He was the youngest son of María Francisca Urisarri Tordecillas and Dr. Rufino Cuervo y Barreto, a politician, lawyer, journalist and vice president of the Republic between 1845 and 1851.
He studied Latin and Greek, but the main part of his work was dedicated to the study of the dialectal variations of Spanish spoken in Colombia. About this topic, he wrote his book Apuntaciones críticas sobre lenguaje bogotano (Critical Notes About Bogotan Language, 1867), which is still an important reference in the study of the American Spanish language.
His most important work was Diccionario de construcción y régimen de la lengua castellana (Dictionary of Castilian language construction and rection).
This work is updated on a regular basis by the Caro y Cuervo Institute. Cuervo also revised and republished the Spanish American grammar of Andrés Bello, Castilian Grammar for Americans.
The Caro and Cuervo Institute in the birthplace of Rufino José Cuervo, in Bogotá's historic old town.The interior of the Caro and Cuervo Institute in 2017.
Cuervo was one of the first linguists who promoted the union of the Spanish language in its different variants. He was worried about the segregationist trend in spoken Spanish and thought that this phenomenon was similar to the events following the fall of the Roman Empire, after which Latin gradually began splitting into several independent Romance languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
In 1878 he was admitted as the Colombian representative to the Real Academia Española. In 1882 he moved to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1911.[1]
