“Selfi” Spanish adaptation of the anglicized “selfie” is the word of the year for Urgent Spanish Foundation, promoted by the EFE Agency and BBVA.
This is the second time the Fundéu BBVA chooses its word of the year after 2013 should choose “escrache” a term from the Spanish of the Rio de la Plata and had great presence in the media.
“We do not seek the word prettiest or the most original or innovative. We want our word of the year, besides being related to current and, therefore, have been very present in the media, have a certain linguistic interest, either by training or by the force of its penetration into the common language, “says th e CEO of the Foundation, Joachim Muller.
“We chose, therefore, between words, by its novelty, creative and adaptive process for their comeback or recovery have been the subject of some of the more than three hundred recommendations Fundéu BBVA has launched over 2014,” he added .
The phenomenon of the photos are taken citizens themselves, usually with mobile devices, and then often share public or private networks is all the rage in recent years worldwide.
Not surprisingly, “selfie”, the English term that referred to such images, and was chosen word of the year by the editors of dictionaries from Oxford in 2013 after calculating that its use among English speakers had grown that year by 17,000 percent.
The Fundéu BBVA, in its efforts to promote the proper use of Spanish in the media, advised in December 2013 and possible alternatives to anglicized fashion: “autofoto” or the well established “self-portrait”, shapely in Spanish words and can be useful to prevent abuse of the English term.
“But the Spanish language has more resources, and creating or choosing alternatives, and one of them is the adaptation to our spelling system of words coming from other languages,” Muller says.
So in October 2014 Fundéu proposed “selfi” without the “e” end of the original English, Spanish adaptation as valid. In its recommendation on that term, it was explained that the proper plural is “selfis” and that while the majority use will side with the male or female, can be considered an ambiguous word in gender (“a / the selfi”) as “the / sea” “the / the frame” and many others.
“The evidence of the over whelming use of anglicized” selfie “made us think that, without renouncing our previous advice to use” autofoto “would be good to propose an adaptation, also in this case offered no problems from the point of view of pronunciation or the graphical representation, “adds Muller.
This double proposal (“selfi” and “autofoto”), he explains, is not uncommon in Spanish and taken for example in such familiar terms as “football” and “football”, adaptation and alternative respectively of the English word “football” , who live for decades in our language.
The combination of these factors and the apparent linguistic term today is what has led the Foundation team to finally choose “selfi” as word of the year 2014.
Before, philologists and journalists working in the Fundéu BBVA had made a f irst selection of twelve terms under these same conditions in which, besides chosen, included also those related to social networks and the widespread use of telephony mobile, as “nomofobia” neologism designating the fear of not being connected, or “appli” shortening “application” proposed as an alternative to “app”.
The sports world contributed to “a referee”, a female most used each time, and the economy, “default”, the Spanish word which successfully replaced the anglicized “default” list.
The verb “abdicate” was on the front pages of all means and raised doubts about its use (“the throne” or “the throne”? He abdicated), as happened with other words such as “Ukrainian” or “Ebola “.
The list is completed “superluna” the no vel “postureo” and two terms that have come this year to academic Dictionary for different reasons: “drone” that flying machine that seems to open new possibilities in many fields, and “amigovio” a common voice in several Latin to refer to people who have a ratio less formal commitment to an engagement.
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