From “siesta” to “reggaetón”: there are almost 2,000 Spanish words in the largest English dictionary
The new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the maximum reference for its language, contains 1,904 terms of Spanish origin. Among them are “neighborhood”, “party”, “guerrilla”, “macho” and “galactic”.
‘Machirulo’, ‘perreo’, and ‘non-binary’, among the words that enter the RAE dictionary
In total there are 1,904 words of Spanish origin in the OED, “after the inclusion in the last update of the dictionary, in September, of ‘frontenis’”, explains Danica Salazar, of Filipino origin and one of the editors of the English Bible of the language. “The OED is updated four times a year and there is at least one word of Spanish origin in almost each of these updates. In 2023, anticucho (a type of skewer of Peruvian origin) has been incorporated in March, chiminea and derecho in June, and frontenis in September,” explains Salazar.
“It’s a chiminea, not a chimney. The form adopted in English is a variant used in Argentina and Colombia,” says the lexicographer.
“Words travel”
The editor of the OED and Javier Muñoz-Basols, honorary professor-researcher at the University of Oxford, are the co-authors of a study, unique in its kind, called “Lexical crosslinguistic influence”, on the reciprocal contact between Spanish and English.
Spanish has eight main varieties, which are Castilian, Andalusian and Canarian, in Spain, Caribbean, Mexican-Central American, Andean, Southern and Chilean, in America. “Of these eight dialect areas, Mexican-Central American Spanish is the one with the greatest historical contact with English,” says Muñoz-Basols.
But also in a reciprocal way, since there are Mexican words such as fajita, burrito and other gastronomic vocabulary, especially in the United States, that are used on a daily basis, points out the Spanish researcher. “Let’s say that words travel as if they were merchandise or currency,” he adds.
Gastronomy is an effective means of transportation for words in Spanish (Illustrative image Infobae)
Gastronomy is an effective means of transportation for words in Spanish (Illustrative image Infobae)
In those 1,904 words, terms like nothing appear, despite the fact that the equivalent “nothing” exists in English. “It is one of the words that has surprised me the most to appear. With two equal vowels, and two syllables that are very easy to articulate. There are testimonies of its use in English-speaking countries since 1867. It is a very sonorous word, which adds additional expressiveness,” says Muñoz-Basols.
In his opinion, English – which does not have a language academy like Spanish and the Oxford dictionary is its maximum reference – is more receptive to importing words from other languages. “It is a borrowing language. The Oxford dictionary contains more than 500,000 words, while that of the Spanish language will be around almost 93,000. This does not mean that it has less, but English does not eliminate words,” he explains.
In Spanish “there is linguistic protectionism that has prevented the incorporation of terms. The dictionary of the Spanish language is normative, while in the United Kingdom, the OED is a repository of the language, a dictionary of use and history at the same time,” he underlines.
Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). In the English language, there is no equivalent institution (Photo: EFE/ Orlando Barría)
Far from French
Spanish is not the language that exports the most words to English. French, and even German, are far ahead, as indicated in the Oxford dictionary itself. German currently provides 3,944 words, while French has 24,821, due to historical linguistic contact and topics such as fashion or cooking. Italian also has more, with 2,293, while Dutch contributes 1,611 and Portuguese 446, lists the Aragonese professor, who is now working on the influence of English on Spanish with a scholarship at the University of Seville.
In this dynamic recipient of the Oxford dictionary, its editors work with thousands of words each year. In the last update of the OED published in September 2023, more than 1,000 new entries were included, details Danica Salazar.
“The candidates go through an advisory process, where the OED editors use various research sources to see if there is sufficient evidence of their use,” comments the editor, emphasizing that although some words are recent, they are quickly incorporated due to their “enormous Social impact”.
