Escribo como hablo. Las ideas pedagógicas de Gonzalo Correas

Abstract

Introduction. Gonzalo Correas is considered one of the main humanists in the Spanish Golden Century. The most prominent of his works is the Ortografia kastellana nueva i perfeta (1630), full of educational passages. Methods. This paper focuses on the pedagogical ideas in Correas's works and the relationships between phonetic spelling and teaching of reading by means of comparative analysis between Correas's works and other Spanish orthographic works which used pedagogical arguments. They were interested in spelling that facilitate children learning although irreconcilable proposals were maintained. Results. By examining Correas's pedagogical references, one prominent idea is emphasized: Spanish language demands a new alphabet that can be adapted to the seventeenth century pronunciation. The new letters would help Spanish children to learn and read faster and better than the traditional alphabet. Letter names and alphabetical order were also changed by Correas to ease learning. Accordingly, a new syllabary is proposed too. Discussion. The results of this paper show that pedagogic arguments are incorporated into the controversy over Spanish orthography reform around the first third of the seventeenth century. These works, as well as linguisticand philological value, offer a valuable testimony about how literacy is conceived in the Spanish Golden Century that until now has not been studied.