Many a country has an official body which acts as the custodian of its language, setting the rules and making changes and additions. In Germany Duden has the final say about matters to do with the German language. In France the Académie Française tries to set the rules, in particular to protect le français from contamination by foreign words, but it rarely works – the French aren’t going to stop using the word le weekend, just because the Académie says so. In Spain the Real Academia Española (RAE) says what’s what; from time to time changing the rules and approving new words and phrases.
In this article Don Pablo highlights the main changes to be introduced to castellano in 2022.
The RAE has recently announced some significant changes to the Spanish alphabet, much to the surprise of Spanish-speakers throughout the world (at the last count almost 600 million native speakers).
Disappearing letters
The letters “ch” and “ll” are to disappear as unique letters in their own right from the Spanish abecedario. This is on the grounds that they are digraphs, ie groups of two letters. So, from now on children in schools will be taught that the Spanish alphabet consists of just 27 letters (our 26 plus “ñ”).
The RAE points out that words containing these digraphs, such as chino, coche, llave and calle, will continue to be pronounced and spelt as before. Why make the change then?
Name changes
Some names of letters are to be changed:
“y” used to be called “y griega”. From now on it’s to be “ye”.
“i latina” will now be just “i”.
“b” will be “b” and “v” will be “uve” (I thought that was already the case!).
“w” will be “doble uve” instead of “doble u” (I thought it was “uve doble”, and so did all the Spanish speakers I know!).
New words and phrases
A number of new words and new uses of words have been approved, particularly in the fields of the new technologies, gastronomy, sex and gender and the Coronavirus. These include:
New technologies
bitcóin, bot, ciberacoso, ciberdelincuencia, criptomoneda, geolocalizar and webinario.
Gastronomy
sanjacobo, cachopo (típico de la gastronomía asturiana) paparajote (dulce murciano preparado a partir de la hoja del limonero) and el rebujito andaluz.
Also quinoa and crudité.
Tinto de verano (para referirse a la bebida típica de España compuesta de vino tinto y gaseosa o refresco de limón) and the addition of balsámico before vinagre.
Sex and gender
poliamor, transgénero, cisgénero and pansexualidad.
Pandemic
COVID, cubrebocas, hisopado and nasobuco, as well as new uses for terms such as cribado, burbuja social, nueva normalidad, triaje and vacunología.
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The 2022 version of the digital DLE (Diccionario de la Lengua Española – official online dictionary of the Spanish language) incorporate a massive 3836 modifications. Blimey! I think I’ll just carry on as before …..
Keep up the good work!
Hasta pronto.