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Nunca lo hubiera dicho: Los secretos bien guardados (o no tanto) de la lengua española by The Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (review)

2023; American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese; Volume: 106; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/hpn.2023.a899453

2153-6414

Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies

Reviewed by: Nunca lo hubiera dicho: Los secretos bien guardados (o no tanto) de la lengua españolaby The Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language Michael Vrooman The Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. Nunca lo hubiera dicho: Los secretos bien guardados (o no tanto) de la lengua española. Taurus, 2022. Pp. 254. ISBN 9788430623648. Nunca lo hubiera dichois the first volume of the series Hablantes, organized by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. The book is a collection [End Page 337]of ninety-seven brief commentaries on issues and oddities that frequently generate considerable debate amongst many speakers of Spanish. The text includes an introduction by Santiago Muñoz Machado, Director of the Royal Spanish Academy, President of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language and well-known Spanish author and jurist, and a prologue by Soledad Puértolas, a well-known Spanish author and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. The commentaries, primarily of two pages in length, are organized into six thematic categories. The first section, "Cosas del español," is composed of five articles that address broad topics related to the Spanish language. These include the use of the terms castellanoand españolthroughout the Spanish speaking world as the names of the Spanish language, the number of speakers of Spanish around the world, and several facts and peculiarities related to the Spanish alphabet. They also address controversies surrounding what some consider to be the best Spanish and the false, but widely held belief that a word is not a word if it does not appear in a dictionary. The next section, titled, "De ayer a hoy: El español a lo largo de la historia," analyzes ten topics related to the historical development of the Spanish language. They range from the Latin roots of Spanish to the first early Romance annotations written in the margins of tenth century Latin texts, including the Nodicia de kesos, a text recently discovered near León that predates the more widely known Glosas Emilianenses. The third category, "Perlas fonéticas y ortográficas," addresses sixteen problems and little-known facts related to Spanish pronunciation and spelling, beginning with the origin of the most Spanish letter of the alphabet, the ñ. Other topics include explanations of the letter h, from its Latin origins to cases where etymology does not explain its usage, and its use in words of foreign origin. In addition, they provide an explanation of the use of the letter x in words such as México, Texasand others. The next section, comprising twenty articles, is titled, "La gramática también tiene su gracia." This unit reflects on several well-known grammatical topics such as gender and number, leísmo, laísmoand loísmo, and the use of vosin many regions of Latin America. They delve into the use of the English suffix -ing in Spanish, and show that while grammatical norms and rules abound, some grammatical structures are still rather "fluid" in certain circumstances. The fifth group, "Más que palabras," consists of thirty-nine entries and is the longest section in the book. Many of the questions addressed center on word use and misuse, how errors often serve to stimulate novel linguistic developments, and the evolution, creation, and loss of words over time. Others address the use of metaphors, acronyms, and firmly held popular beliefs about certain words and phrases and include topics of both historical and contemporary relevance. The last section, "Lenguas y lenguajes muy particulares," concerns historical and regional varieties of Spanish and forms of speech strongly influenced by the Spanish language. The seven topics addressed in this segment include el ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, el calóin Spain, Spanglish in the United States, el lunfardoin Buenos Aires and el chabacanoin the Philippines. The inclusion of these topics affords the reader the opportunity to experience the reach of the Spanish language around the world over the course of several centuries. Nunca lo hubiera dichoprovides the reader with succinct, yet highly informative and insightful analyses...