Yanito renaissance in Gibraltar

In a letter published in today's Gibraltar Chronicle, Gibraltarian intellectual Charles Durante regards the introduction of Yanito in the annual Short Story Competition as an unequivocal move towards embracing Yanito as a language in its own right. Linguists have conferred Yanito the status of a distinctive language for a long time, and have shown interest in its linguistic characteristic at all levels: phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, social and etymological, as well as other perspectives. This scientific interest in Yanito has at times met resistance, as is mentioned in the letter. Another obstacle for its study is the lack of resources - for instance, there is currently no corpus of Yanito. As Charles Durante says, "[t]he stories submitted in Yanito will provide a corpus of written Yanito" and this is a crucial step towards the scientific study and consequent diffusion of Yanito. 

Most importantly, through this bold move Yanito acquires the prestige it deserves and this will will help to make it known outside the home domain. When speakers are proud of their culture and identity, they are proud of their language, and nothing can stand in their way.

Congratulations, Gibraltar!