Honduran Language Academy
Puerto Rican Language Academy
North American Spanish Language Academy
The Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in Mexico in 1951 during the First Congress of Spanish Language Academies with the aim of promoting the unity of the language in common. This association is comprised of the 22 Spanish Language Academies worldwide, as detailed above.
The traditional functions of these academies were the development, dissemination and updating of the 3 pillars of the language embodied in 3 works: Spelling, Dictionary and Grammar with the aim of avoiding the contamination of the language with foreign words or the deformation of the language over its evolution.
Its current function is to maintain the unity of the language in the Spanish speaking community, recognizing the regional variations and the evolution of the language.
To this end, the Royal Spanish Academy has created the Diachronic Corpus (CORDE) and the current Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA). Thanks to them, linguists from different academies track the evolution of a word and its current use.
Among the recent publications of this organization, the following are of particular interest: the Dictionary of Americanisms, the Practical Student Dictionary, Spanish Language Spelling (new version) and the Essential Dictionary.
