A web of words

Words are the prelude, the story is nothing else than the marvelous use of words as tools performed in scene after many practice hours. Thats what a quote of myself would say. However, Im not quotable.

Thus, its time to share a Reith lecture. One from 1996. That old!

Yes, that old. In the original entry, the one I translated ¹, I mention the RAE discussion on the j and the x and you might get confused what does the RAE has to do with a web of words. You might even ignore what the RAE is!

THE RAE

RAE stands for Royal Academy of (E for the Spanish) Language. Theres no such institution in English. English thrives by adding words from the colonial territories (either conquered by the British empire or by the Coca cola one). All you have is the Oxford dictionary as the dictator of GOOD ENGLISH USAGE.

Well, we, in the Spanish speaking world, we have the RAE. And people (the common people) can get really angry about the RAE discussing if the ancient usage of the x and the j is proper.

To be true, the RAE is quite reasonable (except when admitting women into their ranks) and it has admitted popular usages of the words instead of fostering the idea of the language being unchangeable².

You will see why I say this by listening to the lecture. All I’m doing today is posting the link. The questions posed there are equally valid in Spanish as they’re made in English. Its worth thinking about it when writing fiction.

Anyways, this is a blog where nonsense is allowed.

This is a podcast broadcasted by the BBC Reith lectures in 1996 as a series of lectures by Jean Aitchinson.

A web of words

1. With a lot of trouble and in floppy time due to the fact Im a terrible listener; I need the transcriptions. Otherwise I keep listening Tim Ferrough where Dean Farrar should be. ↩︎
2. Its my opnion that the flexibility of the Academy makes it possible to understand Cervantes 500 years later. Unlike Shakespeare, whom I cant read in English at all.
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