Anyone understands that languages are not something static, much less, something inert. Language is alive, grows, evolves and adapts to the communication needs that people create as our world goes forward (or backwards), hence, one should consider language to belongs to all the speakers who use it to express themselves through it.
The problem comes when evolution occurs not because our culture or society incorporates new concepts into human life, in many cases already existing, but hidden or censored, but when an incorrect word in its origin expands through the linguistic community, and doubts begin to arise such as: Is it said this way or that? Destender isn't a verb? Tomorrow are we eating croquetas o cocretas?
It is common to find false legends about words that the Rae admits to be correct every year, this is the case of almóndigas. The truth is that it has not been admitted recently, but is present in the corpus of the academic dictionary since 1726. At present, we can find it as a vulgar word, therefore, although we find this entry in the linguistic corpus, the correct thing is to use the word albóndiga to refer to those meatballs so delicious and typical of our gastronomy.
Another curious case is that of the word cocretas, frankly, I do not know an "incorrect" word more widespread than this. We hear it on TV, with our acquaintances, most likely with some member of the family, but, nevertheless, there is no trace of it in the Academic Dictionary, and my question is why?
What is the criterion that academics follow to incorporate new words into the dictionary? In principle, the basic criterion for a word to be incorporated or recorded in the RAE Dictionary is its use, so should cocreta not be a word admitted as correct at present?
On the other hand, we can find some words that are frequently used in the colloquial sphere such as friki, referring to an extravagant, rare or obsessed person with a specific topic, or depressedas a colloquial adjective to refer to the character of a person or to the illness of depression. These words are not exempt from controversy, since some of them can result in their definition being somewhat discriminatory, as we will talk about muslamen, which the RAE defines as "a person's thighs. Especially those of women. ”
In conclusion, every time the Royal Academy has decided to incorporate a new word into its corpus, we find voices that express their opinion for or against the inclusion of these. As we said at the beginning of this article, language is alive and belongs to us, however, is this reason enough for us to be able to express an opinion on what should be admitted? Should we accept without question the rules that the academy establishes as correct? Today we want to leave this debate open to invite you to reflect on the words we use in our day to day, the correctness in our speech and most importantly, to put value on a language as extensive and extraordinary as ours.
