December 10, 2009 - By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - MADRID (AP) — Can a Barcelona truck driver be expected to speak like a Buenos Aires banker? Can rules be imposed on a language spoken by 400 million people stretching from Madrid to Manila?

The academic overseers of the language of Cervantes have taken an ambitious stab at it, unveiling their first Spanish grammar guidelines in nearly 80 years.

The fruit of their toil is a nearly 4,000-page tome in two volumes presented Thursday, with yet another to come out next year.

It was produced by the Spanish Royal Academy and 21 sister organizations in Latin America and other countries where Spanish is spoken, such as the United States and the Philippines, and has taken them 11 years to compile.

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