Examples of barbarisms
Here are some very common barbarisms by way of example, with the corresponding clarification of what is the correct word:
- ‘You bought ‘ for you bought.
- ‘Guevo’ by egg
- ‘Inauguration’ by inauguration
- ‘Nadies’ by anyone
- ‘Picsa’ for pizza
- ‘Custion’ per issue
- ‘Interperie’ outdoors
- ‘You were’ because you went
- ‘ Both two ‘ for both
- ‘Jrito’ by fried
- ‘ He did it ‘ because he threw it out (he told him to leave)
- ‘Hebrew’ by Israeli (born in Israel)
- ‘Pour’ by pouring
- ‘Hindu’ by Indian (born in India)
- ‘Trumpet’ for tripping
- ‘Addition’ by addiction
- ‘ Except ‘ for except
- He is ‘lego’ in the matter (it means that he is not an expert in that subject, but is usually used when he wants to say the opposite)
- ‘Libido’ by libido
- ‘There were’ for there
Characteristics of barbarisms
The concept of barbarism usually has a pejorative nuance because, if we pay attention to its etymology, the barbarian has to do with the violent, the rustic or the neglected, and conveys the idea that barbarism will be used by those people included in the socio-cultural strata rather low, not endowed with language proficiency to identify the correct paths of language.
However, in many cases barbarisms do nothing more than follow the general rules of language and apply them to cases where arbitrarily it is not appropriate to do so, so that confusion is the most frequent outcome.
It is no accident that the barbarisms are:
- Typical mistakes of children . For example: I stumbled (instead of I tripped )
- Wrong verb conjugations . 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 locality name 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 gentilicios: 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 misused by the simple ignorance of their 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 then be repeated with the same error.
In some cases, barbarisms are more linked to the typical pronunciations of a certain region and the influence of other languages in multicultural societies, which adds one more factor in the determination of the typical error.