The RAE thousand dictionaries used to assemble your Christmas tree – El Universal (Venezuela)

Madrid, December 19 (EFE) .- The Royal Spanish Academy celebrates Christmas with a tree located on the steps of the main facade of its headquarters and built a thousand copies of the latest edition of “Dictionary of the Spanish Language” published ago two months.

With this initiative, explained the elected director of the SAR, Dario Villanueva, the Academy puts an end to the commemoration of its tercentenary and also recalls the importance of the Dictionary, the work that is the main reason for being of this institution and reaching ever greater impact among Spanish speakers.

The peculiar Christmas tree is a pyramidal structure six feet in height and about 2.20 meters base. Neither the academy nor Espasa, the publisher of the dictionary have evidence that has been built before a tree of this kind.

“In the world of communication is important to break the mold, and no evidence it was ever done anything like this, “claimed Villanueva, who on 8th will take up office.

Each dictionary is conveniently laminated to prevent may deteriorate with rain, because when spend Christmas, three hundred copies (one for each year of the SAR) will be donated to public libraries and the rest will go on sale, noted Dario Villanueva.

In the third anniversary program was scheduled activity “free books” and the Christmas tree “is the realization that you have been given,” said

.

On October 16, Espasa published simultaneously in Spanish-speaking countries the Dictionary, with an initial circulation a hundred thousand copies, half of them to America.

In Spain, came out in one volume, the price of 99 euros ($ 122) and Latin America a version of two volumes was published, costing the equivalent of seventy euros in each country. The content is the same.

So far, Spain has sold nearly 20,000 copies of the 23 edition of the Dictionary, a figure that falls far short of the 130,000 that were achieved when he left the previous edition 2001. America still no sales data.

Still missing Christmas, which is “good time” to give this type of work, and the Academy confident that sales will improve, Villanueva said.

Not forgetting that there was no economic crisis in 2001, at least in Spain, and had begun to operate the digital edition of dictionary, which has had an undeniable success: each month receives more than forty million queries coming from all Spanish-speaking countries.

The 23 edition of the dictionary will be in “very improved and new features” red “in the first quarter” of 2015. It will then be made public who the sponsor of this digital version. Darío Villanueva chose today not give any names that are not yet closed the negotiations.

The new edition of the dictionary contains 93,111 entries, up from 88,431 the previous 2001 and includes 195,439 meanings, including almost 19,000 Americanisms. And they have introduced some 140,000 amendments affecting some 49,000 items.