The New York Times contra la RAE, y el timo de la preventa de la nueva Ortografía
El barullo de la llamada «ortografía yeyé» ha trascendido ya las fronteras hispanas. Las precipitadas e imprudentes filtraciones de los directivos de la RAE sobre las novedades normativas de la próxima Ortografía, que han ocasionado publicitadas disensiones internas en el seno de la Española y de sus asociadas (véanse, p. ej., 1 y 2) y una auténtica revolución popular en la red, han merecido una reprobatoria reseña en el diario The New York Times:
Push to Simplify Spanish Gets Complicated
[Traducción en elcastellano.org]
Out go “ch” and “ll,” along with lots of annoying accents and hyphens.
The simplified spelling from the academy, a musty Madrid institution that is the chief arbiter of all things grammatical, should be welcome news to the world’s 450 million Spanish-speakers, not to mention anybody struggling to learn the language.
But no. Everyone, it seems, has a bone to pick with the academy — starting with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
If the academy no longer considers “ch” a separate letter, Mr. Chávez chortled to his cabinet, then he would henceforth be known simply as “Ávez.” (In fact, his name will stay the same, though his place in the alphabetic order will change, because “ch” used to be the letter after “c.”)
An editorial in the Mexican daily El Universal declared the new rules to be an affront to the national identity: “Spelling is not just an imposition; it serves to maintain a minimum of coherence and sense to what is written and said. Can this be dictated from a conference room abroad? A country that is proudly independent would not accept this.”
The editorial went on to ask, “Would the United States accept dictates from England over the use of English?”
They are just as upset on the European side of the Atlantic. Comments have poured forth on the Web — 1,450 of them as of Thursday night — after the first article on the changes appeared in the Spanish newspaper El País at the beginning of the month. The word “absurdo” pops up a lot.
“It’s kind of a magic realist moment. They decide that 2 of 29 letters will disappear,” said Ilan Stavans, a Mexican who is a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. “All the dictionaries will have to be remade, which is good for selling the Royal Academy’s dictionary, which they keep producing as though it’s the Bible.”
Professor Stavans compared it to the authority that English-speakers turn to, the Oxford English Dictionary, which stresses common usage rather than imposing it from above.
The Spanish academy needed 800 pages to explain the new simplified rules. Among other changes: letters with different names in different countries get just one name (which is rather like telling Americans that the last letter of the alphabet should be called “zed”). Iraq becomes Irak and quásar is now written as cuásar.
The spelling rules will go on sale by Christmas in Spain. Latin Americans will have to wait a bit longer.
There have long been complaints about Spanish spelling. At the first international congress of the Spanish language in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1997, the Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez declared, “Let’s retire spelling, the terror of all beings from the cradle.” But he admitted that his pleas were little more than “bottles flung to the sea in the hope that they would one day come to the god of all words.”
That god remaining silent, the Royal Spanish Academy has been filling the void since it was founded in 1713. “They have an oracular way of presenting things, like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai,” Professor Stavans said.
“In my mind, it’s a relic of the 18th century,” he added. “We have to wait for Spain to say how we speak.”
For those who live and breathe Spanish, the academy’s priorities seem a little off. “We are a language in debate,” said the Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II. “Unfortunately, the academy isn’t ahead of the debate, it’s behind.”
To its credit, the academy takes pains to emphasize that it works collaboratively with its associated academies in 21 other Spanish-speaking countries, including in the United States. Early meetings on the new spelling rules were held in Chile; the text was completed this month in Spain; and it will be ratified by the academy and its sister branches at the Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico on Sunday.
In an e-mail, Juan Villoro, a Mexican writer living in Barcelona, was philosophical about one change that seemed to strike at the core of Spanish speakers’ poetic souls on both sides of the Atlantic. Under the old rules, the word “solo” takes an accent when it means “only” and has no accent when it means “alone.”
The academy rubbed out the accent, arguing that the meaning would be clear from the context. “Sometimes, the law has nothing to do with justice,” Mr. Villoro wrote.
Luis Fernando Lara, a scholar at the Colegio de México who coordinates the preparation of a Spanish dictionary used in Mexico, waved off the academy’s new rules: “We’re free in this world not to listen to them.”
As for the changes in the names of letters, Mr. Lara resorted to a line from a classic American song to describe the spat:
“I like tomato, you like tomahto,” he said.
Although he did not say it, the title of that tune, written by George and Ira Gershwin, was understood:
“Let’s call the whole thing off.”
Inmunes a las críticas, ni estas instituciones ni su casa editora retroceden en sus planes de publicarla para la campaña de Navidad, aunque parezca evidente que el texto original de la obra requiere retoques antes de recibir el visto bueno definitivo, lo que descuadra por completo el calendario de edición previsto. Fíjese el lector: el mismo fin de semana (hoy 27 y mañana 28 de noviembre) en que el pleno de la Asale, formado por los directores de las 22 academias [actualización: de las 21, porque el director de la RAE no ha asistido, excusando su ausencia por razones médicas], se reúne en la FIL de Guadalajara para debatir y consensuar el borrador definitivo de esta nueva Ortografía, la FNAC pone la obra en preventa, anunciando una fecha de expedición surrealista: 1 de diciembre.
Ortografía de la lengua española
- Varios Autores
- Normal en español
Articulo en preventa, expedición prevista para el 01 dic 2010
- Oferta socios
37,91 € en lugar de 39,90 € (un descuento de 5%)
Compra 3 libros y te descontamos el 5%*. Hasta el 15 de diciembre.Y recuerda que si eres socio siempre tienes un 5% dto, sin límite de importe o cantidad. * Oferta exclusiva internet, no acumulable a 5% descuento socios y no aplicable a cofres experiencia |
Ya me contarán con qué clase de poderes paranormales cuentan las academias y Espasa para tener impresa a inicios de diciembre una obra que a finales de noviembre ni siquiera está aprobada y sobre cuyo consenso se han proyectado constantes sombras.
Desde el punto de vista técnico, es materialmente imposible que esta Ortografía, una obra de 800 páginas con ilustración, se publique en diciembre (ni el 1 ni antes de Navidad) cuando su borrador se va a aprobar a finales de noviembre, sencillamente porque no hay editores, impresores, encuadernadores y distribuidores capaces de tal maravilla, y prueba de ello es que en el acelerado panorama editorial actual no se ha dado nunca un caso así.
Si para principios o mediados de diciembre esta Ortografía está impresa y distribuida, se habrá confirmado la espectacular tomadura de pelo de los académicos, su cinismo y su extraordinario don para el márquetin viral. Si tal cosa ocurre, una no podrá por menos que concluir que esta obra estaba ya impresa antes de que se anunciaran las polémicas reformas normativas; que las sucesivas apariciones en prensa de diversos académicos americanos anunciando que no las acatarían eran comedia para alimentar las expectativas comerciales; y que incluso el reciente artículo en ABC del académico de la Española Rodríguez Adrados diciendo que el pleno de la RAE había dado marcha atrás en sus reformas ante el clamor general no era más que una manera de engatusar al hablante, haciéndole creer que las academias son simples notarios del idioma mientras que el pueblo es su verdadero propietario... incluso cuando se trata de la elaboración de su código escrito.
En definitiva: si esta Ortografía está impresa en diciembre y se vende en campaña navideña, habremos recibido una lección magistral sobre quién manda en la lengua española y qué clase de ilusos somos.
Silvia Senz
3 comentarios
Silvia Senz -
José Yuste Frías -
¡Muchas gracias Silvia!
Azote ortográfico -
Saludos.