Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr. facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr.
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Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr.
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| Born |
Domingo Tomás Hernández
May 3, 1907 |
| Died | July 4, 2004 (aged 97) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Professor |
Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr. (born May 3, 1907 – died July 4, 2004) was a smart professor at Stanford University. He was an expert in the Spanish language and focused on the traditional stories and customs (called folklore) of Spanish-speaking America. His father was also a famous scholar named Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Sr..
Contents
About Aurelio Espinosa Jr.
Early Life and Family
Aurelio Espinosa Jr. was born in 1907 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His parents were Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Sr. and Maria Margarita Garcia Espinosa. He grew up with four brothers and sisters.
Later, he married Iraida Espinosa. They had two daughters and a son, whom they named Aurelio Ramon Espinosa. He lived a long life and passed away in Palo Alto, California, in 2004, when he was 97 years old.
His Work and Studies
Aurelio Espinosa Jr. earned his first college degree from Stanford University in 1928. He then went to Spain and received his advanced degree (a doctorate) from the University of Madrid in 1932.
From 1932 to 1936, he helped create the Linguistic Atlas of Spain and Portugal (ALPI). This was a big project that mapped out how Spanish and Portuguese were spoken in different areas. While working on this, he also collected many traditional Spanish folklore stories. However, his work was stopped by the Spanish Civil War.
After that, he taught Spanish at Harvard University. During World War II, he taught Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian to students at the U.S. Military Academy.
In 1945, he was honored by becoming a member of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española (Royal Spanish Academy). This is a very important group that looks after the Spanish language.
He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1946, the same year his father retired from teaching there. He worked at Stanford for 22 years, leading the Department of Modern European Languages and later the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He retired in 1972.
In the late 1980s, with help from another folklorist, Julio Camarena Laucirica, he was able to publish the folk stories he had collected in Spain before the Civil War. In 1995, he was recognized in the El Centro Chicano y Latino's Hall of Fame at Stanford.
His Publications
Espinosa Jr. not only published the folk stories he collected, but he also helped write Spanish textbooks. These books were used by many college students learning Spanish.
- Turk, Laurel Herbert, Carlos A. SoleÌ , and Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa. Foundation Course in Spanish. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1989.
- Mastering Spanish. Laurel Herbert Turk, Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa. Heath, Jan 1, 1979.
- "Arcaísmos dialectales. La conservación de «s» y «z» sonoras en Cáceres y Salamanca", in Revista de Filología Española, Anejo XIX, 1935.
- Cuentos populares de España, 3 vols. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1923–1923.
- Cuentos populares de España. Buenos Aires y México: Espasa-Calpe, 1946.
See also
In Spanish: Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa para niños
