Issue date: 20 Mar, 2020
LITERATURE. RAE (la Real Academia de la Lengua Española - Spain’s official institution of the Spanish language - Royal Spanish Academy) NEW WORDS 2019
New times, globalisation and technological advances cause new words to be coined, which people are using more and more frequently.
For this reason, the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language feels the obligation to collect and adapt these terms in order to normalise and accept them within the Spanish language.
When a word starts to be used among speakers, academics check that its use is actually recognised by Spanish speakers in general.
After evaluating, putting into context and ensuring that the term is not ephemeral, experts then decide which words will form part of the official Spanish catalogue of words.
In the latest version of the Diccionario de la lengua española (Dictionary of the Spanish Language published by the RAE ), 1,100 new words have been incorporated; of these, the most striking are undoubtedly the new entries of existing words, or the modifications to some definitions that have become obsolete or have acquired different nuances over time.
New times also bring with them new printing techniques such as those applied to this stamp dedicated to the new words incorporated by the RAE, which features thermochromic ink. When rubbing this stamp, this ink uncovers some of the new terms, such as the loanwords brunch and “rúter” (router).
The stamp is designed to simulate the cover of the RAE dictionary, which is a reference book for the Spanish language.
Loanwords, new verbs for actions that were not labelled before, new professions or recent inventions do nothing but enrich the Spanish language, which has approximately 559 million speakers around the world, with Mexico being the country with the largest number of Spanish speakers. There are also more than 40 million native Spanish speakers in the USA, a country in which English is the main language spoken.
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