The new word of the day…

Whenever I hear someone talk about making English the “official” language of the United States (or some subdivision thereof), my first question is always what authority will decide which words are, and aren’t English?  There’s nothing comparable to the Academia Real, which since 1714 has been, for better or worse, setting the rules for the Spanish language.

In 1951, under the sponsorship of the Mexican government, a separate Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española was created to unify the separate national academies of the Spanish-speaking world — including the United States.  For a few years in the 1950s, the Royal Academy and the Association were separate, but since 1956, the Association and the Academy have collaborated in producing the Diccionario de la lengua española — which, while not perfect and sometimes slow to adopt neologisms — at least gives a reference to what is, and what is not, Spanish.

Spanish had good verbs for being taken by gangsters or pirates (sequestrar or plagiar), and the tragedies of the 1960s and 70s introduced the word for being taken against one’s will by the government (disaparacer) … but nothing in Spanish to talk about being whisked off to Alpha Centari.  How Inexplicata, the Journal of Hispanic Ufology, was able to function without such a word is a mystery.  Perhaps an even bigger mystery than those seemingly common enough in Latin America events which Inexplicata has to write about … without, until now, a word to describe them.

So, they have more reason to cheer the introduction of “abducir” than anyone.

…One can be abducted by an “alleged extraterrestrial creature” or an excellent writer may “abduct readers with his/her novels.”

Last decade, controversy swept across Spanish ufological circles when the DRAE included the word “ufología” (ufology) into its hallowed pages, defining it as “Simulacro de investigación científica basado en la creencia de que ciertos objetos voladores no identificados son naves espaciales de procedencia extraterrestre” that is to say, “A pretense of scientific investigation based on the belief that certain unidentified flying objects are spaceships of extraterrestrial origin.”

So we welcome “abducir” to the pages of the Royal Academy’s dictionary with a glass of the finest intoxicant from Zeta Reticuli. ¡Salud!