Words

In the beginning it was the verb, you know; It was by naming things that they emerged from the primordial whirlpool of chaos and darkness. Words shape the world, but the world also influences them. Alphonse Bertillon, famous French policeman and criminologist of the 19th century, said that you only see what you look at and you only look at what you are prepared to see, a phrase that seems masterful to me and that teaches us that reality, that everyone It seems to us to be an indisputable and absolute value; it is nothing more than a subjective product conditioned by circumstances. And since reality is manifested through words, we can say that only what you look at and what you are prepared to see is named. Hence the Saamis, a people who live in Lapland, have more than 60 terms to define snow in its various states, and as many to refer to reindeer, differentiating them by their peculiarities. Natural: the Saami have depended on both things for their survival, so they have had to observe them with special intensity and care.

I have said many times that the tongue is something organic, that it is like the skin of a society, and that it gains weight, loses weight or becomes scarred depending on the alterations of the body it covers. Substantial changes in language, in short, follow or accompany social changes. But of course, the skin, which in humans is the largest organ, has many corners. There are groups of individuals who invent their own language as a form of identification and reaffirmation; Sometimes they are minority and idiotic innovations that are quickly lost, like those little skins on your fingers that you tear off when you are nervous. When I read Mary Tribune's big moment, the wonderful novel by Juan García Hortelano published in 1972, I was surprised to find characters who said “incinerate the cylinder” instead of “light me the cigarette.” And shortly after, an article came out in the press talking about these forms of expression among the posh people of Madrid, although I have never heard anyone say that. What's more, it may even have been an invention of Hortelano. In any case, such nonsense did not prosper (by the way, another example of the vitality of the language: now posh people are called cayetans).

Yesterday, at a meal with friends, we spent a good time talking about the new expressions that younger people are using. Then I continued digging on my own and have gathered a handful. PEC is the most striking: it comes from “by the ass”, and it means that you love something. “The series of The Bear I put it in PEC”, you would say, for example. Or, which is very common, you shorten it and leave it at the mere PEC; Let's say someone proposes a plan that excites you and then you answer: “Oh, PEC, PEC”, which can give you a certain resemblance to the Roadrunner. The origin of the acronym is not known, but perhaps it is related to that attraction to eschatology that is usually experienced in childhood and early adolescence.

An interesting expression is “serving pussy” or “serving pussy.” Apparently it is a direct translation from English serving cunt and comes from the LGTBIQ+ environment, but here it is used in a general and positive way to talk about women who express their worth and reaffirm feminine strength: “She arrived serving pussy.” Brutal, but iconoclastic and eloquent. Well, there are many more. I will end with a very used one: “And the cheese”, which comes from “And the one that supports”. It came from a soap opera (others say it is from a song used in a reality Mexican). It means that you don't give a damn what people think about you, that you don't plan to change and that others can just put up with it.

But the most curious thing is that I just got on the internet and discovered that we are experiencing a mini-explosion of media attention on the subject. It started just a month ago and continues today: small articles in The vanguard either Infobae, references on television… This is how the language works, with sudden eruptions; It has a rare vitality, a parallel existence. According to him he said in 2010 to Public the linguist and academic of the RAE José Antonio Pascual, “in a generation, the lexicon and the use of language usually change by up to 5%.” The tongue is a living bug, I have already said it. And, amid so many terrifying events that we are experiencing, I am happy and even moved that the words can be news.

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