Spain bows before la blogosfera

God alone knows what Cervantes would have made of it, but the English term "blogosphere" has slithered onto the growing list of neologisms shoehorned into the noble Castillian language, joining chatear, chip, formatear, Internet and módem in a burgeoning list of tech and net-based foreign vocab. Official recocognition came …

[Chris Miller]

Sadly

As I once heard a Hungarian professor remark: "In 100 years, the world will have only one language - bad English."

PS While we're thanking the Spaniards, don't forget aficionado (even if most of us can't spell it correctly).

[Philip J.F. Quinlan]

As Anglo culture takes over, will we lose the tenets of these cultures

I mean really, which of us would like to see a culture whose language that gave us "barbecue, burrito, cocaine, hammock, salsa, siesta, taco and, of course, tequila" disappear, think of what else they may add to Fridays if they're left at it.

Icon, because mono-culture is bad

[Tom]

Beth sy Blogosphere yn Gymraeg

I just wonder what Blogosphere is in Welsh.

I am sure Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Langauage Board) have dispatched their Grand Cheif Lexiographer to this task.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: In 100 years

English is already fragmenting into different dialects and in 100 years I suspect the English we know will have been replaced by several different languages evolving their own ways – despite the influence of USA films and TV shows

Worth looking into Melvyn Bragg's "The Adventure of English" - to show just how English keeps changing

[Bob]

Hmmm....

There's nothing like a Siesta after a Cocaine Salsa Burito

[John Sanders]

Not a bad thing

IT terms being assimilated in spanish form is not a bad thing at all, at the end of the day most of those were invented by english talking people and did not exist before.

I do not remember cervantes using the word "modem" when he wrote "Don Quijote de la Mancha"

[TeeCee]

Blogosphere in Welsh?

I want to know too. If only to have a handy word for "irrelevance squared".

[snafu]

Going downhill

Well, the Real Academia de la Lengua Española introduced "yins" ("jeans") as a substitute for "pantalones vaqueros", which seems to me like raising the white flag. It seems nowadays if you can say it in fewer hipper words, and English excels at that, Spanglish it is. We've got "chatear" for "to chat" which has practically destroyed the original Spanish meaning ("irse de chatos": to have a few glasses of wine with your friends and so). The silly thing is, "to chat" has a simple Spanish word for it: "charlar".

As a Spaniard, the "Blogosfera" word sounds pompous and rather quite silly to me.

[Martin]

Spanish Management Speak

basically consists of inserting as many English words in a sentence as possible. The Spanish are totally obsessed with learning English.

[Jason Togneri]

However

It happens in all languages. I can sit on the metro, surrounded by Finns, Swedes, Russians and Estonians, and understand pretty much the bulk of what they're saying - because I can sometimes understand a few words of their languages, and often because every second or thrid word they use is either a direct loan-word or - particularly among the young - some sort of English-corruption slang word. It's actually quite sad, when I ask a local for a word and I get a corrupted English word. I have to ask again, "Yes, but what's YOUR word for that?" And they think for a moment, and only THEN do they remember that they had an original word in their own language. I'm all for international communications but there's something to be said for a rich cultural diversity too.

Yes, I think that anonymous Hungarian professor was right. All languages evolve but this isn't evolution - it's mutation. Ditto the monoculture comment.

[Stuart Van Onselen]

me am pedant

'Afrikaans" is spelled with a 'k'. 'C' very rarely appears in the language at all, it being redundant to have 'C' and 'K'. (And 'C' is never pronounced 'S' in Afrikaans anyway.)

'Web' is, AFAIK, a long-standing Afrikaans word meaning, er, 'web'.

[Steven Walker]

They have not given up ...

... as computer is called un ordenador and it is very unusual to hear computadora. think that might be a dodgy South Americanism.

[Mr Fuzzy]

@Snafu

Trust me, you don't have to be Spanish for blogosphere or any derivation to sound pompous or silly. Just look at a selection of self referential 'high profile bloggers' for confirmation of pomposity.

[snafu]

The rain in Spain…

I think "ordenador" comes from the French "Ordinateur".

It's not that we Spanish are desperate to put English terms into everything but I guess we are too lazy to think of a good Spanish term when we have to talk jargonese, specially if we absolutely have to deal with English sources daily, such as mags, books, news programmes, etc. Add to that that most computing terms arrive here without much of a translation to help us avoid this idiocy (I am a Mac user, and frankly I am fed up with Exposé this, Dock that, Mail.app, etc.).

"Blogo" sounds a bit like "globo" ("balloon"). So apropos :D

[ian]

Anglic cross-polination

American movies may be spreading yankisms, but the Beeb is spreading angloisms via such masterpieces as "As Time Goes By". Such phrases as "spot on", "gone missing" and others, are now heard often on the left side of the pond, and not just spoken by Anglophiles. No doubt this argot will be further spread by movies to parts of the world where Auntie's video does not yet reach.

Ironically, English (/ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/) has become the new Esperanto.

[carlos]

so?

@the author:

What is actually the point of your article?

Are you pissed off at the spaniards saying "blogosfera"? are you happy? do you have a copyright on words? what's your point?

The terms you consider "newbies" have been around for decades, maybe you have just started learning spanish and believe that the language is growing with you but...

"Briks de leche" are called like that because they come in what used to be called "TetraBrik" ("in 1963 the company introduced Tetra Brik, a rectangular carton" - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra_Pak). So that's us using a swiss trademark name which in turn borrowed a bastardisation of your "brick" word.

We have the word "Paquete" (Packet) but we don't do bundles, instead we just do boxes full of things (with games, playstations, tequila, whatever). Does it bother you if we borrow the word "pack" it to promote "bundles"? otherwise we'll have to use paquete which can also be understood as men's genitals (maybe not nice to print in big letters).

Regarding acronyms and initialisms. What do you suggest we do about this then? Shall we turn...

DVD into DDVV (disco de video versatil)

GPS into SDPG (sistema de posicionamiento global)

IP into PI (protocolo internet, and also 3,1416)

HTML into LDMDHT (Lenguaje de Marcado de HiperTexto)

LCD into PCL (Pantalla de cristal liquido)

MP3 into ??? MP3 (Mocion Pintura Expertos Capa 3????)

PC into CP (Computador personal) or OP (Ordenador personal)

PIN into NDIP (Numero de identificacion personal)

Internet into Redinternacional

Modem (modulator demodulator) into Modem (modulador demodulador) ????

Maybe that would make things easier for everyone:

Imagine the DVD consortium having to design a logo for each different country

or recruiters looking for people with HTML skills in foreign countries having to learn an array of "multi-cultural initialisms"

or having scientists quarreling in the lab about who's the real PI, Internet or maths

or a company wanting to order some PCLs from a British manufacturer

or Sony thinking for the Spanish Betamax name...Betamaximo!!!.

As I said, I totally fail to see the point of this article. Sounds to me like a very retrograde observation you're making here and reminds me to a grafitti I saw yesterday on the street next to "una shop de ordenadores", it said: "Technology is a Cancer".

@snafu:

I'd have thought it is quite handy for us to say "chatear" as it already implies that is being done across the Internet and in text form, whereas "charlar" is still understood as the act of verbally talking to someone. Otherwise we'd have to say "charlando en el chat/ charlando por internet" which would be a waste of time better spent on siesta.

Paris Hilton because she would provide us with this sort of journalism if she only knew how to use a pen.

[Anonymous Coward]

why is blogosphere english derived?

Log and sphere can be traced back to to latein. No wonder that many european languages have an equivalent.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ ian

It's not "angloisms", it's "anglicisms"

[Anonymous Coward]

Spanish style

Did you notice that list of words "barbecue, burrito, cocaine, hammock, salsa, siesta, taco and, of course, tequila". They are all about eating, drinking, sleeping - something. What do we give them in return: technology and work. So they have fun. We have work.

Yeh! Makes you depressed being a northern European.

[Michael Poole]

It got a bit further than Europe

Try ブロゴスフィア (burogosufia) - that's Japanese for those who can see the katakana.

M

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: slow day...

It is somewhat difficult for Lester who, incidentally lives in Spain and is bilingual in English and Spanish, to copy or parody an article that was published three days after the one he wrote.

[Pablo Barboza]

slow day...

Was Lester just trying to copy/parody/whatever the BBC's article about Franglais?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7221918.stm

... slow day, indeed...

@Carlos

Completely agree with you. It's plain stupid to try to translate acronyms for each and every language.

Besides, "blogosfera" is a perfectly adapted word, both in grammar and pronunciation... it's not the first time that happens in Spanish, you know? (jardín, anyone?)