Maria Alonso |
Madrid (EFE).- The linguistic diversity of Spanish has meant that, in some regions such as Andalusia or Murcia and in many rural areas, its inhabitants think that they speak badly, but, according to different linguists in the book “As they say in my town”, neither in the south nor in the towns is the language worse than in the center or in the big cities.
As one of the co-authors of the book, the linguist Beatriz Martín, explains in an interview with EFE, there is no basis for saying that the people who live in these areas do not speak as correctly as those who express themselves by adapting more to the norm.
“The norm is made by whoever has power, who has prestige, and, obviously, the closer you get to the norm, it seems that you speak better, and the further you go, it seems that you speak worse. But both are perfectly valid variants and only because of a subjective fact, someone has decided that this is the norm and not another”, Martín specifies.
The philologist points out that the stigma and discrimination suffered by these people is related to the fact that prestige and power are usually found “where the money is”, and these are normally found in big cities and in people “with higher level of studies.
Andalusia and Murcia, regions with the greatest linguistic discredit
According to Martín, it is always said that in Andalusia and Murcia people speak worse than in other communities in Spain.
The reason for this greater stigma may be, as the philologist indicates, because the presence of certain linguistic phenomena is more visible, such as, for example, the loss of the intervocalic d and a greater relaxation in pronunciation, but the economic factor also influences .
“This stigma has to do with the fact that people tend to think that the southern zone is poorer. In the end, prestige is given by wealth and power, and the further away you are from them, it is understood that you are less prestigious”, comments the linguist.
The worst seen ways of speaking
The loss of d, saying words like “so” or the use of the pronoun “se” in expressions like “if you love me, go away”, are some of the traits that can lead one to think that whoever uses them speaks worse.
In “Como dicen en mi pueblo”, linguists such as Ana Estrada, Carlota de Benito or Andrés Enrique also explain particularities such as why they say “asín”, what the loss of the intervocalic d has meant, and answer questions about whether it is true or not. not that “if I wanted to, I would do it” is a “very Basque thing”.
In addition, they analyze expressions such as the famous “if you love me, go away”, which Lola Flores from Jerez uttered at her daughter’s wedding, and they affirm why there is no need to worry about being a leísta, laísta or loísta.
Why does “pringao” sound better than “pringado” or “estado” than “estao”?
Another of the variants included in the book is why “pringao” sounds better than “pringado”, but, on the contrary, “estado” sounds better than “estao”.
“The form ‘pringado’ is the standard without the loss of the d and would be more formal, but ‘pringado’ is not a word that you use in a formal setting, you say it informally. For this reason, saying loser sounds very strange to us”, clarifies the author.
According to Martín, the opposite case occurs with the word “state”, since it is almost always used in a formal context, so that, if the president of the Government said, “The state of the nation”, it would sound strange.
“If you are in a formal setting, you try to use the d because of the norm, which says that it is not lost, and then you try to use it in formal cases like ‘estado’, but not in ‘pringao’, because it is not a word that go to listen to people giving a speech”, specifies the linguist.
How to respond to those who say that someone speaks badly
As Martín points out, although no one speaks “better” or “worse”, rather there are only ways that are closer to the norm than others, there are people who feel judged and underestimate their way of speaking.
The linguist recounts that in the study from which the book is based -the Oral and Sound Corpus of Rural Spanish, a project in which researchers and students have traveled through Spain to analyze the way people speak-, when they spoke with the neighbours, They told them that it would be better if they spoke to the mayor or the priest, because they would express themselves “better” than they did.
Most of the people consulted by EFE – among them Andalusians, Murcians and inhabitants of towns in the interior of Extremadura – state that they believe that there are people who speak better than them and some admit to having felt offended and discriminated against because of their accent.
However, as the philologist explains, it is possible to “dismantle” those who manifest this stigma. “Everyone speaks well. Each person has their way of speaking, but all of them are valid. The person who speaks differently because they have had less studies or because they do not live in a city is not worse”, concludes Martín.