LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

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...

  A kind and well-meaning Spanish teacher in Instagram, urges his foreign student to say "piños" instead of "dientes" because that´s what Spaniards say. Further, she advocates using "piltra" for "cama".  For "trabajo" we are told that native Spanish speakers say "curro".  And she is right. But, what sort of people say that? I don´t, for one, and I have compiled a massive Spanish slang dictionary, published by Larousse. In my opinion, the foreign learner must stick to "safe" language, which will not raise eyebrows anywhere, anytime. As he or she delves deeper into his language studies, they will be able to discern the difference between "piltra" and "cama". If I go to the dentist and talk about my "piños", it will sound bad, if a foreigner says that, it will sound worse. Stick to standard language until you are able to know the difference between conversational Spanish, slang, and colloqu...

  Los hablantes nativos de una lengua creen que pueden hacer con su idioma lo que les dé la gana, que para eso es de ellos. Y llevan razón. Cada cual puede hacer de su capa un sayo. Pero s i queremos aparentar seriedad debemos expresarnos con seriedad, con pulcritud, con exactitud, con buena gramática... Broken grammar leads to broken English... and broken relationships and, finally, failure. E l extranjero no puede tomarse esas libertades y tiene que ceñirse a las reglas gramaticales y fonéticas siempre. Está "de visita" en el idioma que aprende y los visitantes deben ser respetuosos con los anfitriones. Escuchamos en castellano "delante mío" por "delante de mí", "mu" por "muy", "na" por "nada", "entrar dentro" por "entrar", "hispanoparlante" por "hispanohablante"...  Oiremos a los nativos anglohablantes decir:  "Want a beer?" ("Ju wanabeer?")  "Need a...