The registers of a language are a fascinating thing. Even the mere fact that registers exist is fascinating. And while everyone can recognize that the kind of language that we use as human beings varies with the circumstance—people don’t use the same vocabulary and phraseology in a courtroom as in a taxi or a supermarket—for the student of a foreign language, the importance of a grasp of multiple registers is often underplayed or overlooked. And even if they are nominally recognized, often enough the registers of a language are understood as implicit. This is probably fine for the native speaker, who doesn’t need to consciously understand very much at all. But the non-native speaker needs a more explicit understanding—not to mention that having a grasp of the registers of a foreign language can function as a benchmark for a student’s general proficiency and learning progress.
While considering some of the abilities of the advanced learner of a foreign language—and I take advanced here to mean the C-levels as defined by the CEFR, or roughly Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) level 4/ACTFL Superior/Distinguished according to the American system—and after reading large amounts of text and manuals from the above bodies and organizations, I’ve come to the conclusion that a learner’s most distinguishing trait at the advanced levels is that the linguistic repertoire includes an ability not only to comprehend the multiple registers of a language, but also to deploy them as needed. Knowledge and use of these registers also presupposes a certain amount of cultural knowledge embedded in the language in question, and there isn’t a truly advanced student of a foreign language who doesn’t have their knowledge of the language bound up with that of its culture. To know a language well is to know the culture of that language.
Keep in mind that by register I don’t mean dialect, but instead the designation of a kind of language common to a given social or cultural sphere, such as a low, formal, colloquial, or academic register. It is also worth mentioning that, as a student of a foreign language, being able to navigate multiple registers is not only an essential skill, but also the determinant of your flexibility in the language, your ability to blend in with the culture, to be native-like (and please disregard the inevitable controversy associated with the whole idea of being native, since it is beside the point here).
In conjunction with the ratings provided by the ILR, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the United States brings up the following important hallmark of the Level 4 mentioned above in a self-appraisal checklist of speaking proficiency: “Are you able to alter your speech deliberately, depending upon whether you are talking to university professors, close friends, employees, etc.?” As I’ve been arguing here, this is not just one of the hallmarks but the hallmark of an advanced learner.
That’s where the word variety comes in, and my notion of variety is that it encapsulates a strategy of long-term language learning: it is, in essence, learning from multiple registers over time and using these multiple registers as a pathway toward deepening your knowledge of a foreign language.
Some Different Registers of (Peninsular) Spanish
With that theory out of the way, I wanted to describe a brief list of registers in a single dialect of the Spanish language. I’ve made this list with the hope of uniting theory and practice so as to make my ideas more tangible.
Note that this list of Spanish registers is meant to be my particular application of the above ideas, and that I’ve created it from my own extensive but idiosyncratic experience with the Spanish language. That personal experience is why you’ll find that these examples draw on Peninsular Spanish and, in particular, the central or Castilian dialect found in Madrid.
As a final disclaimer, I’d like to say that this list is not exhaustive, and I’m not a professional linguist. I make no assertions of completeness. Instead, this list is my attempt at a general outline of a handful of registers in one dialect of the vast, sprawling, and beautifully florescent Spanish language. Also note that some of the character quotations from the sitcom mentioned here, Aquí no hay quien viva, are paraphrases.
Register 1: Low Slang, Profanity, and an Endless Array of Vulgar Insults
In Madrid, this would be the language found in general currency among pretty much any group of native speakers, and even if the person in question isn’t inclined to use it, they would certainly understand it (and it wouldn’t necessarily be pleasing to the ear—though it could be hilarious). A perfect example would be the kind of language used by the portero Emilio in the Spanish series Aquí no hay quien viva.
Examples of words and phrases in this register: Que te den morcilla, me la suda, no me jodas, métetelo donde te quepa, a tomar por culo, me cago en la leche, and words such as guarra, golfa, chulo, maricón, julay, and tocapelotas.
Register 2: Informal Language and Frequent Everyday Usages
This is the kind of language found in normal conversations if, for instance, you’re at the supermarket or talking among friends (most of the time). It also has a beautiful expressive range, from low insult (without dipping into the truly vulgar) to something eloquent and radiant, and everything in between. Most of the characters on Aquí no hay quien viva use this kind of language most of the time.
Examples (just a few here at random, because this is a huge category): No me he intentado escaquear de nada, se ha frotado las manos, se me ha ido de las manos, parece mentira que, se le ha ido la pinza/la olla, no se ha enterado de nada, ponerse en la piel de, and ponerse las pilas.
Register 3: Elevated, Formal Language and Educated Usages
A good example of this would be the character Juan Cuesta in Aquí no hay quien viva: he’s an aging schoolteacher, educated and articulate, almost never verbally vulgar, but the sitcom’s running gag is that he always uses this register as an integral and highly annoying part of his personality. In consequence, he comes off as a prig, pretentious, and generally unlikable. And very often brilliantly funny.
Examples: “¿Qué es lo que opinas sobre el papel que tiene China como potencia económica a nivel mundial?” “Impugno la junta.” Looking at a chart explaining fetal development in a doctor’s office: “Es una maravilla ver cómo el feto, en su desarrollo morfológico, empieza a dar sus primeros saltos vitales.” “¿No sería mejor que soslayásemos las consecuencias de estos pequeños percances para llegar a un acuerdo mutuo?”
Register 4: Academic and Literary Language
Registers four and five could be classified together because they both use a special and often highly formal, even fossilized register distinct from the day-to-day stuff found on television or while shopping, talking with friends, or having a family dinner. It is rarely, in other words, what’s found in your local pub.
Examples: Lots of field-specific terminology, the use of the relative adjective cuyo in uninterrupted speech patterns or constructions, some low-frequency connectors like por mor de or de suerte que, and a massive number of low-frequency verbs and set phrases such as canícula, vilipendiar, escarabajear, proceloso, tiempo ha, dantesco, motu proprio (a Latinism), and fuero interno.
Register 5: Ceremonial or Parliamentary Language
This is the register in which usted occurs in the highest proportion. There are also formal, almost stilted usages backed by what are probably centuries of linguistic custom. This register is largely confined to formal speeches or arguments and rebuttals in parliamentary discussions.
Examples: Heavy use of usted (in fact, tutear would here be the exception), words of formal address and honorifics like señoría, and expressions such as tener la palabra. Common collocations like enmiendas constitucionales also show up, in addition to lots of hand-waving, microphones, and performative gestures meant for the public eye.
It goes without saying that there are more registers than the ones listed above, but the salient feature common to all is variety. A student’s ability to learn from the multiple registers of the target language—to get familiar with this variety and to continue exploring it—in large part determines their progress toward a varied and robust linguistic repertoire.
Variety, ultimately, is the most important factor in reaching advanced proficiency in a foreign language. Variety is also the greatest source of pleasure for the foreign-language student—like the variety found in a bottomless koi pond with a thousand whipping and multicolored tails. As with many other fields or bodies of knowledge, we never really finish learning a language, which will always be full of surprises for the curious and the persistent and the eternally young at heart.
