Two years ago, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) presented the latest update of its dictionary. The number of new words is mind-blowing — no less than 4,074 have been added. The dictionary now contains more than 94,000 entries. Is this good news for those of you learning Spanish? I'm not sure. But now you can confidently use words like "barista". It was about time! We needed that word. Besides, who doesn't have a barista as a relative or friend? Bars are such great places for conversation. But let's move on to another one. Oh, yeah, this one is really unexpected: "sulky." What the hell is that? Sounds like a Japanese sauce! Or how about "tabulé", which rhymes with crème brûlée, even though it has as much to do with dessert as a lightbulb does with fluff.
What else have we got? Hold on to your hats: "umami" and "wasabi" are now officially Spanish words. Shocking right? I can hardly hold back my tears of joy — I won't need to italicize them anymore. But wait, here's something even more surprising: "espóiler." We may hate spoilers, but we sure love that word.
So, from now on, you can write something like, "El sulky de mi cuñado es barista y siempre me hace espóiler cuando voy a ver al Real Madrid a su bar. Aunque hace un wasabi umami riquísimo"* without batting an eye. Another thing is that we understand you.
I guess that the RAE has come to the conclusion that they couldn't stem the tide of new words. That must be why.
*My sulky of a brother-in-law is a barista and always spoils things for me when I go watch a Real Madrid football game at his bar. He makes a delicious umami wasabi though.
This is so interesting! I love dictionaries. What can tabulé mean if it's not about cooking? 😲 And how do spoilers work in a football game? 😲
Hi, @Lokus! My mistake, "tabulé" is a salad 😅 Thanks for pointing that out! I'll rewrite that part.
As for the "spoiler," imagine you're a total football fan and your favorite team is playing in the World Cup final that day. You're dying to watch the match, but you can't because you have to work, and to top it all off, your boss hates sports. The last thing you want is for someone at the office, someone who's been following the game on the sly, to accidentally tell you who won. Football nuts really hate that. Thanks for your comment!
Oh, I see what you mean! Somehow, this kind of spoiler puts people off watching the match much more than plot spoilers do for moviegoers. But good luck with trying to protect yourself from knowing who won the World Cup final for 24 hours as a football fan 😅 I imagine you'd have to put all your devices on plane mode, so before long your friends would report you as a missing person 🤭
Keeping yourself oblivious to an important match in Spain is almost impossible. The noise of fans shouting “goool!” in unison comes through closed windows and brick walls. This passion is insane.😅