If my grandmother were to see the present day, she would probably say: «Do you see how I was right every time I said that we had “almóndigas” for dinner?». And it is true. After many years of correcting our grandmothers, we have to prove them right. It is right to say “almóndigas” instead of “albóndigas” when referring to meat balls.
It is true that the Real Academia de la Lengua (RAE), or the Spanish Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, which is the institution that «cleans, fixes, and gives splendour» to the Spanish, accepted terms like the aforementioned because its use among the Spanish population is greatly widespread.
The same happens with other words such as “murciégalo” instead of “murciélago” (bat). They are part of the latest linguistic update in which some words were removed while some foreign words were included.
Aside from the controversy among Hispanic speakers that is always created in this type of openness towards spoken language, the problem arise with the students of Spanish, who addition to having to deal with the richness of our language vocabulary, they have to memorize the correct way if they do not want to go too far as «colegas», term which means «companion” or “friend» but it is also used to loosen the language rules and to imply a more colloquial level of the use of the language.
Precisely, now is when the Spanish is a most sought-after language worldwide: we are 400 million speakers at the current time.
Regarding the double meanings in the Spanish language, we will talk about it in another post. Now, we simply want to encourage you to know the culture and the richness of this language.
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