Research Project CORPEEU - CORPUS DEL ESPAÑOL EN LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS

The Spanish language has been evolving in North America since it first arrived in the 16^th century.  It has been influenced by distinct varieties of Spanish spoken in all Hispanic countries and by its longstanding contact with English. Researchers predict that, in two decades, the United States will have more Spanish speakers than any other country in the world except for Mexico.  It is therefore necessary to design appropriate methodological instruments to study this variety of Spanish. To this end, the “Corpus of Spanish in the United States” (CORPEEU) was created as a collection of written and spoken language materials that allow us to study the Spanish of the United States. The examples of U.S. Spanish that comprise the corpus are varied in terms of the time and place in which they were collected; the social origin of their speakers; and their mode and style, without predetermined criteria for exclusion. CORPEEU was initiated in the fall of 2017 by the Instituto Cervantes’ Observatory of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures at Harvard University, in collaboration with the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE). In 2020, the HCIAS became the main reference center for CORPEEU’s elaboration. Further technical development and the institutional integration of CORPEEU in Heidelberg has been partially funded by the University’s Field of Focus 3 (2019) within the framework of the Excellence Strategy put forth by the German federal and state governments.