RAE faces the most stylish fullness

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) is celebrating a plenary session this Thursday, where the conflict between tildists and anti-tildists will once again fly over. Despite the fact that some wanted to present a picture of the RAE divided between writers and philologists over whether to emphasize the contribution only and some pronouns, the reality is that the recovery of the orthographic sign in ambiguous cases (“I only work on Sundays”) was unanimous and without cracks. The official position of the entity led by Santiago Muñoz Machado is that there was no rebellion and that it all boils down to a “change of wording” to make things clearer in cases that could lead to confusion, an option that has already been planned. Spelling from 2010.

Supporters of the tilde, like Arturo Pérez-Reverte – and other writers-, sang victory and declared victory on Twitter because they had won the “old battle”. But it is not so clear that there are winners and losers in the debate, even though the author is Flemish table predicted that this Thursday’s meeting would be “tumultuous”.

The RAE is not surprised by these controversies: it has long had to deal with controversies of various kinds, from inclusive language controversies to the war on foreign words. When Gabriel García Márquez advocated abolishing spelling and sending the “axe” to the devil in 1997 at the Congress in Zacatecas, there were those who trembled and believed that the foundations of the language were shaking, despite the fact that the author of the book one hundred years of solitude he was a very orthodox writer and respected language.

Apostles in @

A quarter of a century has passed since that disgusting speech, and RAE does not win for disappointment. Undoubtedly, the biggest attacks on the language come from the ranks of inclusive language defenders. Among them are paladins @ and the xgraphic resources for integrating masculine and feminine forms of nouns in one word.

The problem with using these labels is that they are unpronounceable, so it is necessary to resort to gender separation (“Spanish women and Spanish men”), which, according to the RAE, threatens the economy of the language. The entity that ensures the purity of Spanish believes that the generic masculine gender is not discriminatory, an idea that has fallen on deaf ears in political language, except when public representatives retreat from the podium.

As Álex Grijelmo, a journalist specializing in linguistic issues, argued a few weeks ago, politicians use gender separation except when the noun has negative implications. No one talks, for example, about “corrupted and corrupted.” The RAE continued the dispute with the Government – or the Government with the RAE – regarding the possibility of including the gender division in the Constitution. Former Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo sent an inquiry to that institution in this regard, and the answer was negative, which angered Calvo.

The war against linguistic contamination is at the very origin of the organization. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, they detested the “Galiparlan Plague” and used expressions borrowed from French. Sometimes the Academy finds it difficult to accept language newspapers and follows the voice of the street. Word restaurant appeared in the dictionary since 1817, but with the meaning “an establishment where meals are served” was not recorded until 1925. Words like buffet and driverof French origin, are now fully accepted, but have faced hostility from language purists.

“weaker sex”

RAE’s resistance to foreign words is justified in the face of an avalanche of anglicisms that are sometimes difficult to justify, such as abstract or consultationwhich can easily be replaced with extract and consultant. Feminism, whether postmodern or classical, rejects that institution as macho. RAE did not exclude from the dictionary the meaning of “weaker sex” for all women. Misogyny? It’s not about that, says Darío Villanueva, former RAE director, in his book To bite your tongue, which acknowledges the machismo of the locution. But he cautions that the dictionary’s mission is to include documented words from the year 1500, even if the later emphasizes the “slang, pejorative, offensive or discriminatory character” of the term.

Feminist organizations were revolted by the meaning of the adjective easy, which read as follows: “It is said of a woman: That she indulges in sexual relations without problems”. Such a term appeared in the writings of Emilia Pardo Bazán and Concepción Arenal, but the RAE decided that this attribute should be extended to men and women, since the sexual revolution caused the proliferation of literary testimonies that speak of “easy men, boys or uncles”. like mushrooms. ».

Ethnic minorities were very sensitive to the learned house. Soledad Becerril, former ombudsman, requested the withdrawal of the only definition a gypsy woman as cheat, despite the fact that the dictionary specifies that such a meaning should be understood as offensive or discriminatory. However, the uses of language are as arbitrary as they are capricious, because Gypsy It can also be understood, in a colloquial sense, as one “who has the grace and art to win the will of others.”

Eight years ago, parents of autistic children petitioned the Ministry of Health to ban the meaning autistic as a person “closed in his own world, consciously separated from reality”.

Another way to supplement the RAE page is to suggest terms that are not included in the lexicographic discussions. An organization of parents who have lost a child to illness or accident complained that there was no adjective to define them, so they proposed the term orophile, with the oft-repeated argument that what is not named does not exist. An unfortunate fabrication, because as Villanueva says, orophile he would be the one “who loves the orphanage”. And it is not true that Spanish does not contain a word that refers to children without parents. It is no longer in use, although it was sent in 1791: «dishijado, yes».

legion of offended

The accusation that RAE is an immobile institution is also not entirely true. In the formation of professional women, he recognized words such as judge, deputy or councilor.

There are legions of those offended by the RAE. In 2015, an organization that smokes cannabis and marijuana sent the institution a letter accusing it of reinforcing the negative bias of the drug, “when throughout human history it has meant much more than that and has been an essential and necessary raw material for [el sector] textiles, navigation, medicine, etc. In addition, he complained about the offense of talking badly about cannabis derivatives, and not about the harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco.

Salvador Gutiérrez, a linguist and academic, complained at the time that many of these protests were not very constructive, but were written in a belligerent and offensive tone. Gutiérrez complains that RAE is also a victim of fraud. A few years ago it was said that the Academy had just approved vulgarisms such as meatball, towel or sowords that actually appear in the dictionary since the 18th century, because in their time they were variants that appeared in classical works.