Orthography of the Royal Spanish Academy Cover Image

El trato de los extranjerismos en la nueva ORAE [How Foreign Words Are Dealt with in the ORAE
Orthography of the Royal Spanish Academy

Author(s): Roxana Maria Crețu
Subject(s): Language studies
Published by: Editura Universităţii de Vest din Timişoara
Keywords: adaptation; Spanish; foreign words; orthography; RAE (The Royal Spanish Academy);

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show how foreign words are viewed in the latest edition of The Orthography of the Royal Spanish Academy. Language is a system that is constantly developing, and foreign words are an important matter in this process because a language enriches itself by borrowing words from other languages. During its creation and development, the Spanish language has been influenced by other languages, such as Latin, Arabic, French, English, even Basque and Catalan. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, English has become a language spoken worldwide and it has influenced all languages. The Royal Spanish Academy is a conservative institution that, since its creation in 1714, has done nothing else but look after the purity of the Spanish language, which is why its position vis-à-vis foreign words is not a tolerant one. RAE (The Royal Spanish Academy) seeks to find Spanish equivalents for foreign words but is not always successful, because Spanish words do not reflect the meanings of English words. To integrate this new reality into the Spanish language, it chooses to adapt, whenever possible, the foreign words to the phonological and orthographic system of the Spanish language. That is why the purpose of this article is to see how RAE has dealt with foreign words in the New Orthography, what phonetic and orthographic rules apply to foreign phrases, so as to adapt them to the phonological and orthographic system of the Spanish language, as well as to integrate them into the language.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 56
  • Page Range: 169-177
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: Spanish