/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/LANGUAGE-SPAIN: The Academy’s Dictionary ‘Changes Its Leaves’

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Oct 16 2001 (IPS) - The latest version of the dictionary of the ‘Real Academia Española’ (Spanish Royal Academy) has caused a stir due to the great number of ‘americanismos’ it includes, despite the fact that the tome maintains conceptual and terminological differences with the Spanish spoken in Latin America.

Fernando Lázaro Carreter, a language expert known for his articles in the Madrid dailies ‘ABC’ and ‘El País’, cautioned during the presentation of the 22nd edition of the dictionary in mid-October that the volume is lacking in certain areas, but that it is inevitable because Spanish is a living and expanding language.

As soon as this edition of the dictionary was released, the Academy began working on the next version, according to Lázaro Carreter.

The director of the Academy, Víctor García de la Concha, made the official presentation of the dictionary accompanied by his Colombian counterpart Jaime Posadas, Lázaro Carreter, Humberto López Morales, secretary of the Academies of the Americas, and Rafael González Conde, head of Espasa publishing, which produced the dictionary.

The Latin poet Horace was cited during the ceremony, recalling that as forests change their leaves each year, and the old ones fall to the ground, the lives of exhausted words come to an end, and “new ones gather force with youthful vigour.”

According to Horace, who lived a century prior to the Christian era, dead terms will be reborn and those that are in fashion today will die, if that is what is sought by usage, which is “arbiter, judge and owner in questions of language.”

García de la Concha underscored the contributions made by the national language academies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and by the Philippines, where Spanish is the second leading language.

The Bolivian Academy, requested the removal of approximately 30 percent of the “Bolivianisms” included in the previous edition, explaining that the terms had fallen into disuse since the dictionary’s 21st edition, published in 1992.

The fact that words lose their force is reflected in the elimination of 6,008 of the 83,014 entries published in the previous edition.

Furthermore, the Academy amended two-thirds of the items that were in the 1992 edition and added 11,425 new entries, 24,819 more meanings and 3,896 complex forms.

A new methodology allowed the Academy staff to carry out this great number of changes and updates. Previously, all changes to the dictionary were debated in plenary sessions of the academics, who usually numbered between 40 and 45.

In 1992, after the publication of the 21st edition of the dictionary, five commissions were set up, says De la Concha, “to carry out a truly formidable task.” Only the unresolved doubts and discrepancies arising from the commissions were brought before the plenary sessions.

A large portion of the progress recorded in the new edition is attributed to the Spanish language database that was established in Buenos Aires in 1991 with help from the Argentine Academy of Letters and headed by professor Francisco Marcos Marín, of Spain.

The database continues to grow, and is financed by the Spain-based energy multinational Endesa.

At the official presentation of the new dictionary, one among the linguistically curious asked why the 22nd edition includes the Anglicism “chutar” (to shoot), which means “in football, to launch the ball with one’s foot,” but not the verb “patear”, which in many Latin American countries is the term used to express the same thing.

De la Concha’s response was simple: because the academies of the Americas did not request the inclusion of “patear”.

Despite the collaboration from other academies, there are still some differences in the definition of terms. For example, “españolismo” is defined as “love or fondness of things characteristic or typical of Spain,” but does not refer to the manner of speech in this country.

Meanwhile, “argentinismo”, “bolivianismo”, “mexicanismo” or “portuguesismo”, for example, are defined as an “expression, turn of phrase, or characteristic mode of speech” of Argentines, Bolivians, Mexicans or Portuguese, respectively.

In contrast, the new edition maintains its previous definition of “latinoamericano” as “belonging or related to the countries of America that were colonised by Latin nations, that is, by Spain, Portugal or France.”

López Morales, head of the academies of the Americas, rejected that definition, saying Latin America is a term invented by the French, and should be replaced by the word Ibero-America, referring to the Iberian peninsula that consists of Spain and Portugal.

In this case the dictionary also marks differences with López Morales’ opinion, because the first meaning of ‘iberoamericano’ indicates it is a synonym of ‘latinoamericano’, and the second meaning states: “belonging or related to these peoples (Latin Americans) and to Spain and Portugal.”