{"id":1006,"date":"2023-04-20T16:51:42","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T15:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/academic-and-employability-skills\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:02:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:02:26","slug":"un-english-and-spanish-language-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/academic-and-employability-skills\/2023\/04\/20\/un-english-and-spanish-language-days\/","title":{"rendered":"UN English and Spanish Language Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

To mark UN English and Spanish Language Days on 23 April, Alex and Daisy look at the remarkable influence of Shakespeare and Cervantes on the English and Spanish languages.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

UN Language Days<\/h2>\n

Did you know that in 2010 the United Nations (UN) established a language day for each of its six official languages? Each language day is an opportunity to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity in the UN and around the world.<\/p>\n

UN English<\/a> and Spanish<\/a> Language Days both fall on 23 April, the anniversary of the death of the English playwright William Shakespeare, and, coincidentally, the burial date of Spanish man of letters Miguel de Cervantes, both in 1616. 23 April is also UNESCO World Book Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over 400 years since their deaths, both Shakespeare and Cervantes have left a lasting legacy on world literature and the language we use today.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s literary and linguistic legacy - Alex Paramour<\/h2>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s legacy is all around us. His poems and plays have been read and performed continuously since the late 1500s and remain as popular as ever. But his influence extends far beyond performances and adaptations of his work. It\u2019s deeply embedded in the novels and poems we read, in the films and TV series we watch and in the English we use every day.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s literary impact<\/h3>\n

Although Shakespeare often borrowed his plots from classical and historical sources, what he did with them was revolutionary. He drew out timeless themes \u2013 love, grief, jealousy, ambition \u2013 and posed nuanced problems that get to the heart of the human condition.<\/p>\n

He created characters of unprecedented psychological depth and complexity. And he blended genre conventions in ways that would have surprised Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. The fusion of comedy and tragedy may be familiar territory for today\u2019s novelists and screenwriters, but Shakespeare did it first.<\/p>\n

Think of almost any work of English-language fiction of the last 400 years and you\u2019ll see something of Shakespeare\u2019s literary legacy reflected in it. Would the novels of Dickens have existed without Shakespeare? How many rom-coms were inspired by Beatrice and Benedick\u2019s witty repartee in Much Ado About Nothing<\/em>? Would we have Succession <\/em>without King Lear<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s use of language<\/h3>\n

Another major reason for Shakespeare\u2019s enduring influence is, of course, his innovative use of the English language. Over 2,000 words have been traced back to his work and hundreds of these are still in use today, including excellent<\/em>, critical<\/em>, vast<\/em> and lonely. <\/em>He\u2019s also thought to have introduced many popular idioms and phrases \u2013 foregone conclusion<\/em>, be in a pickle<\/em>, foul play<\/em> and flesh and blood <\/em>to name a few.<\/p>\n

But as the linguist David Crystal points out, trying to quantify Shakespeare\u2019s contribution to our vocabulary provides a limited \u2013 and probably misleading \u2013 measure of his linguistic legacy. Just as important was his highly creative use of other aspects of the language, such as grammar and phonology.<\/p>\n

Perhaps what really explains Shakespeare\u2019s profound influence on our literature and language, then, is the way he dared to challenge and break the rules in so many ways at once.<\/p>\n

Cervantes and D\u00eda del Idioma Espa\u00f1ol en las Naciones Unidas - Daisy Zhu<\/h2>\n

Miguel de Cervantes is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language.<\/p>\n

He has had such an impact on the Spanish language that Spanish is often referred to as la lengua de Cervantes<\/em> (the language of Cervantes).<\/p>\n

Every year the Spanish Ministry of Culture awards the Cervantes Prize<\/a>, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish language. And the Instituto Cervantes<\/a><\/em> (Cervantes Institute) helps to spread the Spanish language and culture to more than 40 countries in the world. Cervantes has even made his way into Spanish popular culture as a recurring character in the television show El ministerio del tiempo<\/a><\/em> (The Ministry of Time).<\/p>\n

Don Quixote<\/h3>\n

Cervantes may not have contributed as many words to the Spanish language as Shakespeare did to English, but he is credited with words and expressions that even managed to find their way over to the English language. For example:<\/p>\n