Journal #8

I did this assignment with my passion for the Spanish language in mind. My first attempt at the Ngram failed, and I got no results. I quickly realized I needed to narrow down my search and include commas between each word. One thing that did not surprise me was how much more frequently “Spanish” appeared compared with the other terms. I figured that would be the result since English speakers generally refer to the language as Spanish rather than castellano. “Spanish” increased significantly during the twentieth century, while “castellano” also increased but remained much less common. I also noticed that the graph was not consistent, since “Spanish” peaked around the late 1970s before dropping and eventually rising again.

However, I realized the graph was based on books in English. I changed the dropdown to Spanish and was not surprised by my results.

When I switched the language setting to Spanish, I noticed that “castellano” was used much more frequently, while “lengua española” became more common during the second half of the twentieth century. I found it interesting to see how these patterns changed over time, especially since the use of “castellano” fluctuated so much. Since I am studying bilingualism in Paraguay for my senior comp, I already understand how language connects to culture and identity. I thought it was interesting to look at this in a different context, especially in Spain, where language is also connected to regional identity and the presence of other languages. I liked being able to compare the two graphs and see how much the results changed simply by switching the language setting.