LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

Dr. Pedro Álvarez de Miranda (Royal Spanish Academy, RAE) has been kind enough to forward a very interesting article of his, "Dos efemérides", published recently in El Cultural (18 June 2026). He discusses the magnificent Diccionario de autoridades (1726–1739), which predates Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary by sixteen years. The article is well worth reading, both for its intrinsic interest and for the light it sheds on the importance of the Diccionario de autoridades in the history of European lexicography. In his Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made (1996), Jonathon Green made little mention of these early Spanish contributions, including the Diccionario de autoridades , which marked a cusp in the history of dictionary making. Dr. Álvarez de Miranda writes with considerable scholarly authority and gravitas, and succeeds in whetting the reader's appetite for language and its history. 

    In a previous post, I chose corrupción as the word of the year in Peninsular Spanish. As I anticipated, FUNDEU RAE (Fundación del Español Urgente, Real Academia Española) has opted instead for arancel , apparently on the grounds of frequency, in keeping with a posture of political neutrality that has little to do with the study of language as social practice or lived experience.   I have conducted a modest, admittedly unscientific poll among acquaintances, students, friends, and family. All of them know perfectly well what corrupción means, whereas several hesitated or faltered when asked about arancel . I am well aware that anecdotal evidence does not compete methodologically with corpus data, and I stand ready to be corrected on scientific grounds; still, I stick to my guns and proclaim corrupción the word of the year for 2025. One can only hope that it will lose currency in 2026—and perhaps even disappear from our vocabulary altogether.

I asked Camilo José Cela for a brief prologue to my 1997 An English and Spanish Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language . He wrote it and asked me to his place in Puerta de Hierro several times. I showed him a few pages of my project on a Spanish Dictionary of Slang. Cela liked it but suggested I use backup citations for every entry. Foolhardily I dived into the project not realizing the amount of work it was to take. After two years and reading over 800 books, I had the manuscript ready. Víctor García de la Concha , then Director of the Real Academia Española , refused to allow me to use the CREA or CORDE, data bases that were almost ready for public use. I went to the Academia's library every day, from 10 to 1, for a month, to check the citation files. In 2000 Larousse published Gran Diccionario del argot, el sohez . McGraw-Hill brought out the US edition and Ediciones del Serbal also published two additional editions.  Cela suggested I use the word soez for the dicti...

Sólo permanece y dura el mudar, el cambio, y no hay nada estático. Por eso la palabra "lapso" que significaba tiempo entre dos límites, ahora es "lapso de tiempo" y no se considera redundante. Se acepta: ya ha pasado un largo lapso de tiempo.  "Tématico" era sólo adjetivo, ahora es también sustantivo: la temática del empleo, de la inmigración, como conjunto de temas parciales. El que llegaba a su hora era "puntual" y ahora significa también "concreto": un problema puntual. Y "remarcar" significaba volver a marcar, pero ha adquirido la idea de poner de relieve: Quiero remarcar lo bien que me trataron en Londres. Y si "tesitura" era disposición de ánimo, ahora también es circunstancia o situación: En esta tesitura, lo mejor es no actuar. (Continuará...)

  En 2010, la Real Academia Española, junto con todas las demás, decidieron eliminar el acento diacrítico de las palabras "solo" y de pronombres demostrativos "este, ese, aquel." El acento diacrítico es el que diferencia palabras: el (the), él (he); mas (but), más (more); solo (alone), sólo (only). Yo no les hice caso porque creo que ese acento está para aclarar y no tiene mayor complicación. Han reconocido en 2020 que fue una metedura de pata y que pocos acataron la nueva normativa. La lengua inglesa, como sabemos, hace la diferenciación de manera ortográfica: mail (correo), male (varón); tale (cuento), tail (rabo); piece (trozo), peace (paz). Sigo creyendo que la unión de todas las academias de la lengua castellana ayudan a que el idioma no se complique más. El inglés lo tiene más difícil. Así que animo a todas a diferenciar: "Sólo bebo café cuando estoy solo."