The barbarisms are vices of language consisting pronounce or misspell certain words or use improper words, believing they have some meaning, when in fact its meaning is another. For example: naides, guevo, you were.
The Spanish language (like all the others) has a series of resources so that communication, either orally or in writing , is effective, which in part depends on the receiver correctly understanding or decoding the messages.
Most people in school acquire the basic lexical and normative knowledge that governs their language and manage to build words and sentences by speaking and writing appropriately.
Examples of barbarisms
Here are some very common barbarisms as an example, with the corresponding clarification of what is the correct word:
- ‘You bought ‘ for you bought.
- ‘Guevo’ per egg
- ‘Inauguration’ by inauguration
- ‘Nadies’ by no one
- ‘Picsa’ for pizza
- ‘Custión’ by question
- ‘Interperie’ by intemperie
- ‘You went’ by you went
- ‘ Both two ‘ for both
- ‘Jrito’ for fried
- ‘ What ‘s done ‘ so he threw (she told him to leave)
- ‘Hebrew’ by Israeli (born in Israel)
- ‘Pour’ for pouring
- ‘Hindu’ for Indian (born in India)
- ‘Stumble’ for stumbling
- ‘Addition’ by addiction
- ‘ Except ‘ for except
- He is ‘layman’ in the matter (it means that he is not an expert in that subject, but it is usually used when he wants to say otherwise)
- ‘Libido’ by libido
- ‘There were’ for there was
Characteristics of the barbarisms
The concept of barbarism usually has a pejorative nuance because, if we look at its etymology, the barbaric has to do with the violent, the rustic or the careless, and conveys the idea that barbarism will be used by those included in the sociocultural strata rather low, not endowed with idiomatic competence to identify the correct paths of language.
However, in many cases barbarisms do no more than follow the general rules of language and apply them to cases where it is not arbitrarily necessary to do so, so confusion is the most frequent outcome.
It is no coincidence that the barbarisms are:
- Typical mistakes of children . For example: I trompecé (instead of I stumbled )
- Wrong conjugations of verbs . For example: I sabo (instead of I know) or Do not fall (rather than not you fall )
- Poorly constructed plurals. For example: My feet hurt (instead of My feet hurt )
- Certain adjectives gentilicios . In these cases, there is an additional problem, which is that the same proper name of locality in its shortened version (for example: Santiago ) can refer to different cities ( S. del Estero, S. de Chile, S. de Compostela ), and these assume different names: santiagueño, santiaguino and santiaguense , respectively.
Other barbarisms
The other idea of barbarism has more to do with the essence of the term and corresponds to those words that are used erroneously due to the simple ignorance of its correct writing, pronunciation or meaning.
It is clear that the most immediate origin of these barbarisms is the intergenerational transmission of these mispronounced or misused words, which will later be repeated with the same error.
In some cases, barbarisms are more related to the typical pronunciations of a certain region and the influence of other languages in multicultural societies, which adds one more factor in determining the typical error.
