The first dictionary of “americanisms” in the Spanish language is going to be announced next year, this week important academics met in Seville to talk about which aspects of the Spanish language they’ll be including. Click here to read more!
In 2010 Spanish language experts are going to publish a Dictionary of Americanisms! Because of the way Spanish is spread across the world there are thousands of regionalisms and different means for the same word.
Seville
The director of the Real Academia Español (the authority on the Spanish language) met this week in Seville with people from 21 Spanish language academies from America to discuss the dictionary. The dictionary will collect all the words deriving from old languages in America, old castillian words whose use is carried on in America but not in Spain. It’s going to include too loads of words that have different meanings in Spain and in America!
In Spain, “león” means lion, but in America it means lion and puma. There are loads of verbs that have different meanings too. “Prender” (to take) also means turn on the light and cheer up in Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Columbia!
The academics that met in Seville now have 61.000 words out of 100.000 ready to include! The words they’re including make up 10% of the entire language and are words used every day in loads of regions all across America.
The dictionary will be announced at the 5th Congress of the Spanish Language in Chile in 2010.
