Every day we are exposed to dozens of seemingly inevitable foreign words.
Use of foreign words
The use of foreign words is not always advised, as it can make communication difficult. The Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) suggests avoiding its use when there are words in Spanish that are equivalent . “Marketing” is an example of foreign language: according to the recommendation of the RAE , it is preferred not to resort to said foreign language and use, instead, “marketing” .
Specialists point out that foreign words should be written in italics or in quotation marks . The objective of this practice is to warn the reader that the term does not belong to their own language.
Adaptation of foreign words
In many cases, the foreign word is adapted to the language that adopts it, thereby modifying its spelling to improve its pronunciation . The foreign word “whiskey” , to mention one possibility, was adapted into Spanish as “güisqui” .
It is important to keep in mind that, beyond adaptation, it is common to end up choosing foreignism. Returning to the previous example, in various nations it is very infrequent to write “whiskey” , since the English form ( “whisky” ) continues to be chosen. This is also recorded with “quorum” ( “quorum” ), to highlight another example.
Communication challenges
The use of foreign words presents a series of challenges for communication that we are generally not prepared to overcome . The first and most obvious is the pronunciation. We are talking about words that come from languages that are very different from each other and from ours, which in some cases are based on different writing systems and which have sounds that are impossible to reproduce with our alphabet .
In this framework we must briefly define the concept of phoneme : it is the minimum unit of sound that we can articulate when speaking a certain language. Spanish has 24 phonemes, while English, for example, has 45. However, this data - which in itself shows us that English phonetics requires a greater effort than Spanish - is not enough to compare both languages, since Combinations between phonemes can give much more overwhelming numbers .
Writing also presents a challenge when we choose to use a foreign word. If it is a word belonging to a language with our same alphabet, such as English, unless we are familiar with its spelling rules, we can make errors of varying severity. But if the term comes from Russian or Japanese, we are forced to accept a transliteration, which makes the situation more absurd, since in that instance it is no longer a borrowed term per se.
Sushi is a foreignism, if it is understood as the attachment to a foreign dish.
Attachment to foreign customs
A foreignism is also an exaggerated attachment or devotion to a foreign custom . This is another meaning that the RAE dictionary offers us. It can be said, in this framework, that sushi is a foreign word from the Asian continent that has been imposed in different Latin American nations. Another cultural foreignness is the celebration of Halloween or Halloween in non-Anglo-Saxon regions.
At this point we also fall into the use of the other meaning of foreignness, since in most cases we are forced to write or pronounce words from other languages, which generates the different types of challenges mentioned above and, therefore Therefore, they impoverish our communication . However, appreciating foreign dishes or celebrations is not something negative in itself; On the contrary, it may be an opportunity to broaden our horizons and break down the cultural barriers that supposedly separate us from other nations.