Words that come and go
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Loading... - stanley scarlett
- 17 Oct 2022
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Popular imagery characterized the academics of the Spanish language –at least while they worked within the institution– as old-fashioned gentlemen, majaderos and with an authoritarian vocation, attentive to the slightest dissonance in the practice of the Spanish language in order to impose then, from their respective armchairs, identified with old alphabetic characters, their disapproving opinion. The RAE, rather than as an academy, has tended to be perceived as a court and its members as judges or language commissioners.
They themselves earned this perception due to their solemn performance, which for years was reduced to the periodic publication of some bulletins with the air of an imperial edict and an "official" edition of the Dictionary, which by its nature settled any debate with the solid argument of its printed version.
Taking the weight off this perceptive sensation of the pedestrian speaker, who on his part never needed a idiomatic authority to communicate with others, has forced the relaxation of that arrogant attitude. Shortened the distance from its fiscal domicile in Madrid, the Royal Spanish Academy is ubiquitous and informal, thanks to its digital media: an App, a dynamic 'web', an 'on-line' dictionary, a very useful Twitter account, in addition to a series of publications that contribute to highlighting the splendor of our language, for example the commemorative editions of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' (García Márquez), 'The City and the Dogs' (Vargas Llosa), 'The Most Transparent Region' (Fuentes ) or 'Don Quixote de la Mancha' (Cervantes).
'I would never have said it' is one of these efforts, the most recent, to revive the fondness of Spanish-speakers for their language. Based on the exposition of circumstances that arouse the curiosity of the non-specialized reader, questions related to the casual, the equivocal, the witty that by affinity are found in the long itinerary of our language, born at the end of the century, are unraveled here. XII and in full effervescence at the entrance of the third millennium. Read More…
