Foreign words are those words borrowed from other cultures that in most cases become normalized in daily use, but that contemplate important aspects when using them, especially when writing them, and that some people are unaware of.
Once we wrote in this space that all foreign words are written in quotation marks or in italics to show that this spelling or word is not original to ours. But… what happens with the foreign words that end up adapting to Spanish? Well, the grammatical rules that concern us must be applied to those.
This is how the Royal Academy of Language expresses it, when it explains that words of foreign origin already incorporated into Spanish or fully adapted to their pronunciation and writing, including proper names, must be subject to the accentuation rules of our language.
Now, to make it clearer, we are going to cite some examples of some foreign words and their adaptation to Spanish. It happens with baseball, from the English “baseball”; bidé, from the French “bidet”; Alzheimer’s, from the last name of the German doctor who investigated the disease; charter, from the Anglicism “charter” to refer to organized flight.
Keep in mind that the adaptations or alternatives to Spanish of foreign words will vary and that depends on the culture or country. We can cite, for example, that the English form sandwich is common, as well as its adaptations, some variants not yet approved by the Academy, such as the case of sandwich (in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela); sanguche or sandwich (in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Venezuela), among other variations.
Transcriptions of words from languages that use non-Latin alphabets, including proper names, are considered adaptations and must therefore follow the rules of accentuation, as is the case in Taiwan.
Spanish is broad and there are alternative words and expressions to expressions that we continue to use due to the influence of a region. We could cite the following cases: decal, instead of the Anglicism “sticker”; invoice or receipt, instead of the English voice “voucher”; flyer, instead of “flyer”, of English origin.
We are going to use the Spanish term tray inbox, instead of the English word “inbox”; fanatic or fanatic, instead of “fan”; follower, better than “follower”.
Definitely, we must love our culture and apply it in the use of our language is to validate that love for what is ours, regardless of the fact that knowledge is an important addition.
Thanks for reading me!
