Award-winning Mexican writer Ernesto de la Peña Muñoz died Monday, Mexico’s Conaculta culture and arts council said. He was 84.

His death represents a loss for the entire Spanish-speaking world, Conaculta chair Consuelo Saizar said on Twitter.

A member of the Mexican Academy of the Language since 1993 and a gifted linguist whose knowledge extended to Sanscrit and Hebrew, De la Peña was a student of classical literature.

In the course of his life he received Mexico’s National Arts and Sciences Award in the field of linguistics, the Fine Arts Gold Medal and the National Jose Pages Llergo Prize for Cultural Journalism More.

See: Latin American Herald Tribune