Adding New Words

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Josue Matos. I’m in Bristol.

Bristol, Connecticut.

Bristol, Maine.

Bristol.

Bristol, Virginia.

Bristol, Florida.

Bristol, Florida.

Gotcha. Welcome to the show.

So many Bristol.

You said Josue?

Yes, Josue.

Josue, well, welcome. How can we help?

This question arose from a debate while playing an online video game, Lord of the Rings Online.

Yeah.

And we were talking about how words are acquired.

And basically the guy was saying, you know, all languages, it’s good to adapt new languages simply from use, and that’s it.

And you just have to use a word enough and it’ll happen.

But the impression he was giving that all languages acquire new words the same way and that it’s a fairly quick thing.

It only takes maybe a few months of using the word over and over again to get enough people, it’ll happen.

And I was debating the opposite side, not the opposite side, but that not all languages are that way, but rather that English is kind of not unique, but it’s an author’s language.

You know, it was kind of almost designed to be inventive, whereas other languages, like Spanish, it’s a little bit slower.

There’s, like, a protocol, and there’s, like, an academy that kind of decides what official words are.

I guess, I don’t know if you can pull an abstracted question out of that, but do all languages acquire new words the same way?

No, they don’t, but yes, they do.

And I know that’s a ridiculous answer.

I think the yes part of that is all of the same mechanisms are at play in every language, but the way that the language is transmitted is completely variable.

It’s just accidents of history, accidents of population, accidents of geography.

So the change is going to be really different.

English is a kind of weird case.

There are only a couple other languages that are as much of a mutt as English is.

That gives it some strength.

It also gives it some weaknesses because it is so abundant with all these loan words.

But generally we’re talking about changes in lexicon that happen either through new invention or that happen through close contact with other languages.

We are talking about changes in syntax and structure that happen because of a variety of different fads and trends and maybe changes in the way we learn or the way that we teach.

And also we’re talking about changes in pronunciation that just happen through, again, these same kind of trend lines where one person who has a large community of people who pay attention to them does something and other people imitate it either on a large or a small scale.

And all of these things happen at varying rates, varying degrees, some a lot, some not at all, on a word-by-word basis or a paragraph-by-paragraph basis and on a language-by-language basis.

I know this sounds like a big, vague, muddled mess, but think about all the people that you know.

We were all born from a mother.

But from there, each one of us takes our own path.

And languages and words tend to be the same thing.

We each have a different life with different influences and different destinations and some short, some long.

One thing that, you know, because part of the debate came up because I find English is almost like designed for you to make up words.

If, you know, if I can’t think of how to, you know, how to describe this thing, I can make up a word.

And the people who speak English with me, most of them will be able to figure out what I’m trying to say based on, like, the mechanics that I use.

Whereas in Spanish, when I do that, I get in trouble all the time.

I don’t have a clue what I’m saying.

What do I mean?

Because I’m trying to use the same mechanic.

Yeah, because I’m trying to use it.

You know, I do this with my wife.

My wife is Colombian, and she laughs at me all the time because I’ll invent the word, basically, using Spanish, you know, grammar rules.

You know, I’m trying to think of one and blanking out.

But, yeah, I don’t know.

It doesn’t work the same.

English does have a lot of flexibility.

The morphological possibilities are immense with English, which is part of the thing that makes it difficult for learners.

It does happen in Spanish, though.

You can certainly put a prefix in front of a word with no problem, and nobody would blink an eye at it, right?

What variety of Spanish do you speak, Josue?

I’m Cuban.

Cuban, okay.

My family’s Cuban.

I was born in New York, but I still call myself Cuban.

My wife is Colombian, however.

They have a tendency to be a little bit more formal with their language than Cubans are.

Certainly with their pronunciation.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Those two varieties of Spanish are very different.

And did you live in New York long enough to pick up some of the New York Spanishisms, some of the weird regionalisms that happened there because of the mix of the Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans?

No, no.

I picked up a lot of the Mexican and Mexican-American things because when I was four, we moved to Texas.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Yeah, my dad’s a Baptist minister, so we moved around a bit.

Speaking of, you’ve got a nice Mutt Spanish dialect, then, I bet, right?

Yes, actually, I do.

When I start speaking Spanish, no one can identify where I’m from.

That’s awesome.

I’ll get Puerto Rican.

I’ll get Venezuelan.

I’ll even get Chilean sometimes.

They’ll never think Cuban.

I don’t speak loud enough.

I’ll be confused with Cubans.

But to go back to kind of the underlying question is every language does allow this invention and this kind of change.

But there is a culture of permissiveness around some languages and inside culture.

Like, for example, in academia in the United States, they’re going to be far more restrictive about coining new words than you would find, say, in advertising in the United States.

So it’s very dependent upon your milieu.

And the same for Spanish.

My Colombian Spanish-speaking friends all believe that they speak the best Spanish in all of Latin America.

Right.

Which may or may not be true.

But that really controls the way that they’re likely to accept inventiveness, I believe.

Whereas my Puerto Rican friends are really used to just borrowing English words right and left and have no problem with putting a Spanish suffix on an English word and just making it work.

Right. And see, I always thought it was a thing about Spanish itself that, you know, a lot of times you end up having to borrow English words because you can’t find a Spanish word for it.

Well, the same thing happens in English, though.

I mean, I always said that English is, you know, if all the languages had a party, English was the one that would be going around asking, you know, are you going to eat that? Can I have that last bit of parsley off your plate?

And you make a good point about Spanish having the academy that.

But who listens to the Academy Royale?

Well, it exists.

It exists, yeah.

It exists.

But it’s a weird aberration that’s mostly ignored, just like the French Academy is mostly ignored.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, Josue, thank you so much for calling.

Well, thank you.

Thank you very much for receiving my call.

It’s been kind of fun.

It’s been really fun.

Thanks, Josue.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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