Joy of Spanish
A Mexican by Any Other Name
For those who live “connected” to the wide world of cybernetic activities and paraphernalia, the spat over synonyms included in Microsoft’s premium word processor in Spanish a few years back probably is no longer important, or never was. But for those of you who still live outside the electronic loop and feel strongly about language, let me remind you of what happened.
In Spain, where people tend to be — on the whole — less docile than in Mexico, there was a tremendous uproar over certain synonyms that appear in Word’s word-processing dictionary, prepared by Microsoft Corporation. These words include mexicano, indio, mestizo, oriental, and even andaluz. The uproar is more than justified because the synonyms given for these words are so ridiculous or blatantly racist that one has to think hard to figure out how they got into the dictionary in the first place.
For example, synonyms for mexicano in the dictionary are azteca, charro, basto, vulgar, chillón, ridículo (aztec, cowboy, uncultured, vulgar, whining [or loud], ridiculous). Indians, indios, are characterized as salvajes, antropófagos and primitivos (savages, cannibals, and primitives). Mestizos, on the other hand, are híbridos, cruzados, mezclados, and bastardos (hybrids, cross-breeds, mixed, and bastards). The list can go on and on. But what happened? Who does this sort of thing? Is it anything new? Is there any possible excuse?
The art of compiling dictionaries goes back to the late 15th century. As a matter of fact, the first dictionary as we know them today was one of the Spanish language which appeared the same year Columbus sailed in search of the Indies, 1492; the same year the Jews were banished from all of Spain. This last event is not necessarily unrelated to the other two.
Dictionaries, whether in Spanish, English, or Swahili, are tricky endeavors. The traditional lexicographical attitude was that dictionaries should somehow tell us what is correct” and “incorrect” usage. In other words, the traditionalists held that dictionaries should establish a norm, that they should regulate the way we speak and write. Modern lexicographers, on the other hand, hold that dictionaries should merely reflect actual usage, when this usage is widespread enough, and when it has been around long enough to guarantee that it won’t disappear overnight. The rest is a matter of elaborating careful definitions, pronunciations, etymologies, etc.
The former school of lexicography leads to stodgy dictionaries that aren’t extremely useful to writers and readers of modern literature, newspapers, or whatever. The words that appear there will always be polite, unoffensive, and perhaps even antiquated. The latter school will include slang, so-called “swear words,” and a whole host of sayings that in days of yore were considered colloquial at best and vulgar at worst. But that’s the way people use them, is the rationale behind these dictionaries, and a good rationale it is. Most swear words, for example, have been around for centuries, and it’s about time they found their way into a decent dictionary. Even “incorrect” usage, if widespread enough, should be included as, well, incorrect usage. Like “ain’t.” You may remember the old addage: “Ain’t ain’t in the dictionary, because ain’t ain’t a word!” Well, it certainly is in the dictionary now, and the English language is no worse for the wear.
So it would seem that the old-style dictionaries would be “politcally correct” while the modern temples of lexicography would be smattered with all sorts of offensive materials, like those that appear in Microsoft’s dictionary of online synonyms. Yet this is not the case, because a modern dictionary will always indicate when a usage is meant to be derogatory or insulting. If, for example, a dictionary includes “liar” as a synonym for “Indian,” it would be obligated to indicate that this is derogatory usage. If under the word “Jew” we find the phrase “to Jew down,” we should find something like the following: “…to bargain sharply with; beat down in price,” preceded by the word “Offensive,” as indeed it does appear in the Random House Unabridged Electronic (and regular paper) Dictionary.
There are historical reasons these words and phrases have offensive overtones, and these overtones can not be ignored in a good dictionary. The problems begin when they are included with no indication as to the shades of meaning involved. The old “stodgy” dictionaries were often at fault in this sense: they didn’t bother to question the often racist attitudes of their compilers. Racism was natural and, hey, who cares if it doesn’t hurt me or my feelings?I do not know exactly how Microsoft got into the mess a few years back, but I can take a guess: they probably cut a lot of corners trying to save a bundle of moolah (slang for “money”). Computer people tend to be lazy when it comes to language (they’re just the opposite when it comes to programming). Lazy, lazy, lazy. Out of mental sloth they murder the English, Spanish or whatever language they happen to come into contact with, over and over again, every time they get their hands on it. I’m not talking about new usage but confusing usage; words and phrases that sound “really complicated” but that could be very well put much more simply. It takes time and effort to say (and write) things in such a way that people may readily understand them.
So what happened? Microsoft probably paid somebody to compile lists of synonyms gleaned from here and there, and then simply stuck them in their thesaurus without ever looking back. Cheap, easy… and disastrous. Language is humanity’s most delicate invention. And it should never be taken lightly, not even by computer people. I should point out in all fairness that dictionaries have come a long way in vindicating their honor in regard to their traditional racism. Even the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, notorious for its racisim and really dumb definitions, has corrected much of what made it the laughingstock of lexicography (although it still has miles to go before it sleeps, or can be considered a truly modern dictionary of Spanish usage). But word processor dictionaries are a whole ’nother story, because they want to economize as much as possible, especially on space: they’d much rather use it on fancy icons and doo-dads (informal, “a decorative embellishment”). Language be damned. But people still do care about language, as can be gathered from the fuss.
To Microsoft’s credit, most of these synonym problems have been corrected, but its dictionary is still woefully limited. And forget about using its spell-checker in Spanish. It just doesn’t get it. Not only does it fail to discern grammatical sense, therefore allowing words to be spelled without accents when they should have them (“Juan canto ayer” instead of “Juan cantó ayer”), but it will insist that misspelled words are correctly spelled, and that correctly spelled words are misspelled.
This is bad news for English speakers who need to write in Spanish. But you have it no worse than I did, or indeed you have it a lot better. When I learned Spanish, way back when, there were no computers. I had to use real dictionaries and guides to conjugation. But maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
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