MADRID, 16 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The philologist Dolores Corbella, who has entered the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) this Sunday, March 16, has questioned whether “it is really worth continuing the debate” regarding putting an accent on the adverb ‘solo’. “There are much more important things than an accent,” she pointed out in an interview with Europa Press prior to her admission.
Corbella, who has explained that as a philologist and linguist her position on the matter is “very clear” -as has been the norm-, believes it is unnecessary to generate such a long debate on the matter. “Are we going to mess with the kids now so they know how a word is accented or not? It’s simple: if we want to use it, we use it and if not, no, perfectly”, she has remarked.
“The language tries to economize in every way and the debate is something that was resolved in 2010. Now it has simply been specified that, if someone wants to continue using the ‘solo’, then there is no problem”, he has settled.
Corbella (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1959) has read his speech ‘A sea of ??words’ to occupy the ‘d’ chair of the learned house and has been welcomed on behalf of the corporation by academic Pedro Álvarez de Miranda. The new academic considers this income “a triple recognition”.
“First, as a Canarian, because it is a reaffirmation of pan-Hispanism; second, as a lexicographer, because the research work that I have been doing for 30 years is recognized; and third, as a woman.” “I hope that at some point the fact of being a woman will not be the news when you enter, but precisely the fact of the investigation or the baggage that you carry behind you, but references are still needed,” she remarked.
In her speech, the philologist has influenced her work on the analysis of the dialectal lexicon, specifically in the Canary Islands. “For the Canaries, the language and words have united us both to the Peninsula and to America and thus we have overcome the concept of island: we are like a bridge between the peninsular and the American and words have helped to create a union”, he remarked she.
After several years of work around the collection and analysis of the Canarian lexicon, the philologist acknowledges that there are “many” words at risk of extinction. “Especially in the lexicon of agriculture or the maritime lexicon, where all that terminology that was used tends to disappear due to the replacement of machines: it is logical, because society is changing,” she pointed out.
Corbella also rejects any type of “discrimination” due to the accent in speech. “I think that it is a wealth of society: from a Cuban, to a Colombian, going through the Canarian, the Andalusian or the Extremaduran, we all speak the same language with their own varieties and that is what must be accepted,” he remarked. .
Professor of Romance Philology at the University of La Laguna, regrets that reading is being “abandoned” among the students of the new generations. “Many times the same students do not write well, you have to have a lot of influence on that and then also on the contents, because sometimes they believe that these are superfluous. Quite the contrary: a philological training and a strong classical discipline is sometimes necessary to simply be able to reading a math problem”, he concluded.
The Plenary of the Royal Spanish Academy elected Dolores Corbella as an academic in the session of February 17, 2022. Her candidacy was presented by the academics Emilio Lledó, José Antonio Pascual and Carme Riera. Corbella has come to take possession of the ‘d’ chair, vacant since the death of Francisco Rodríguez Adrados on July 21, 2020.
