LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

 Our vocabulary must be increased constantly if we wish to express ourselves better and more accurately. Since my father gave me the daily task of looking up words in dictionaries when I was about ten, I have been adding new ones to my vocabulary to this day. Not a day goes by that I do not strive to enlarge my stock of words in both English and Spanish. Most additions enter my active vocabulary and become part of my daily discourse. Others fade away and remain only passive elements of my language. That is why I urge you, and myself, to refresh our vocabulary through active reading.  For example, prig is a word I learnt while reading the autobiography of Bertrand Russell. According to him, many of his friends and acquaintances were prigs. Obviously, he did not consider himself one. Yesterday the word popped up again from the page of a book. And the word coy stayed with me while reading Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress . These Anglo-Saxon words, short and to the poin...

  I do not mean to flog a dead horse, but I must insist.   Sorry. Active reading is the best way to polish, improve, and perfect your foreign language. By active reading, I mean looking up the unknown words and jotting them down in a notebook. If you can copy the context, i.e. the whole sentence where they appear, so much the better. The sentence that illustrates the meaning of a word is called a "citation." Once in a while, you can review your notes, reflect upon them, memorize them, and incorporate them into your vocabulary. This is the way to expand the horizon of your vocabulary. This proactive measure will always keep you in good stead in your language studies. No pain, no gain! 

  In my quest for adding new words to my vocabulary, I find that the definitions given by dictionaries are not enough to grasp the meaning. I have the upper hand because I can rely on bilingual dictionaries also, which might help elucidate the idea the word is trying to convey. Take the word figment which, according to The Random House Webster´s Unabridged Dictionary is: "a mere product of mental invention; a fantastic notion: The noises in the attic were just a figment of his imagination." Can I then say "What you are saying is a figment"? Collins explains: "A fantastic notion, invention, or fabrication: a figment of the imagination." Webster´s New Worl Dictionary defines it as: "To make, device, something merely imagined or made up  in the mind." Can I say that your story is a figment? Elizabeth McCracken published a book in 2008 entitled: An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: a Memoir . And Shells Walter, also in 2008, published: F...

  A while ago I took a weird, online vocabulary test and the result was that my vocabulary in English was about 22,000 words. I wish I had such a large vocabulary! I guess that, at most, I own around eight thousand English words. This debate about the number of words speakers have has been going on for a while and despite technological advances, we are still in the dark. My (un)educated guess is that most native speakers handle a handful of terms and phrases and repeat them over and over. The problem is not with their vocabulary but their ideas, conceits, and thoughts which, always being the same, drape them in the same words. They have little new to say and need not new terminology. If you wish to expand your vocabulary you will have to read and check all the words you ignore or you are not sure of.   

  Some time ago I had an article published (Viva Fifty) entitled "Every day to a more powerful vocabulary" in which I made a rundown of books inciting readers to expand their vocabulary in a brief period of time. The quiddity of it was that the "powerful" vocabulary was made up of unusual, recondite, and useless words. Of late I have been receiving emails from "Stream of Words" very apropos of this. They want the recipient to choose the right word for a sentence. The choices are: "alacritous, balter, incisive, contrapositive, vituperative, ripost, lipomatous..." and such. Of course, I am all for improving and enhancing one´s trove of words... but words with which we can actually communicate with an average educated person, and not words nobody has ever heard of.  Improve your vocabulary, not from lists, but from your readings, in context. 

Una interesante entrevista con el dramaturgo argentino Mauricio Kartun (1949) en TVe, la 2, me alerta de nuevo sobre ese afán por importar vocablos que ya existen en castellano. En un momento de la entrevista (que no interviú), Kartun emplea el verbo "tipear" que el entrevistador (supuesto experto en lengua) repite inmediatamente. Intuyo que se refieren al verbo "teclear" ("escribir algo tecleando en una máquina, mecanografiar"). En Arg., Chile, Ec., Nic., Perú, Ur., y Ven. se decidió utilizar el verbo inglés "to type", importarlo, dejando de lado el "teclear", de tecla. Pero, ¿por qué no llamarlo "taipear" que se ciñe más al original? Misterio de misterios. Las palabras entran, se quedan y otras visitan y se van. Y el pueblo llano tiene la última palabra, que es un retruécano que empleo aposta.

Como ha escrito el profesor James Parr, en los idiomas no existen niveles absolutos de conocimiento, por mucho empeño que pongan los que se dedican a su enseñanza en trocearlos en nivel básico, nivel medio bajo, medio alto o conversacional. Cuando un principiante –el que parte de cero- llega a conversar y expresar sus ideas, los niveles desaparecen. Confundimos con niveles la soltura y dominio en la expresión. Nadie sabe exactamente qué nivel de vocabulario tiene en lengua castellana. ¿Cuántas palabras sabe y emplea un nativo hispanohablante de cultura universitaria? ¿Sabemos qué gramática domina y qué fraseología sabe y cuántas palabras emplea y entiende?   Nunca decimos que domina 5000 vocablos o que tiene un nivel medio alto. En los currículos nadie se interesa por el nivel de español que tiene el posible empleado. Se supone que es bueno, aunque eso sea mucho suponer. Un porcentaje elevado de nativos de un idioma, cualquier idioma, tiene un nivel básico y hablando p...

Hay palabras que existen en los dos idiomas que nos interesan a nosotros pero que tienen más circulación en uno que en otro. La palabra ORDEAL es de uso común y corriente entre los hablantes del idioma inglés. ORDEAL : any extremely severe or trying test, experience or trial. (A primitive form of trial...) -Crossing the desert was an ordeal. -The German-language examination was an odeal for all. -My life right now is an ordeal. La palabra, repito, la conoce todo el mundo. ORDALÍA es su equivalente castellano que según el diccionario de María Moliner es "en la Edad Media prueba a la que eran sometidos judicialmente los reos para demostrar su inocencia." En ambos casos las torturas de todo tipo era lo que dio significado a la palabra. A pesar de que he encontrado ejemplos de uso en periódicos de nuestra época, no es de uso corriente y la población en general la desconoce. Algunos diccionarios traducen ORDEAL por CALVARIO , que se comprende mejor.

Los opuestos (antónimos) son fáciles de recordar. Cada vez que aprendamos una palabra, busquemos su término opuesto. Por ejemplo: seldom , rara vez -- often , a menudo top , parte superior -- bottom , fondo, parte inferior always , siempre -- never , nunca. right , derecha -- left , izquierda. up, arriba -- down , abajo dear , caro -- cheap , barato hairy , peludo -- hairless , pelado full , lleno -- empty , vacío thick , grueso -- thin , delgado, fino float , flotar -- sink , hundirse weep , llorar -- laugh, reír rainy , lluvioso -- sunny , soleado haga la prueba y cada vez que aprenda una palabra recuerde su significado opuesto. This simple trick works miracles.