The Real Dictionary will give all the words that exist in use, the bad words as wellas any. The Real Grammar will be that which declares itself a nucleus of the spiritof the laws, with liberty to all to carry out the spirit of the laws, even by violatingthem, if necessary. . . . These States are rapidly supplying themselves with newwords, called for by new occasions, new facts, new politics, new combinations. Farplentier additions will be needed, and, of course, will be supplied. . . . Many of theslang words are our best; slang words among fighting men, gamblers, thieves, arepowerful words. . . . The appetite of the people of These States, in popular speechesand writings, is for unhemmed latitude, coarseness, directness, live epithets,expletives, words of opprobrium, resistance. This I understand because I have thetaste myself as large, as largely, as any one. I have pleasure in the use, on fitoccasions, of __ traitor, coward, liar, shyster, skulk, doughface, trickster, mean cuss,backslider, thief, impotent, lickspittle. . . . I like limber, lasting, fierce words. I likethem applied to myself __ and I like them in newspapers, courts, debates, Congress.Do you suppose the liberties and the brawn of These States have to do only withdelicate lady-words? with gloved gentleman words? Bad Presidents, bad judges, badclients, bad editors, owners of slaves, and the long ranks of Northern politicalsuckers (robbers, traitors, suborned), monopolists, infidels, . . . shaved persons,supplejacks, ecclesiastics, men not fond of women, women not fond of men, cry downthe use of strong, cutting, beautiful, rude words. To the manly instincts of the peoplethey will be forever welcome.

Walt Whitman, American poet, c. 1852

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TOPICS IN SPANISH LEXICAL DIALECTOLOGY: BACK TO SCHOOL / BACK AT THEOFFICE

Andre Moskowitz

Keywords: Spanish, regionalisms, terminology, dialectology, lexicography, sociolinguistics, schooland office supplies.

Abstract: This paper contains information on the words used in different varieties of Spanish forcertain school and office supplies.1

INTRODUCTION

This article somewhat resembles an international tourist’s guidebook except that instead of tellingyou, the reader, what you can expect to experience in different countries with regard to mountains,beaches, parks, cathedrals, museums, hotels, restaurants, store hours, currencies, governmentauthorities, local customs, weather and the like, it will tell you things about the language you willencounter if you travel to different parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Well, this is indeed anexaggeration. It will tell you about a very small subset of the language you will run into, namely,some of the terminology relating to school and office supplies. This paper also has something incommon with international cookbooks that bring home exotic recipes from far-off places, except thatthe platos típicos, in this case, are not dishes but words__words and their meanings__a linguisticsmorgasbord, kaleidoscope or maelstrom of regional flavors and delights. In addition, this study canbe considered an example of investigative journalism except that what is being researched, exposed,and debated is not the what and the wherefore of conflicts, politics, feats, disasters or other currentevents, but of language use.

The primary goal is to describe early 21st century lexical usage in the Spanish-speaking world fora series of school- and office-supply items whose names vary diatopically or by region. Secondaryobjectives include addressing sociolinguistic issues, such as attitudes held by Spanish speakers fromdifferent regions toward the relevant terms and variants, examining cases in which a lexical changemay be in progress (one term rising and another declining or dying out), and exploring a fewquestions involving the history of the Spanish language, that is, the histories of its different varieties.Lastly, I will review some of the relevant definitions of the 2001 edition of the Spanish RoyalAcademy’s Diccionario de la lengua, also known as the Diccionario de la Real Academia(hereinafter DRAE), and make suggestions on how these definitions can be improved.

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Topics

The following topics, referred to by their United States English names, will be discussed:

A) Writing, erasing and related: 1) chalk, 2) chalkboard or blackboard, 3) chalkboard eraser orblackboard eraser, 4) crayon, 5) (magic) marker, 6) pen A - ballpoint pen or regular pen, 7)pen B - fountain pen, 8) pencil A - regular pencil, 9) pencil B - mechanical pencil, automaticpencil or self-sharpening pencil, 10) pencil eraser and/or pen eraser, 11) pencil sharpener.

B) Fasteners and related: 1) rubber band, 2) staple (noun), 3) stapler, 4) staple remover, 5)thumbtack, 6) paper clip.

C) Miscellaneous: 1) paper punch or hole punch, 2) ink pad or stamp pad, 3) notebook A - spiralnotebook, 4) notebook B - loose-leaf notebook or (three) ring binder, 5) pencil case, 6) filefolder, 7) briefcase.

Formatting Conventions in the “Terms by Country” Tables

Each section of this paper addresses one of the topics outlined above in A) Writing, erasing andrelated, B) Fasteners and related, and C) Miscellaneous and contains a “Terms by Country” tableconsisting of countries in the left-hand column and terms and fractions in the right-hand column.The denominators in these fractions represent the total number of responses from a specific countryfor a given item and the numerators indicate the number of informants or respondents from thatcountry who gave a particular response. Thus, part of the Terms by Country table for section A1,CHALK, reads as follows:

SPAIN tiza (20/20).MEXICO gis (54/56), tiza (7/56).GUATEMALA yeso (14/15), tiza (3/15).

This is to be interpreted as, “When asked to give the name or names used for chalk, 20 out of 20Spaniards queried indicated tiza, 54 out of 56 Mexicans said gis, 7 out of 56 Mexicans gave tiza, 14out of 15 Guatemalans said yeso, and 3 out of 15 Guatemalans offered tiza.” As we see in thepreceding example, some respondents offered more than one term for a given item and therefore thesum of the fractions corresponding to each country is often greater than one.

The section on chalk will demonstrate that tiza is the most commonly used term for this item in over75% of the Spanish-speaking countries (see section A1 below). We can therefore consider tiza tobe General Spanish usage, the most “neutral Spanish” word for this item, or the so-called“international standard” term. In contrast, gis and yeso are commonly used in the sense of chalk inrelatively small subsets or pockets of the Spanish-speaking world, and thus these usages can beviewed as regional. To distinguish regionalisms such as gis and yeso (‘chalk’) from General Spanishterms such as tiza, the former will be written in italics and the latter in regular letters in the Termsby Country tables.

Because gis and yeso were offered by at least 50% of the respondents from Mexico and Guatemala,respectively, they will also be considered “majority regionalisms” and written in boldface and italics

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to highlight their importance; other regionalisms presented in this study that were offered by lessthan 50% of the respondents queried will appear in italics only.

In examining the data for chalk presented above, we also note that tiza was offered by 20% or lessof the respondents from Mexico and Guatemala and this usage is therefore deemed a “marginalresponse” in these two countries. To underscore its infrequent use among respondents from Mexicoand Guatemala, tiza is written in small print in the corresponding lines of the table; tiza, however,appears in regular-sized letters next to Spain where it is the dominant term.

Responses and Respondents

For each of the 24 items listed above in A) Writing, erasing and related, B) Fasteners and related,and C) Miscellaneous, responses were obtained from native speakers of Spanish from Spain and the19 countries in Latin America that have Spanish as a principal official language.

The amount of data collected from respondents from each of the 20 Spanish-speaking countriesvaries considerably. The initial goal was to obtain between 10 and 20 responses for each item fromeach country, but the actual numbers ended up varying because not all respondents were asked allquestions, not all those who were asked a question were able to answer it, and some of the writtenresponses had to be discarded because they were illegible. Sometimes I also went back and queriedadditional respondents from specific countries on specific topics when I felt the data initiallycollected were inconclusive and I wanted to probe specific issues. In addition, I received over 50responses from Mexican respondents due to the fact that I happened to attend a two-day symposiumin Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico in October of 2005 at which I attempted to obtain informationfrom about 75 mostly Mexican translators, interpreters, educators and literary critics.

I collected data from respondents by a combination of one-on-one, face-to-face interviews andthrough written responses to questionnaires that were both pictorial and text-based. The samequestions were asked in both the interviews and the questionnaires by means of the same images;the questionnaires used arrows and written cues that were similar to the oral prompts employed inthe interviews. For example, with the set of items consisting of the chalk, the chalkboard, and thechalkboard eraser, respondents were shown a picture of a wall-mounted chalkboard with an eraserand a piece of chalk on the chalkboard’s shelf; in the interviews respondents were asked thefollowing questions while I pointed to the corresponding item:

Question 1: ¿Cómo se llama esto donde uno escribe en el salón de clases (or en el aula)?Answers: Pizarra, pizarrón, tablero, encerado.Question 2: ¿Cómo se llama esta cosa blanca (or esta barrita blanca) con que se escribe en lapizarra (or en el pizarrón, el tablero, el encerado)? I would use whichever term for “chalkboard”the respondent had previously given in answering question 1.Answers: Tiza, gis, yeso.Question 3: ¿Y cómo se llama esto para quitar lo escrito con tiza (or con gis, or con yeso)?Answers: Borrador, almohadilla, mota.

The percentages of respondents who were questioned using each of the two methods__oral interviewor pictorial/text questionnaire__also varied somewhat by country. More data were obtained throughwritten responses to pictorial questionnaires from respondents from Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto

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Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile, whereas interviews were the source of muchof the data from the Central American countries, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Bolivia,Paraguay and Uruguay. This discrepancy was primarily due to logistical reasons and happenstance:The native speakers of Spanish I have met over the years, both in the United States where I live andabroad, and those I see at talks, conferences and symposiums, generally hail from the first set of(mostly larger) countries, whereas to contact people from the second set of (mostly smaller)countries I generally had to actively seek out potential respondents in the waiting rooms of theirrespective consulates in San Francisco, California, and New York City.

Respondents who completed the pictorial questionnaires in writing were mostly translators,interpreters, academics, and other highly educated individuals, and they were specifically askedabout their background and work experience, whether they had lived in any other Spanish-speakingcountry for more than six months, and sometimes their age. People who answered questions orally,in contrast, were selected at random from among those who happened to be available at theconsulates when I paid my visits. Because the interviewees were not specifically asked about theirbackgrounds, their educational levels are not known with any certainty. However, I was able toobserve respondents’ speech and take a guess at the amount of schooling they had probablyreceived. This was aided by the fact that many respondents had a desire to provide more informationthan I had requested and would frequently offer long explanations about the purpose and operationof the items they were shown, especially when they had difficulty coming up with a name for theobject. Based on their pronunciation, morphosyntax, and vocabulary, I believe the range ofeducational levels of those interviewed orally was fairly broad, everything from highly educatedindividuals with graduate degrees to those who had perhaps only a middle-school diploma. I alsoqueried some who appeared to have even less formal education, perhaps only some primary school,but I obtained little data from them for the simple reason that they were generally unable to answermany of the questions.

The geographic distribution of the respondents within each country was also rather limited. In mostcases, the majority came from their country’s capital or another large city. For example, theoverwhelming majority of Argentine and Peruvian respondents came from Buenos Aires and Lima,respectively. The reason for this is that it is a lot harder to find people from San Salvador de Jujuy,Jujuy, Argentina or from Cerro de Pasco, Pasco, Peru outside of Jujuy and Pasco, respectively, thanit is to find Porteños and Limeños outside of Buenos Aires and Lima; Bonaerenses and Limeños canbe found scattered across the globe, almost anywhere. In the case of Mexico, more respondents camefrom Monterrey and the northeast border states than from any other region, although there were alsoquite a few who hailed from Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puebla, Veracruz and other large cities.Perhaps ironically, the country from which I was able to obtain the greatest geographic diversity ofrespondents was Spain, and yet little variation was encountered for school- and office-supplyterminology in the different regions of the madre patria.

How representative and valid the data are is certainly open to question. Unlike in the lexical studiesthat are part of the Proyecto de estudio coordinado de la norma lingüística culta de las principalesciudades de Iberoamérica y de la Península Ibérica (the first of which was Juan Miguel LopeBlanch’s Léxico del habla culta de México, published in 1978), the answers in the present studywere not all obtained from a pool of respondents who come from the same city and whoseeducational levels are both known and similar. Further research will be needed to determine howand to what extent school- and office-supply terminology varies intra-nationally, or within nations,

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among the different sociocultural, age and gender groups of each society, and diachronically, thatis, over time.

Spelling and Variants

To some extent, the existence of written and/or spoken variants–such as sacapuntas andsacapunta–is noted in the Terms by Country sections through the use of parentheses: In this case,both variants are represented by sacapunta(s) whenever some respondents from a given countryoffered the form with a word-final s and others gave the form without one. Throughout this articlethere are also paragraphs entitled Spelling & Variants which explain in greater detail the differentwritten and spoken forms offered by respondents that could be considered variants of a single term.While sacapuntas is the only spelling for this term listed in the DRAE (and in many other Spanish-language dictionaries), large numbers of native Spanish speakers, including highly educated ones,say and write sacapunta without a final s, and some even write the term as two words, saca punta(s),or as a hyphenated word, saca-punta(s).

Some of you may chuckle or scoff at many or all of these “unofficial” variants of the wordsacapuntas, and may even be thinking to yourselves ¡pero qué brutos que son! in reference to thosewho use them, but in fact this variation can be attributed to several mitigating factors: On the onehand, many Spanish speakers write and pronounce the word sacapunta, with no final s, that is, withno regular s ([s]), no Castilian s (apical s or [Ñ]), nor any aspiration ([h]). Secondly, there is a fairamount of general uncertainty regarding how to spell infrequently written compound terms likesacapunta(s) since people tend to talk about pencil sharpeners much more often than they write theword. With regard to semantics, it is true that over the course of its lifetime a pencil sharpener maysharpen many points (durante su vida útil, un sacapuntas puede sacar muchas puntas), but at anygiven moment it sharpens only one (un sacapunta saca una sola punta a la vez). Thus neither formis semantically more precise than the other. There are even some Spanish speakers who believe thata sacapunta is a hand-held pencil sharpener that has only one hole, like the one shown in figure A11,and that a sacapuntas is a hand-held one with two different holes for two different sizes of pencil,or a pencil sharpener with a crank that has multiple holes like the one shown in figure A11', thoughmost Spanish speakers would probably dispute any claim that sacapuntas and sacapunta refer todifferent types of pencil sharpeners. Also, in defense of sacapunta, it should be noted that the DRAElists and accepts both sacabocados and sacabocado (‘hole punch’), and since these devices likewisemake many holes over time but sometimes only one at a time, the argument can easily be made thatsacapunta is no less valid than sacabocado. In the case of sacahoyo(s) and abrehueco(s) (‘holepunch’), no form of these words appears in many dictionaries, they are written even less often thansacapunta(s), and many speakers who use the latter terms, including highly educated ones, show aneven greater variation and uncertainty concerning the terms’ “correct” spelling.

Somewhat similar variation issues exist with many English-language compound terms. To cite justa few examples from the school- and office-supply domain, we note that “paper clip,” “rubberband,” “thumb tack,” and “push pin” are often written as one word__“paperclip,” “rubberband,”“thumbtack,” and “pushpin,” respectively__and if you do an Internet search of the different formsof these words, you will get hundreds of thousands (and in some cases millions) of hits for each.Which spellings are preferable? On the one hand, it can be argued that a “paper clip” is merely onespecific type of clip, used with paper, among others in the general category of clips. This mightsuggest that “paper” should be a simple adjective modifying the noun “clip” and that the compound

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term should be written as two words. On the other hand, in the minds of many speakers a “paperclip”is its own item, separate and apart from other “clips.” This may explain why “paperclip” is so oftenwritten as one word, and perhaps even why the Spanish word clip mostly refers to paper clips ratherthan to other types: In the linguistic transfer from English to Spanish the Anglicism clip tends to benarrower in meaning and more specific, although theoretically it can refer to any type of clip. Withinthe field of computers, two of the most ubiquitous examples of this type of variation are “log on”and “log in,” both of which are frequently written as one word, perhaps even when they are verbs,though not in the past tense (“she logged on,” not “she *logonned”), or in a progressive tense (“I’mlogging on,” not “I’m *loggingon,” or “I’m *logonning”).

Comparing Other Sources

I have checked a number of regional Spanish dictionaries__diccionarios de guatemaltequismos, debolivianismos, etc.__to see if any of them contained information that contradicted the findings of thisstudy. Most lacked definitions of the respective country’s regional school- and office-supplyterminology, and others confirmed some of the assertions made by this study’s respondents.However, a few sources had definitions that contradicted, expanded upon or modified theinformation obtained from respondents. I have also compared my data with those of the Léxico delhabla culta studies to see how the educated usage presented for specific cities in those worksmatches up with what I encountered for the corresponding countries as a whole. However, for themost part I only cite or reference entries from lexicographical works or sections of the Léxico delhabla culta studies that contradict or go beyond that which the data from this study suggest isprevalent, and when published sources conflict with the results of this study, I pose basic usagequestions. In citing the Léxico del habla culta studies, I indicate the author’s last name and the pagenumber in parentheses, but when referencing dictionaries, I do not list the page number since in allof the lexicographical sources the words appear in alphabetical order. See endnote 12 forinformation on an online source called Varilex (Hiroto Ueda et al).

Real Academia Regional Review

The Real Academia’s dictionary, or DRAE, currently in its 22nd edition, has played an even morecentral role in the lives of Spanish speakers than the Oxford, the Webster’s or other importantEnglish-language dictionaries have in the lives of English speakers, and unlike the leading British,Australian, Canadian or American dictionaries, each of which has more of a regional following, theDRAE is regularly consulted by Spanish speakers from all Spanish-speaking countries. This is duein part to a dearth of high-quality general dictionaries published in Spanish America, and in part toa tradition in Spanish America of culturally and linguistically worshiping the mother country ingeneral and the DRAE in particular. While some would propose simply breaking with thistradition__i.e. tossing the DRAE (or relegating it to a box in the closet or the garage), and in its placewriting at least 20 national general Spanish-language dictionaries, one each from Guatemala,Honduras, etc.__this is not easily done or likely to be achieved in the near future in the case of mostSpanish-speaking countries. Nevertheless, in the last decade or two, Mexico, by far the largestSpanish-speaking country in population, has made significant strides in creating its ownlexicographical self-sufficiency with the publication of the Diccionario del español usual en México(Lara Ramos 1996) and its predecessors, the Diccionario básico del español de México (Lara Ramos1986) and the Diccionario fundamental del español de México (Lara Ramos 1982), as well as theDiccionario inicial del español de México (Ávila 2003). However, even these works are all abridged

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dictionaries. (Los diccionarios de Lara Ramos y de Ávila son excelentes y representan un gran pasoadelante, pero lo que realmente necesitamos para cada país hispanohablante son diccionarioscompletos, íntegros __o al menos no abreviados__, no diccionarios básicos, ni iniciales, aunque porahí supongo que se ha de empezar.) And since Mexico’s lexicographical autonomy is a special case,an exception that confirms the rule, I would therefore recommend that for the time being we Spanishspeakers continue to uphold the practice of consulting the DRAE and letting it serve as our primaryguide in matters concerning the Spanish language, but that this tradition be made more functionalby proposing specific changes to the dictionary that are motivated by the following three generaldesires:

a) That the DRAE describe items more precisely in its definitions;b) That the DRAE use metalanguage in its definitions that conforms more to General Spanish

than to Peninsular Spanish usage (this may be a sueño quijotesco); and, most importantly,c) That the DRAE paint a more accurate picture of the Spanish language’s international

contours and landscape.

This article’s “Real Academia Regional Review” sections present an evaluation of the 2001 editionof the DRAE and “grade” this dictionary’s definitions of specific terms using the following gradingscale:

A Corresponding definition, correct regions. This grade is given when the DRAE defines theterm as used in a particular section of this article and correctly indicates the countries and/orregions in which the term is used in this sense.

B Corresponding definition, incorrect regions. This grade is given when the DRAE defines theterm as used in the section and specifies a region or regions but does not specify themcorrectly. Its definition either fails to include regions in which the usage occurs or includesregions where the usage does not occur. However, the grade of B is raised to an A if theDRAE’s definition is appropriate, “Amér.” (América, that is, Spanish-speaking LatinAmerica) is specified in the definition, and the term is used in 10 or more (over 50%) of the19 Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.

C Corresponding definition, no regions specified. This grade is given when the DRAE definesthe item in question but does not specify any countries or regions in which the term is usedin this sense. In essence, it fails to identify a regional usage as regional. However, the gradeof C is raised to an A if the term is used in at least 10 (at least 50%) of the 20 Spanish-speaking countries.

D No corresponding definition. This grade is given when the DRAE does not include in itsdefinition of the term a sense that corresponds to the item in question.

F Term not listed. This grade is given when the DRAE does not list the term at all.

The DRAE’s definitions themselves are quoted in these sections so that the reader can follow theanalysis that went into their evaluations. When citing DRAE definitions of nouns, I do not includethe gender specification “m.” or “f.” unless the word’s gender is not transparent to most Spanishspeakers, as in the case of gis or birome, or is specifically a dialectal issue, as occurs with a wordlike chinche. Terms that were offered by fewer than three respondents are generally not graded, anddefinitions of some relevant words that were not given by respondents are also presented. Thus notall terms indicated by respondents are graded and not all words whose definitions are quoted wereoffered by respondents. When, in my judgement, the category under which a definition rightfully

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falls is debatable, the grade assigned (A, B, C, D or F) is followed by a question mark, or ispresented as one or more alternatives such as “C or D?”

In addition to the grades assigned, an overall score or grade point average (GPA) for each topic iscalculated based on the American-style 4-point grading system in which A = 4.0, A! = 3.7, B+ =3.3, B = 3.0, B! = 2.7, C+ = 2.3, C = 2.0, C! = 1.7, D+ = 1.3, D = 1.0, and F = 0.0. As indicatedabove, no plus or minus grades are assigned to the coverage of each term, but the plus/minus gradingsystem is used to calculate the overall GPA for each topic. Thus in the Real Academia RegionalReview section corresponding to CHALK, in which the DRAE receives the marks of gis (no regionspecified = C = 2.0), tiza (General Spanish term = A = 4.0) and yeso (no corresponding definition= D = 1.0), the grade point average or GPA is the sum of the grades (7) divided by the number ofwords graded (3). Thus, 7 ÷ 3 = 2.33, which is just barely above a C+, but since this figure falls inbetween two grades we round it up to the next highest mark and the grade ends up being a B! (2.7).Because we round up the GPA score if it falls between grades, and because we also calculate theGPA on the basis of the highest grades when the grades given are in doubt (e.g. “A or D?”), thereis a certain amount of GPA inflation involved. On the other hand, it can be argued that the gradingsystem is too harsh since if the DRAE does not list a term such as lápiz de mina, it will also not listits variant lápiz mina and therefore receives an F twice for what is essentially a single defect, whichnaturally results in a lower GPA. Similarly, the DRAE gets “dinged” twice for not including pilotor páilot when both are really just different forms of the same word.

As will be shown in the individual “Real Academia Regional Review” sections, the DRAE oftenreceives poor marks for its definitions, especially those which relate to Spanish American usage. Inthe DRAE’s defense, it can be said that attempting to describe usage in the entire Spanish-speakingworld can be a daunting task, even in the case of a domain such as school and office supplies thaton each national level appears to be fairly standardized. Many theories can be advanced regardingthe causes of the DRAE’s poor performance, but I believe the following are three key factors:

a) Just as some governments have poor cultural, diplomatic, strategic and militaryintelligence in parts of the world, a lack of knowledge by DRAE authors and editors of the linguisticsituation on the ground, that is, of actual usage in the different Spanish American countries, meansthat the DRAE has a poor grasp of language matters in Spanish America.

b) Despite the claim in the DRAE’s Preámbulo that they receive and seriously consider largeamounts of input and information from the corresponding academies, an examination of itsdefinitions suggests a reluctance to engage in an active, frank and open collaboration with SpanishAmericans on the Dictionary project.

c) A lack of awareness–which some might consider akin to eurocentrism, glossocentrism,or perhaps just plain old-fashioned arrogance–on the part of the DRAE’s editors that leads them tobelieve that their lack of knowledge and experience with the Spanish language, as it is used indifferent parts of the New World, is not a serious impediment to their accurately describing SpanishAmerican usage.

Until such time as the Real Academia’s editorial staff recognizes these organic deficiencies andresolves to do the necessary investigation and consultation so that it can scale the mountain with thebenefit of the multiple perspectives, analyses, knowledge bases and equipment that are needed toaccomplish this feat without suffering frostbite (or worse casualties), its dictionary is likely to beplagued by the same basic condition and much of the information it presents on New World Spanish

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will continue to be at variance with actual usage. Any other publishing house, whether located inMadrid, Mexico City, Managua, Miami, Bogotá or Buenos Aires, that seeks to write a pan-Hispanicdictionary of the Spanish language should heed the same warning and be prepared to get out and dothe necessary investigation, consultation and legwork.

** *

Marginal Responses

Marginal responses, those offered in this study by 20% or less of the respondents from specificcountries, appear to fall into different categories and to occur for different reasons. Some may becases of respondents misinterpreting an image or question and offering a term that refers to a relatedbut different object than the one targeted. For example, some of the respondents who offeredtachuela in the sense of ‘thumbtack’ may have thought the image shown to them was just a smalltack since thumbtacks and tacks look somewhat similar, and they may have been unclear on thedifference between the two objects. Yet the large number of Spanish speakers, including dozens ofeducated ones, who indicated tachuela in response to the question about the thumbtack also suggeststhat for many Spanish speakers tachuela is in fact the name they use for this object, and was notoffered as a result of confusion or misunderstanding.

In other cases, marginal responses may reflect speakers’ lack of “communicative competence” insome aspect of the school- and office-supply domain, which simply means (with regard to thelexicon) that they do not know one of their own country’s official words for a given object. If aperson being asked to identify a picture of an ink pad does not know one of the “real names” for thisitem, he or she may not want to lose face by answering “La verdad es que no sé cómo se llama eso”and may instead decide to take a stab at it and try to come up with some name that sounds like areasonable possibility. However, based on relatively small amounts of data, it is sometimes difficultto distinguish between cases in which speakers lack linguistic competence and those in which theysimply use a less precise term. For example, in part because tinta refers to ink, it is unlikely thatmany highly educated people would accept tinta para sello(s) as a legitimate term for ink pad, butthe fact remains that this metonymic term appears to be widely used in the sense of ink pad by largenumbers of Spanish speakers who, for whatever reason, do not know one of the “correct,” “real” or“official” words for this object. Other marginal responses may involve terms that some respondentsdo use regularly in the sense in question but which are atypical of mainstream usage in their speechcommunity. Many are hapax legomena__words that in this study were offered in a particular senseby only one respondent from a given country or region__and in the absence of other supportingevidence these should be given little or no weight. Even terms that were offered by a handful ofrespondents should be viewed with a healthy skepticism, especially if three or four times thatnumber indicated a different usage. On the other hand, if 4 out of 32 Colombians offered plumero(‘ballpoint pen’), but all 4 were Costeños (Colombians from the Atlantic Coast region) and theywere the only Costeños queried, then we have a situation in which 100% of Colombians from aspecific region have indicated a specific usage. The results of such a small sampling are notstatistically significant, but they do suggest that we may indeed be on to something and the nextlogical step is to try to query as many Costeños as possible, preferably from different parts of theCosta, to see what pattern emerges.

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Perhaps the most frequent type of marginal response occurs when respondents offer the GeneralSpanish term either instead of or alongside their country’s regional word, sometimes in an effort tosuppress or reject the regional term. For example, some Mexicans and Guatemalans may opt to saytiza instead of gis or yeso in order to use a word that enjoys international prestige and recognitionand to avoid using one that they perceive (or believe others may perceive) as “regional,” “local” or“unsophisticated.” In some cases, people do this in an attempt to distinguish themselves from theirmore “plebeian” fellow citizens and to show that they belong to “las clases ilustradas.”

It is also important to bear in mind that the language recorded in this study was not spontaneous, asit was clear to respondents that a researcher was writing down their responses. And perhaps evenmore so than in the case of phonetics, phonology and other aspects of pronunciation, with thelexicon most speakers have a considerable ability to choose their words depending on what thesituation is, who their interlocutors are, and what the image and identity they are trying to projectis. For example, some Mexicans and Guatemalans who offered tiza may have felt self-consciousabout using gis or yeso and may have wanted to take on a cosmopolitan or international air in theinterview or on the questionnaire through their use of the General Spanish term. Other Mexicans andGuatemalans, in contrast, may really say tiza in their everyday speech when speaking withcompatriots, although to use the international standard instead of the national standard wouldgenerally entail a deliberate and conscious choice. Also, by not using the term for a given item thatis most frequently used in their own country, speakers run the risk of being labeled as odd, snobbish,extranjerizante and perhaps even unpatriotic. This can easily happen to a Mexican who says tizainstead of gis, or to an Argentine who says piscina instead of pileta (‘swimming pool’).

Majority Regionalisms

Majority regionalisms, those offered by 50% or more of respondents and appearing in boldface anditalics in the Terms by Country tables, are likely to be of primary interest to readers of this article,regardless of their attitudes toward regionalisms.

For example, if you are a regionalism enthusiast (or a dialectologist), then majority regionalismsrepresent exciting and exotic manifestations of Spanish that depart from the run-of-the-mill,international-standard or “textbook” terminology that students of Spanish as a second language learnand that their teachers are instructed to teach. At the same time these regionalisms constitutemainstream usage in the speech communities in question. In other words, usages like gis and yeso(‘chalk’), though regional, can not be easily dismissed as ones that are only heard in certain smallcommunities, or are primarily used by isolated groups of rural, uneducated and/or elderlyindividuals. On the contrary, the large percentage of this study’s Mexicans and Central Americanswho offered gis or yeso (‘chalk’) suggests that millions of Spanish speakers from the countries inquestion, including highly educated persons, use these terms everyday. This belief is based onlimited data and the unscientific but often reliable principle of cuando el río suena agua lleva orcuando el río suena (es porque) piedras trae. However, as the variants of this refrain suggest, themeaning of a river’s sound is open to interpretation.

Those of you who take the view that Spanish regionalisms are an impediment to uniformity, a thornin our language’s side, and even a disease for which a prophylactic ought to be developed andapplied, will find the terms in boldface and italics useful as they will allow the “culprits” to be easilyidentified and held up for public scorn by like-minded individuals. Vilifying regionalisms, or leading

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a crusade against them, however, may not be successful in dislodging or eliminating them,notwithstanding the advances of modern international media and communications that are supposedto “globalize” and “homogenize” our societies, or at least those societies which share a commonlanguage, in this case Spanish.

The pervasiveness of the media, though possibly decreasing and diluting regional differences withinnations, may in some cases be strengthening regional differences between and among countries:Nationalism, as the last century has shown, is a powerful force, and language is one of its primarymanifestations. This last point is important for the study of dialectology as it poses the generalquestion of what the future holds for usages that are regionally marked within a given country. Forexample, since words for “hopscotch” are not products that are bought and sold, or concepts that aretaught in federally controlled school systems or referred to in national media, regionally markednames for this game can easily survive and co-exist within a single country. The future for mostschool- and office-supply terms that are regionally weighted within a country, in contrast, isprobably not very bright.

Readers of this article who have a neutral view of Spanish regionalisms and just want to know whosays what and where will also want to focus on the majority regionalisms and contrast them with theinternational standard so as to understand language usage on a pan-Hispanic level. The regionalismspresented here, and especially the majority regionalisms, will also be of interest to those of you whoare curious to find out how your own vocabulary matches up with that of other Spanish speakers.And you may be surprised to learn which of your own usages are regional and sound odd to otherSpanish speakers. Hopefully, you will also gain a better understanding of why some of yourSpanish-speaking friends’ usages seem strange or foreign to you.

A marshmallow by any other name would smell as cloyingly sweet and, unlike a rose, really doeshave many names in Spanish. Yet we all have our biases when it comes to language varieties anda sense of aesthetics regarding language use, including “proper” terminology: Some names smelljust right to us while others appear to give off a foul odor. However, if we can avoid getting caughtup in wanting everyone to speak the same way, we may find lexical diversity and variation to bequite enriching. We Spanish speakers can all appreciate “classic” Spanish terminology, such as tiza(‘chalk’), sacapuntas (‘pencil sharpener’), or perforadora (‘hole punch’), but sometimes we maybe in the mood for more offbeat and regionally marked usages such as gis, yeso, tajador, tajalápiz,abrehuecos or taladradora.

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A WRITING, ERASING AND RELATED

A1 CHALK

A1.1 Summary

Tiza is the General Spanish term. Gis is used in Mexico and yeso in northern Central America.

A1.2 Terms by Country (3 terms)

SPAIN tiza (20/20).MEXICO gis (54/56), tiza (7/56).GUATEMALA yeso (14/15), tiza (3/15).EL SALVADOR yeso (16/17), tiza (3/17).HONDURAS tiza (14/18), yeso (11/18).NICARAGUA tiza (13/13).COSTA RICA tiza (12/12).PANAMA tiza (14/14).CUBA tiza (17/17).DOMIN. REP. tiza (13/13).PUERTO RICO tiza (17/17).VENEZUELA tiza (24/24).COLOMBIA tiza (17/17), gis (3/17).ECUADOR tiza (14/14).PERU tiza (16/16).BOLIVIA tiza (16/16).PARAGUAY tiza (10/10).URUGUAY tiza (10/10).ARGENTINA tiza (22/22).CHILE tiza (15/15).

A1.3 Details

General: Why did a Nahuatl-derived word, tiza, become the term for chalk in most parts of theSpanish-speaking world, perhaps replacing and/or displacing Latin-derived gis and yeso?(See the etymologies of gis, tiza and yeso in section A1.4 below.) And why did tizaironically not take root in New Spain/Mexico, the colony/country with the strongest andmost direct Nahuatl influence? How this apparent swap took place is not adequatelyexplained in the DRAE or in the Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico(Corominas). Is it possible that during the beginning of the colonial period the conqueringSpaniards were so intent on eliminating Aztec language and culture in New Spain that theymanaged to successfully suppress the Nahuatlism tiza(tl) and impose the “castizo” term gis,and that tiza was still able to be transplanted back to Spain and prosper in most parts of theSpanish-speaking world outside of Mexico where eliminating Aztec influence was not anissue? Could this explain why gis took root and flourished in Mexico but is used onlyvestigially in Colombia, Bolivia and perhaps Spain? Although this seems unlikely, it is anintriguing theory.

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Spain: Tiza (‘chalk’) is clearly the dominant usage in Spain, but what are the characteristics of thoseSpaniards__i.e. older Spaniards, Spaniards from certain regions, etc.__who when speakingSpanish currently use other words for this item such as clarión, creta, gis or yeso? In thisstudy, tiza was the only term offered by all 20 Spanish respondents, but a couple of thoseborn before 1960 indicated that their parents use or used clarión in this sense, and theDRAE’s definitions of clarión, creta, gis and yeso (see section A1.4 below) suggest thatsome of these terms are, or were, synonyms or quasi-synonyms of tiza. In the three Léxicodel habla culta studies involving Spanish cities (Madrid, Granada and Las Palmas de GranCanaria), small numbers of respondents__only 1 out of 12, 1 out of 16 and 1 out of 24,respectively__indicated that creta, pizarrín or yeso were used in the sense of tiza, thoughnone offered clarión (Torres Martínez: 586; Salvador: 747; Samper Padilla: 479). The issueof who in Spain uses terms other than tiza for chalk__when speaking Spanish__is one thatwarrants further study; the words guix and clarió, I am told, are used in Catalán and/orValenciano.

Mexico: Gis is not only by far the most frequently used term in Mexico, it also appears to enjoy avery high level of acceptance among educated Mexicans vis-à-vis General Spanish tiza.Statements such as “Tiza lo dicen en España y otros países, aquí en México decimos gis”were made often and unapologetically by educated Mexicans in this study. This acceptanceof gis is also supported by the fact that both the Diccionario del español usual en México(Lara Ramos) and the Diccionario inicial del español de México (Ávila) define gis inneutral, unmarked terms and either do not list tiza (‘chalk’) or specifically define it as aforeign usage. The acceptance of gis in Mexico is in stark contrast to the situation inGuatemala, El Salvador and Honduras where another regional term, yeso, is used.

Guatemala, El Salvador & Honduras: Yeso is the dominant term in Guatemala and El Salvador andis a serious competitor of tiza in Honduras. Educated speakers from all three countries, someof whom prefer tiza, tend to exhibit a fair amount of linguistic insecurity concerning the useof yeso in the sense of chalk, and remarks by Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans suchas “Le decimos yeso a la tiza, pero es incorrecto: el yeso es el material de que está hecha latiza” reflect this view. See Attitudes toward tiza vs. alternate terms below.

Colombia: Tiza was offered by all respondents in this study, but 3 of them__2 Bogotanos and 1Santandereano__also indicated that gis is used (or was used in the past) in the sense of a thickpiece of chalk for writing on individual, hand-held chalkboards on which elementary schoolchildren used to do their schoolwork. Two of the Colombians who offered gis stated thatthey believed this usage was either dead or dying, and in the Léxico del habla culta deSantafé de Bogotá study, published in 1997, 25 out of 25 educated Bogotanos offered onlytiza (Otálora de Fernández: 838). However, the Nuevo diccionario de colombianismosdefines gis as the standard Colombian Spanish word for chalk (Haensch and Werner 1993a).Was gis (‘chalk’) standard Colombian Spanish in the 1980s and early 1990s when the teamof researchers led by Haensch and Werner were researching this variety of the language? Ifthis had been so, it seems unlikely that this usage could have virtually disappeared withoutleaving a trace among so many respondents from both the Léxico del habla culta study andthe present study in such a short period of time. Also, my own memory from having livedin Colombia in 1984-85 was that tiza was the term used for regular classroom chalk.2

Bolivia: Is gis used in this sense in Bolivia and, if so, how frequent is this usage? None of the 16respondents in this study offered it, but in the Léxico del habla culta de La Paz study, 2 outof 12 educated Paceños indicated that gis was used in the sense of chalk, albeit less oftenthan tiza (Mendoza: 530).

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Attitudes toward tiza vs. alternate terms: What can explain the fact that gis is fully accepted inMexico but yeso is a source of concern, and often embarrassment, among educatedGuatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans, a linguistic insecurity that manifests itself in arejection and sometimes even denial of their own usage? The following are some possibleexplanations:

a) Because yeso has the closely related meaning of ‘plaster’ in General Spanish, someeducated Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans may be genuinely (if illogically)troubled by the fact that this term should be applied to both the material and the bar madeof a similar material, especially since such a “good word” (tiza) exists for the latter;sometimes people are uncomfortable with polysemy. In contrast, Mexico’s gis can not beobjected to on these grounds as it refers only to chalk.

b) The history of northern Central America is quite different from that of Mexico. InGuatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, military dictatorships, protecting the interests of bothsmall national oligarchies and United States corporations, and generally funded and trainedby the US military, have ruled over the course of most of their histories. Also, the civil warsin Guatemala and El Salvador, which lasted for several decades until the 1990s and pittedthe elites, backed by the army, against campesinos and the indigenous populations, backedby the guerrillas, were concluded with few substantive concessions or structural changesmade by the winning side (the elites). It is perhaps in part for this reason that in northernCentral America many members of the upper classes feel little affinity with or connectionto their respective country’s less fortunate masses, and have a strong desire to differentiatethemselves from the general population. In Guatemala, members of Indigenous groups alsotend to feel a great resentment toward and cultural disconnect from the urban Ladinopopulation. (Ladinos are those who identify themselves as racially Hispanic/Mestizo andhave a Western orientation.) In Mexico, in contrast, issues of class struggle were supposedly“solved” (and buried) by the Mexican Revolution (1910-1928, “armed phase”), and the“ongoing revolution” or “institutional phase” that followed in the succeeding decades, andmany aspects of the pueblo’s traditional culture are enjoyed and appreciated by Mexicansof all social classes. In other words, although the contrast between haves and have-nots canbe just as stark in Mexico, the cultural divide is not seen as a chasm that has no bridges.

c) Mexico is a much larger country than Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras, andsometimes people from large former colonies do not care as much how their language useis perceived by outsiders and tend to be less interested in imitating the usage of the mothercountry.3

A1.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: gis (C), tiza (A), yeso (D). GPA = B!DRAE definitions: tiza, “(Del nahua tizatl). Arcilla terrosa blanca que se usa para escribir

en los encerados y, pulverizada, para limpiar metales”; clarión, “(Del fr. crayon, quizá con infl. declaro). m. Pasta hecha de yeso mate y greda, que se usa como lápiz para dibujar en los lienzosimprimados lo que se ha de pintar, y para escribir en los encerados de las aulas”; gis, “(Del lat.gypsum, yeso). m. clarión”; pizarrín, “Barrita de lápiz o de pizarra no muy dura, generalmentecilíndrica, que se usa para escribir o dibujar en las pizarras de piedra.”

Questions/Comments: Some Spanish-English dictionaries translate the terms tiza, clariónand pizarrín as “chalk,” “white crayon” and “slate pencil,” respectively, and the DRAE’s definitionsof the Spanish-language words indicate that they all refer to something that is used to write on

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chalkboards but that they are not exact synonyms. Since the definition of gis cross-references thereader to clarión and that of clarión does not refer the reader to tiza, a user of the DRAE is notinformed that gis and tiza are geosynonyms. The DRAE needs to add a sense of gis that correspondsto ‘chalk’ and include in it the regional specification “Méx” and perhaps also “Col.” and “Bol.” ifthis usage is in fact common in Colombia and Bolivia; the evidence from this study and others thatis presented in sections A1.2 and A1.3 above suggests that the use of gis (‘chalk’) is at best marginalin these two countries.

The definition of tiza also needs to be expanded to include other uses for and types of chalk.Compare the Diccionario inicial del español de México’s definition of tiza, which in addition todescribing standard chalk used with chalkboards, also includes senses corresponding to tailor’s chalkand cue chalk used in pool and billiards: “2 Especie de tableta rectangular de color blanco que usanlos sastres para trazar líneas sobre las que van a cortar una tela: Marca con tiza la tela, para cortarladespués. 3 Polvo de color azul que se pone en la punta de los tacos que se usan para jugar billar: Sino pones tiza al taco no le vas a pegar bien a la bola” (Ávila). Nowhere are these two importantuses of chalk mentioned in the DRAE’s definition. In fact, the DRAE’s definition of tiza needs to bemade more general so that the chalk described is not limited to a particular color and so that theentry covers various common uses. For example, chalk dust, in addition to being used for cleaningmetal, as the DRAE’s definition indicates, also has another very important use in carpentry, drywall,masonry and other trades: By means of a device called a “chalk line” or a “chalk reel” that coats astring with (typically blue or red) chalk dust, one “snaps a chalk line” to mark a straight line betweentwo points, often for the purpose of sawing or cutting boards, plywood, sheetrock, etc. Gymnastsand other athletes also use chalk dust to absorb sweat so that their hands will not be slippery andthey will be able to catch and hold on to bars, balls, etc.

A2 CHALKBOARD or BLACKBOARD

A2.1 Summary

When referring to a chalkboard of the type attached to a wall, pizarrón is the most commonly usedterm in 6 or 7 countries, pizarra in 4 or 5, and in about 7 or 8 others the two terms enjoy a healthycompetition. Spain, Panama and Colombia have more regional usages not commonly foundelsewhere.

A2.2 Terms by Country (4 terms)

SPAIN pizarra (20/20), encerado (6/20).MEXICO pizarrón (57/57), pizarra (4/57).GUATEMALA pizarrón (14/14), pizarra (1/14).EL SALVADOR pizarra (11/16), pizarrón (9/16).HONDURAS pizarra (15/16), pizarrón (4/16).NICARAGUA pizarrón (12/14), pizarra (9/14).COSTA RICA pizarra (15/15), pizarrón (8/15).PANAMA tablero (14/14), pizarra (2/14), pizarrón (2/14).CUBA pizarra (14/17), pizarrón (7/17).DOMIN. REP. pizarra (13/15), pizarrón (10/15).PUERTO RICO pizarra (17/17).

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VENEZUELA pizarrón (21/24), pizarra (13/24).COLOMBIA tablero (17/17), pizarra (4/17), pizarrón (3/17).ECUADOR pizarrón (12/14), pizarra (2/14).PERU pizarra (17/17), pizarrón (2/17).BOLIVIA pizarrón (13/19), pizarra (10/19).PARAGUAY pizarrón (10/10), pizarra (2/10).URUGUAY pizarrón (10/10).ARGENTINA pizarrón (22/22), pizarra (4/22).CHILE pizarrón (11/16), pizarra (9/16).

A2.3 Details

General: The image shown to respondents in this study was a wall-mounted chalkboard of the typeused in classrooms, not a small, hand-held portable one or “slate” that students in the UnitedStates once used (with a “slate pencil”), and no doubt still do in many parts of the world.Some respondents were also asked what they would call these hand-held chalkboards. Theresults of this study suggest that most Spanish speakers use a single base term (e.g. pizarra,pizarrón or tablero) for all types of chalkboard and make distinctions through modifiers. Inother words, they say pizarra grande vs. pizarra pequeña or pizarra chica to distinguishlarge ones from small ones. However, more research needs to be done to determine if somespeakers use two different base terms such as pizarrón (large chalkboard) vs. pizarra (smallor medium one), or possibly a tripartite distinction such as pizarrón (large, wall-mounted),pizarra (medium, wall-mounted), and pizarrita (small, hand-held).

Spain: Pizarra (‘chalkboard’) is the dominant usage in Spain but the following issues need to beresearched: What are the characteristics of those Spaniards who currently use the termencerado, and what distinctions in meaning, if any, do different Spaniards make betweenpizarra and encerado? Who, if anyone, in Spain currently uses tablero (‘chalkboard’)? Inthis study, some respondents said that they believed encerado is used more in Castilla andother regions of northern and central Spain, and most of those who offered encerado werein fact northern and central Spaniards born prior to 1960. Quite a few respondents fromeastern Spain (i.e. Mediterranean Spain) and from southern Spain (e.g. Andalucía) stated thatthe term encerado is not commonly used in their regions. Others said that encerado is usedmore by teachers, regardless of region, especially in phrases such as ¡Al encerado! whentelling students to go up to the chalkboard, and that pizarra is used more by the generalpopulation. Still other Spaniards claimed that the distinction between encerado (largechalkboard) and pizarra (small hand-held chalkboard) used to be important at a time,perhaps prior to 1960, when paper, notebooks and pens were too expensive and manystudents would use hand-held chalkboards and chalk (or slate pencils) to practice basicwriting or math skills. They indicated that since hand-held chalkboards are no longercommonly used in the school system, the distinction is no longer needed, and pizarra is nowused to refer to all chalkboards, large or small, and that perhaps for this reason the use ofencerado has declined. However, the DRAE defines encerado, with no regionalspecification, as a synonym of one of the senses of pizarra, and defines tablero, also withno regional specification, as a synonym of encerado (see section A2.4 below). Perhapstablero (‘chalkboard’) was once common in Spain or in some parts of Spain, but theevidence from this study and from the Léxico del habla culta surveys suggests that this usagehas been rare in much of Spain for many years: In the Léxico del habla culta studies

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involving Spanish cities only 1 out of 53 respondents offered tablero in response to thechalkboard question (Torres Martínez: 586; Salvador: 747; and Samper Padilla: 479), andthis single response came from the oldest of the studies, the Encuestas léxicas del hablaculta de Madrid, published in 1981. In the present study, tablero was not given by any of the20 respondents, and only 6 offered encerado.

Panama & Colombia: Tablero is the dominant usage in Panama and Colombia. If in the past tablero(‘chalkboard’) was much more common in Spain and elsewhere than it is today, can itssurvival in Panama and Colombia be characterized as an “archaism”__an archaism from aPeninsular and General Spanish perspective__that has survived in these two countries? Howcommon was the use of tablero (‘chalkboard’) in different parts of the Spanish-speakingworld in, say, 1900, and why has it continued to flourish in Panama and Colombia? Iftablero lost the jousting match elsewhere to pizarra and/or pizarrón, what was the cause ofits downfall?

Related concept, “whiteboard”: In certain settings, such as workshops and “trainings” (as corporateand government training sessions are now often called), “whiteboards” have largely replacedchalkboards: A whiteboard is a white plastic board used with special markers called “dryerase markers” which use an ink that is easily erased from the board’s surface. Researchneeds to be done to determine what names are used in Spanish for whiteboards, and where.Related to this question is the issue of which Spanish speakers refer to a whiteboard with thesame name they use for a chalkboard, perhaps adding a modifier such as blanco/a orlíquido/a__e.g. pizarra blanca or pizarra líquida for a whiteboard__and which use twodifferent base terms such as pizarra (blackboard) vs. tablero (whiteboard), or encerado(blackboard) vs. pizarra (whiteboard).

A2.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: encerado (C), pizarra (A), pizarrón (A), tablero (C). GPA = BDRAE definitions: encerado, “(Del part. de encerar). 4. Cuadro de hule, lienzo barnizado,

madera u otra sustancia apropiada, que se usa en las escuelas para escribir o dibujar en él con clarióno tiza y poder borrar con facilidad”; pizarra, “(De or. inc.). 3. Trozo de pizarra [tipo de roca]pulimentado, de forma rectangular, usado para escribir o dibujar en él con pizarrín, yeso o lápizblanco. || 4. encerado (|| para escribir o dibujar en él). || 5. Placa de plástico blanco usada paraescribir o dibujar en ella con un tipo especial de rotuladores cuya tinta se borra con facilidad”;pizarrón, “Am. encerado (|| para escribir o dibujar en él)”; tablero, “11. encerado (|| para escribiro dibujar en él).”

Comments: The DRAE defines encerado broadly as a board that can be made of “hule, lienzobarnizado, madera u otra sustancia apropiada” and since slate is certainly an appropriate substancethis definition covers and subsumes sense 3 of pizarra. It is therefore unfortunate that the DRAEdivides pizarra into two separate chalkboard senses, one made specifically of slate (sense 3), andanother (sense 4) that is synonymous with encerado. In other words, its definitions unsuccessfullytry to make technical distinctions between two types of boards and two terms, pizarra and encerado,that in fact can be synonyms. It would make more sense to cover different boards under a singlebroad definition. The main bone of contention is whether “whiteboards” are to be included in theconcept of pizarra, pizarrón, tablero and/or encerado. Compare the following two definitions ofpizarrón, both from Mexican dictionaries: The Diccionario del español usual en México’s definitionreads “Trozo de material duro y plano, generalmente de forma rectangular y de color verde, negroo blanco, sobre cuya superficie se pueden hacer trazos con gis o con un lápiz especial y luego

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borrarlos con un pedazo de fieltro o de tela afelpada; se usa principalmente en los salones de clasede las escuelas: escribir sobre el pizarrón, borrar el pizarrón, pasar al pizarrón” (Lara Ramos). Andthe Diccionario inicial del español de México defines pizarrón as “Material duro y plano en formade rectángulo, de color verde o negro; sirve para escribir con gis y luego borrar: El maestro me pidióque escribiera una idea en el pizarrón” (Ávila).

These definitions by Mexican lexicographers have much to recommend them__tointernationalize the metalanguage used, all we would need to do is replace gis with tiza__but let usalso take a look at the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of “chalkboard,” in which onlythe object’s essential properties are included, and there is no discussion of where the object istypically used (schools) or the materials out of which it is typically made (slate or synthetic stone):“A smooth hard panel, usually green or black, for writing on with chalk; a blackboard” (Pickett).Since a chalkboard does not stop being a chalkboard if it is not located in a school, an argument canbe made that omitting the detail of where chalkboards are typically used makes sense. On the otherhand, to give a reader who has never experienced a chalkboard more context to work with, includingthis information may be useful. It largely depends on the type of reader or dictionary user thelexicographer envisages. Similarly, it can be argued that no mention need be made of a chalkboard’scomposition since over the past one hundred years the materials have in fact evolved__most are nolonger made of slate__and will probably continue to evolve.

Therefore, the DRAE could also define pizarra or pizarrón succinctly as “Cuadro duro, lisoy plano, por lo común de color verde o negro, el cual está diseñado para escribir o dibujar en él contiza” and then cross-reference the regional synonyms encerado and tablero to pizarra or pizarrón.However, if the terms pizarrón and pizarra, etc., can also refer to a “whiteboard,” then the definitionmay need to be made more general so that it reads “Cuadro duro, liso y plano, por lo común de colorverde, negro o blanco, el cual está diseñado para escribir o dibujar en él con tiza o con marcadoresespeciales.” In fact, a more recent English-language dictionary, the Encarta Webster’s CollegeDictionary, published in 2005, even defines “blackboard” as “a board of either a dark color or whitethat is written on with contrasting chalk or erasable markers, used especially in classrooms”(Soukhanov). In the case of English, it remains to be seen how many native speakers would actuallyrefer to a board that is so patently white as a “blackboard.” (Yo no lo haría, pero mi propio uso talvez no coincide con el de la mayoría.)

With regard to Spanish, another lexicographical issue is which word, pizarra or pizarrón,should be chosen as the lead term to which all others would be cross-referenced. Pizarrón iscommonly used in more countries than pizarra and the former also has the advantage that it doesnot have additional meanings (such as ‘slate’). Therefore, by selecting pizarrón as the lead term,pizarra could then be defined (in its chalkboard sense) as “pizarrón,” tablero as “Col. y Pan.pizarrón,” and encerado as “Esp. pizarrón,” whereas if pizarra is selected as the lead term, thenthe cross-references would need to include a gloss such as “pizarra (|| para escribir o dibujar en él)”and this requires more space.

A3 CHALKBOARD ERASER or BLACKBOARD ERASER

A3.1 Summary

Borrador is the General Spanish term. Almohadilla is common in Guatemala and Bolivia, andperhaps in some regions (or among some speakers) of several other Spanish American countries.Peru has a unique usage not found elsewhere.

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A3.2 Terms by Country (3 terms plus variants)

SPAIN borrador (20/20).MEXICO borrador (56/56).GUATEMALA almohadilla (10/14), borrador (8/14).EL SALVADOR borrador (16/16).HONDURAS borrador (16/17), almohadilla (3/17).NICARAGUA borrador (14/14).COSTA RICA borrador (12/12).PANAMA borrador (14/14).CUBA borrador (17/17).DOMIN. REP. borrador (13/13).PUERTO RICO borrador (17/17).VENEZUELA borrador (24/24).COLOMBIA borrador (14/16), almohadilla (3/16).ECUADOR borrador (14/14).PERU mota (15/17), borrador (3/17), almohadilla (2/17).BOLIVIA almohadilla (15/18), borrador (7/18).PARAGUAY borrador (10/10).URUGUAY borrador (10/10).ARGENTINA borrador (22/22).CHILE borrador (15/15).

A3.3 Details

General: The item tested was a standard chalkboard eraser with a felt pad, not a sponge or cushionused to erase chalkboards. However, the image I used was not particularly clear and it ispossible that some respondents interpreted my question as referring to the latter type. Theterms borrador and almohadilla are sometimes modified by phrases such as de pizarra, depizarrón, de tablero or de encerado whenever speakers feel a need to be more precise since,in an office-supply context and in some regions, borrador by itself could refer to either achalkboard eraser or a pencil eraser (see section A10), and an almohadilla to either achalkboard eraser or an ink pad (see section C2). In Peru, in contrast, mota has only onemeaning in this context and therefore needs no modifier. While it would stand to reason thatlonger, specific forms such as borrador de pizarra would be more common in countrieswhere borrador, rather than goma (de borrar), is used in the sense of pencil eraser, researchneeds to be done to determine if this is actually true. Because sponges and small cushionsare sometimes used in place of standard felt chalkboard erasers, and were no doubt used forthis purpose more so in the past, it is also possible that in regions where almohadilla is usedto erase chalkboards some speakers make a distinction between an almohadilla (cushion orsponge used to wipe the chalkboard) and a borrador (standard chalkboard eraser with a feltpad). It would be interesting to research the terms’ social stratification in different regionsand, in particular, whether in some countries the word almohadilla (‘chalkboard eraser’and/or ‘cushion’) is used more in rural areas and by the elderly than by younger citydwellers. As cushions, sponges and other pads that are used to erase chalkboards becomeless and less common and, even in rural areas, are replaced by standard felt chalkboard

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erasers, this distinction between almohadilla and borrador, if one currently exists, may alsobecome moot. See Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru & Chile below.

Spain: To what extent do the terms cepillo, cepillo de borrar, paño and paño de borrar (‘chalkboarderaser’) compete with borrador in Spain? Neither cepillo nor paño is defined as a chalkboarderaser in the DRAE, nor was either term offered by the respondents in this study, but in theLéxico del habla culta studies dealing with usage in Madrid, Granada and Las Palmas deGran Canaria, cepillo and/or paño (de borrar) were offered by 9 out of 16 Madrileños, 3 outof 25 Granadinos, and 6 out of 12 Gran Canarios (Torres Martínez: 586; Salvador: 747;Samper Padilla: 479). Given that those studies were published in 1981, 1991 and 1998,respectively, and the fact that none of the 20 respondents in this study offered these terms,the following question arises: Have these Peninsular Spanish regionalisms been dyingout__unable to withstand the force and greater precision of General Spanish borrador, andperhaps due to the disappearance of the old-fashioned types of chalkboard erasers__or arecepillo and paño (‘chalkboard eraser’) still alive and well in Spain, perhaps still frequentlyused among Spaniards, especially of the older generations? It is true that the pool ofSpaniards who participated in my study were for the most part translators, age 40 and under,international in outlook, and sophisticated, in short, not ones who would be likely to call achalkboard eraser a cepillo or a paño.

Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru & Chile: How common is almohadilla(‘chalkboard eraser’) in these countries, and in which of them is this usage limited to certainprovinces, states, departments, or regions? The data presented in section A3.2 above suggestthat almohadilla (‘chalkboard eraser’) is marginal in Honduras, Colombia and Peru, and noevidence of its use in Venezuela and Chile was encountered in this study. One Nicaraguanstated that an almohadilla is a cloth that is moistened to wipe down chalkboards and isdistinct from a borrador, a standard chalkboard eraser. However, the DRAE indicates thatalmohadilla (‘chalkboard eraser’) is used in Nicaragua (see section A3.4 below). In addition,the Diccionario del habla actual de Venezuela states that almohadilla is used in the Andeanregion of Venezuela4, and defines this term as “5 And[es] Instrumento que se utiliza paraborrar el pizarrón” (Núñez). The Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos affirms thatalmohadilla is used in the sense of chalkboard eraser in so many different departments andregions of Colombia as to suggest that this usage is not constrained to or even typical of anyparticular part of the country5 (Haensch and Werner 1993a). And the Diccionarioejemplificado de chilenismos y de otros usos diferenciales del español de Chile, publishedin 1984, defines almohadilla as “2. Cojincillo para borrar la pizarra” but defines borradoras “Utensilio escolar provisto de una superficie blanda o esponjosa con que se borra en lapizarra” (Morales Pettorino), which perhaps implies (depending on how one interprets theword “cojincillo”) that some Chileans make or used to make this distinction betweenalmohadillas (pads or cushions used to erase chalkboards) and borradores (standard feltchalkboard erasers). However, in the Léxico del habla culta de Santiago de Chile studypublished in 1987, 12 out of 13 respondents offered borrador and 4 out of 13 almohadillain response to the chalkboard eraser question (Rabanales: 527). Therefore, if we assume thatthe item used by Rabanales’ team in its surveys was consistently a standard chalkboarderaser and not a sponge, cushion or pad__the study does not specify which item wastested__then the Diccionario ejemplificado de chilenismos’s claim that an almohadilla isdistinct from a borrador appears to be refuted. En fin, ya les he alargado mucho el cuento,y basta con decir que aún queda mucho por investigar.

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A3.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: almohadilla (B or D?), borrador (A), mota (D).DRAE definitions: borrador, “(De borrar). 5. Utensilio que sirve para borrar lo escrito con

tiza en una pizarra o sitio semejante”; almohadilla, “10. Bol., Chile, Col., Guat. y Nic. Cojínpequeño destinado a borrar lo escrito en las pizarras de las escuelas.”

Questions/Comments: If some Spanish speakers conceive of an almohadilla as a standardchalkboard eraser with a felt pad but others as a sponge or small cushion used for the same purpose,then the DRAE should define almohadilla as both a “borrador de pizarra” (or a “borrador depizarrón”) and as an “esponja o pequeño cojín destinado a borrar...” with the appropriate regionalspecifications in each case. On the other hand, if most Spanish speakers who use the termalmohadilla do not make such a distinction, then almohadilla can just be cross-referenced toborrador. In any case, mota needs to be defined as “Per. borrador de pizarra” or “Per. borradorde pizarrón.”

A4 CRAYON

A4.1 Summary

Crayola is the dominant term in 8 or 9 countries, crayón in 3 or 4, and in several more both wordscompete. Together crayola and crayón can perhaps be considered co-General Spanish terms as theremaining words are commonly used in far fewer countries. Creyón is frequently heard in Cuba andVenezuela, and the predominant usages in Spain and Chile are considerably different from thosefound in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world.

A4.2 Terms by Country (c. 8 terms plus variants)

SPAIN cera (8/20), pintura (de cera) (6/20), lápiz de cera (4/20), plastidecor (3/20), color decera (1/20).

MEXICO crayón (33/57), crayola (32/57), color (de cera) (6/57).GUATEMALA crayón (12/14), crayola (1/14), crayón de cera (1/14).EL SALVADOR crayola (12/17), crayón (7/17).HONDURAS crayola (15/20), crayón (4/20), color (2/20).NICARAGUA crayón (10/15), crayola (6/15), lápiz de cera (1/15), lápiz de color (1/15).COSTA RICA crayola (12/15), crayón (4/15), lápiz de color (1/15).PANAMA crayola (6/15), crayón (6/15), lápiz de cera (5/15), creyón (3/15).CUBA crayola (10/17), creyón (7/17), crayón (1/17).DOMIN. REP. crayola (12/13), crayón (4/13), lápiz de cera (1/13).PUERTO RICO crayola (17/17).VENEZUELA creyón (16/24), creyón de cera (7/24), color (2/24).COLOMBIA crayola (15/18), crayón (3/18), color (1/18).ECUADOR crayola (8/15), crayón (8/15), lápiz de cera (1/15), lápiz de color (1/15).PERU crayola (13/16), crayón (4/16).BOLIVIA crayón (15/17), crayola (3/17), lápiz de cera (1/17), pintura (1/17).PARAGUAY crayola (11/12), crayón (2/12), lápiz de color (1/12).URUGUAY crayola (10/10).

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ARGENTINA crayón (21/25), cerita (6/25), lápiz de cera (4/25), crayola (1/25), crayón de cera (1/25),lápiz de color (1/25), lápiz de grasa (1/25).

CHILE lápiz de cera (9/15), lápiz de color (3/15), crayola (1/15), crayón (1/15), lápiz cera (1/15).

A4.3 Details

Spain: Cera and pintura (de cera) are the dominant terms, but a few Spaniards who gave plastidecorindicated it is a brand name that is also sometimes used generically.

Uruguay: In this study, only crayola was offered (by 10 out of 10 respondents), but the Nuevodiccionario de uruguayismos indicates that both crayola and crayón are used in Uruguay andthat the latter is generally pronounced creyón or creión (Haensch and Werner 1993b). SeeArgentina below.

Argentina: The Diccionario del español de Argentina states that crayón is generally pronounced asif it were written creyón or creión, and that lápiz de cera and lápiz de grasa are also used inthis sense (Haensch and Werner 2000a). The pronunciation of crayón as creyón or creiónclaimed by Haensch and Werner, however, was contradicted by this study’s Argentinerespondents: Of the 21 out of 25 Argentines who gave crayón (which included a half dozenor more not from Buenos Aires), 10 offered the term orally and the pronunciation was clearlywith an /a/ sound in the first syllable, and another 8 of those who had given crayón or crayonas a written response confirmed this pronunciation (crayón) via e-mail. All Argentines whooffered crayón orally pronounced the y as Argentines typically do, that is, with rehilamiento,either as a sound like the g in English “beige,” or its devoiced version, like the sh in English“wish.” Thus the question remains as to who and where these Argentines are whosupposedly say creyón or creión. They may exist but, try as I might, I was unable to locateany. Although I threw in the towel after 21 crayón responses, I am fairly confident thatcrayón, and not creyón or creión, is the dominant spoken and written form of the word inArgentina.

Chile: Lápiz de cera is the dominant usage in Chile, but one Chilean offered lápiz cera (in writing),which appears to be a case of “de-dropping.” See Spelling & Variants in sections A6.3 andA7.3, and Related concept, “binder clip” in section B6.3 below for other possible examplesof this phenomenon.

Related concept, “pastel”: Is pastel used everywhere in the sense of “pastel” or “pastille,” that is,the “lápices blandos, pastosos y de colores variados” that the DRAE refers to in its definitionof pintura al pastel? If other terms exist, are they regionally distributed?

A4.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: cera (C), cerita (D), color (D), color de cera (F), crayola (B), crayón (F),creyón (F), creyón de cera (F), lápiz de cera (F), lápiz de color (C or D?), pintura (D), pintura decera (D). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: cera, “6. Lápiz compuesto de una materia colorante y cera”; crayola,“Cuba, Hond., Méx. y Ur. cera (|| lápiz)”; lápiz de color, “Composición o pasta que se hace convarios colores dándole la forma de puntas de lápiz, y sirve para pintar al pastel”; pastel, “6. Lápizcompuesto de una materia colorante y agua de goma.”

Comments: Peninsular Spanish usage cera (‘crayon’) would be an excellent candidate toreceive the “Esp.” regional designation, and if the DRAE really wants to be international in itsapproach, as it claims in its Preámbulo, sense 6 of cera should be cross-referenced to crayola rather

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than the other way around. The regional specifications in the definition of crayola indicate that theDRAE’s authors have only a vague notion of where this term is used, and they appear to be blissfullyunaware of the existence of crayón, a term which is not listed at all. This assumes they have notdeliberately suppressed the term crayón due to its status as an Anglicism–the English word “crayon”itself comes from French crayon (‘pencil’)–but this makes little sense since the DRAE does includecrayola, a word that is arguably just as much of an Anglicism as crayón given that the former comesfrom the American brand of crayons by the same name.

A5 (MAGIC) MARKER

A5.1 Summary

Marcador, commonly used in all Spanish-speaking countries with the possible exceptions of Spain,Peru and Chile, can be considered the General Spanish term. Plumón is frequent in Mexico, ElSalvador, Cuba, Peru, and Chile, and competes with marcador in several of these countries. Spain,Costa Rica, Panama, Puerto Rico, Uruguay (and perhaps Paraguay and Argentina) have highlyregional usages.

A5.2 Terms by Country (terms)

SPAIN rotulador (20/20), marcador (1/20).MEXICO marcador (40/54), plumón (25/54), pincelín (5/54), plumín (2/54).GUATEMALA marcador (14/14).EL SALVADOR plumón (14/17), marcador (8/17), páilot/pilot (2/17).HONDURAS marcador (15/15).NICARAGUA marcador (14/14).COSTA RICA páilot/pilot (15/18), marcador (7/18).PANAMA marcador (10/13), piloto (6/13).CUBA marcador (9/14), plumón (8/14).DOMIN. REP. marcador (12/14), magic marker (2/14).PUERTO RICO magic marker (11/14), marcador (8/14).VENEZUELA marcador (23/23).COLOMBIA marcador (17/18), plumón (3/18).ECUADOR marcador (14/14).PERU plumón (15/17), marcador (2/17).BOLIVIA marcador (15/15).PARAGUAY marcador (11/13), pincel (4/13), fibra (1/13).URUGUAY marcador (10/12), draipén/drypen (5/12), sylvapen (2/12).ARGENTINA marcador (18/19), fibra (2/19).CHILE plumón (14/15), marcador (3/15).

A5.3 Details

General: This section addresses a general class of writing instruments that in United States Englishare called “markers,” “magic markers,” “marker pens,” “felt-tip pens” (also spelled “felt-tipped pens”) and “porous-point pens,” among other names. Respondents in this study were

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specifically asked whether they used different base terms to refer to markers with a thick tipand ones with a thin tip, but were not asked to make finer distinctions between, say, fine-point markers (such as those manufactured by Sharpie) and even thinner porous-point pens(such as those produced by Flair). A majority of respondents from most countries said theyjust used modifiers to make the distinctions, that is, they indicated that they say marcadorde punta gruesa or marcador de punta fina, etc. However, some from Mexico, El Salvador,Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba and Puerto Rico stated that they used one base term for thick-tipped markers and another for thin-tipped ones. For example, some Salvadorans said thata plumón is a thick-tipped marker whereas a marcador is a thin one, and a few Cubans saidthe opposite, namely, that a marcador is a thick marker whereas a plumón is a thin one.However, others from these same countries attributed the opposite qualities to the respectiveterms. More research needs to be done on how different Spanish speakers differentiatebetween marcadores and plumones, and what words they use to refer to markers of variouswidths. See Related concepts, “highlighter” and other special types of markers at the end ofthis section.

Mexico: Most Mexican respondents in this study stated that marcador and plumón are synonyms,or indicated they only use one of the two terms for all types of markers. However, a numberof them said that a plumón is a thin marker, whereas a marcador is a thick one. Interestinglyenough, the Diccionario inicial del español de México (Ávila) does not define marcador inthe sense of any type of magic marker but does define plumón as “Especie de pluma paraescribir de tamaño grande y con una punta ancha: Préstame un plumón para poner minombre en esta caja de cartón.” The Diccionario del español usual en México (Lara Ramos)does not list plumón but does define marcador as “2 lápiz o pluma de punta muy ancha, quesirve para hacer trazos gruesos sobre alguna superficie.” Although both definitions use thewords “grande,” “ancho” and/or “grueso,” which suggests an instrument with a broadtip__but broad in relation to what, other markers or regular pens?__unfortunately neitherdictionary defines and contrasts both terms, or cross-references them, and therefore basedon the definitions it is hard to tell with any certainty whether Ávila and Lara Ramos considermarcador and plumón to be general markers, or specifically thick ones. Thus the questionremains as to how Mexicans generally view these two terms, whether as exact synonyms oras markers of differing thicknesses. The few Mexican respondents in this study who gavepincelín and plumín stated that these were felt-tip pens, but the numbers were so small (5 outof 54 and 2 out of 54, respectively) that the currency of these usages is called into question;neither term is listed in either of the two Mexican dictionaries mentioned above.

Costa Rica & Panama: Why did Costa Ricans adopt the Anglicism/brand name páilot or pilotwhereas Panamanians have Hispanized or “translated” this term to piloto?

Puerto Rico: Will the use of the term magic marker dwindle in Puerto Rico due to the prestige ofGeneral Spanish marcador? It appears that the term “magic marker” may be on the wane inUnited States English (being pushed out by “marker”), and this may also contribute to itsdecline in Puerto Rican Spanish. See endnote 8.

Colombia: In this study, marcador was the overwhelming choice by Colombian respondents, butthe Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos indicates that marcador, plumígrafo and rotuladorare all commonly used in Colombia in the sense of ‘marker’ (Haensch and Werner 1993a).How common are these non-marcador terms in Colombia? Is plumígrafo a synonym ofmarcador, or perhaps something slightly different? See Related concepts, “highlighter” andother special types of markers below.

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Uruguay: Marcador appears to be the dominant usage and was offered by almost all Uruguayanrespondents in this study. Draipén/drypen, in contrast, was given mostly by olderUruguayans, several of whom indicated that this usage is dying out and may soon beobsolete or archaic usage. A couple of Uruguayans stated that sylvapen, like drypen, was abrand name that became generic. The Nuevo diccionario de uruguayismos (Haensch andWerner 1993b) indicates that draipén, fibra and marcador are all used in this sense inUruguay. If the use of draipén (‘marker’) is on its death bed in Uruguay, will the termperhaps be resuscitated and rise again with a slightly modified and narrower meaning, ‘dryerase marker’? See Related concept, “whiteboard” in section A2.3 above.

Argentina: The Diccionario del español de Argentina states that marcador and fibra (‘marker’) areGeneral Argentine Spanish usages, and that felpa is used in this sense in northwestArgentina6 (Haensch and Werner 2000a).

Spelling & Variants: Most Costa Ricans pronounced their word for marker páilo(t) but spelled theword pilot, as it is written in English, and Puerto Ricans generally spelled magic marker asin English, but pronounced it as if it were written mayi márke(r) or mayi málke(l). Similarly,the Uruguayans who orally offered draipén and silvapén indicated they would spell the termsdrypen and sylvapen, respectively.

Related concepts, “highlighter” and other special types of markers: Only a few respondents in thisstudy were asked about fluorescent markers called “highlighters” in United States English,but some variation was encountered: destacador (Chile), marcador (Spain?, Costa Rica?,Chile?), marcatextos (Mexico), resaltador (Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico,Venezuela) and subrayador (Spain?). Can resaltador be considered the General Spanishterm for ‘highlighter’? Marcador resaltador appears to be the industry name in SpanishAmerica. Two Colombians stated that a fine-point marker used for drafting is called aflumáster. Are there different names in different places for “dry erase markers”? (SeeRelated concept, “whiteboard” in section A2.3 above.)

A5.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: draipén (F), drypen (F), magic marker (F), marcador (B), páilot (F), pilot (F),piloto (D), plumón (B), rotulador (C). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: rotulador, “2. Instrumento semejante a un bolígrafo o a una estilográfica,que escribe o dibuja con un trazo generalmente más grueso que el habitual, mediante una escobillao pincel de fieltro”; marcador, “7. Am. Cen., Arg., Ecuad., Par. y Ur. rotulador (|| instrumento paraescribir o dibujar)”; plumón, “3. El Salv. rotulador (|| instrumento para escribir o dibujar).”

Questions/Comments: Rotulador (‘marker’) may be used occasionally outside of Spain, butit appears to be essentially Peninsular Spanish usage and should not be presented in the DRAE asGeneral Spanish. Given its status as an españolismo, defining this term with the “Esp.” regionalspecification would be appropriate. The DRAE authors also seem to have only a vague notion ofSpanish American usages as evidenced by the fact that both marcador and plumón are used in manymore countries than those indicated by their definitions’ regional specifications. Costa Rica’s andPuerto Rico’s unique usages__páilot/pilot and magic marker, respectively__are not discussed at all.Are these two lacunae due to the fact that the DRAE is allergic to Anglicisms, or due to its editorslack of knowledge of Costa Rican and Puerto Rican usage? Or perhaps both? While it is debatablewhether or not the DRAE authors were aware of what was going on in Costa Rica and Puerto Ricoin this regard at the time the 2001 edition was being compiled, even if they had been it is unlikelythey would have reported it since they probably adhere to the New York Times’ motto of “All the

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News That’s Fit to Print.” Of course, what is and what is not “fit to print” is a matter of opinion andchanges over time and regimes.

A6 PEN A - BALLPOINT PEN or REGULAR PEN

A6.1 Summary

In a sense bolígrafo can be viewed as the General Spanish word for ballpoint pen insofar as it isrecognized, understood, and to some extent used everywhere. Yet bolígrafo is the most commonlyused term in only a handful of countries, probably only Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.Lapicero is common in much of Central America, Colombia and Peru; pluma in Mexico, Honduras,Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and coastal Ecuador; lapicera and birome in the River Plate region;and Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile have highly regional usages.

A6.2 Terms by Country (c. 15 terms plus variants)

SPAIN bolígrafo (19/20), boli (4/20), bic (1/20).MEXICO pluma (49/54), bolígrafo (24/54), pluma atómica (11/54), lapicero (1/54).GUATEMALA lapicero (14/14), bolígrafo (1/14), pluma (1/14).EL SALVADOR lapicero (16/18), bolígrafo (5/18), pluma (2/18).HONDURAS lápiz (de) tinta (11/21), pluma (9/21), bolígrafo (3/21), lapicero (2/21).NICARAGUA lapicero (12/14), bolígrafo (2/14), lápiz de tinta (1/14).COSTA RICA lapicero (14/15), bolígrafo (7/15).PANAMA pluma (10/13), bolígrafo (5/13).CUBA bolígrafo (13/17), pluma (10/17), lapicero (5/17).DOMIN. REP. lapicero (15/15), felpa (7/15), bolígrafo (2/15).PUERTO RICO bolígrafo (14/16), pluma (9/16), bic (1/16).VENEZUELA bolígrafo (20/22), pluma (8/22), lapicero (6/22), boli (1/22), kilométrico (1/22).COLOMBIA lapicero (19/32), bolígrafo (14/32), esfero (10/32), plumero (4/32), esferográfico

(2/32), bic (1/32), kilométrico (1/32), papermate (1/32).ECUADOR esfero (10/15), pluma (8/15), bolígrafo (5/15), esferográfico (3/15).PERU lapicero (17/17), bolígrafo (3/17).BOLIVIA puntabola (10/20), lapicero (8/20), bolígrafo (7/20), mango (3/20), esferógrafo

(1/20), tinta seca (1/20).PARAGUAY birome (9/12), bolígrafo (8/12), lapicera (3/12), lapicera a bolilla (1/12), pluma

(1/12).URUGUAY birome (8/11), lapicera (6/11), bolígrafo (3/11).ARGENTINA birome (17/22), bolígrafo (9/22), lapicera (6/22), lapicera birome (1/22), lapicera

bolilla (1/22).CHILE lápiz (de) pasta (8/15), bolígrafo (5/15), lapicera (a pasta) (5/15), pluma (1/15).

A6.3 Details

General: Respondents in this study were shown pictures of ballpoint pens with a cap and ones witha button (“retractable pens” or “clicking pens”), and many were specifically asked if theyused a different word for each type. Some said they did. For example, some Cubans

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indicated that a lapicero was a ballpoint pen with a cap whereas a bolígrafo was one witha button. However, the majority of respondents from all countries indicated that they usedthe same base term for both types of ballpoint pen and distinguished them through the useof modifiers. Some also claimed that a bolígrafo was a fancier ballpoint pen such as a Parkeror a Montblanc (a luxury item), whereas a lapicero or a pluma, etc., referred to lessexpensive ballpoint pens (such as a Bic), but, again, those who made such claims were asmall minority. Most respondents indicated that they would generally use a single base termfor all types of ballpoint pens and make distinctions by means of modifiers, i.e. pluma contapa or pluma con botón, lapicero de lujo or lapicero corriente, bolígrafo caro or bolígrafobarato, etc.

However, the interviews in this study also revealed that the word bolígrafo has acertain cachet in most Spanish American countries: Perhaps because many SpanishAmericans consider bolígrafo to be a fancier word for ballpoint pen than lapicera, lapicero,pluma, etc., they also tend to associate bolígrafo with fancier pens than the ones theyassociate with the more common terms. In Spain, in contrast, bolígrafo is the standard wordfor ballpoint pen and as such has a neutral value. In other words, the diglossia (and richness)that exists in Spanish America with respect to this item is absent in Spain, although Spainarguably has its own distinct diglossia that is weighted toward the lower end of the spectrumwith its standard bolígrafo vs. colloquial boli (see Spain below).

Among the topics relating to the ballpoint pen that need to be researched is thequestion of the different images–that is, the different types of pens–that the different wordsfor this object conjure up among different Spanish speakers. There is also the issue oftechnical vs. nontechnical and more precise vs. less precise usage. The terms listed in sectionA6.2 above can also refer to pens that have evolved beyond the traditional ballpoint pen. InEnglish, these newer-technology pens have various industry names such as “rollerball,”“rolling ball,” “gel roller,” “liquid point,” “liquid roller,” and “gel stick,” etc., but in theminds of most English speakers, or at least in their everyday usage, there is really only abipartite division of pens: There are fountain pens, and then there are any and all pens thatare not fountain pens, which are frequently thought of as “ballpoint pens” or, more often, asjust “pens.” And so it is in Spanish. The terms lapicera, lapicero and pluma can refer toeither of the two basic categories of pens, but because fountain pens are less common thanballpoint pens, rollerball pens, etc., Spanish speakers will often add some modifier, such asfuente, to lapicera, lapicero or pluma in order to specify a fountain pen (see section A7below), whereas many use the unmodified or base forms to refer to regular pens. Researchneeds to be done to determine how the different pen manufacturers have translated orfashioned Spanish names for “rolling ball,” “gel stick,” etc.

Spain: Boli is a shortened, colloquial form of bolígrafo that appears to be more common in Spainthan elsewhere.7

Mexico: Pluma is currently the dominant term. The relatively few respondents (11 out of 54) whooffered pluma atómica were for the most part born prior to 1960, and many of them statedthat this usage is dying out. A comparison of the evidence from the Lexico del habla cultade México study, published in 1978, in which 22 out of 25 educated respondents from theDistrito Federal indicated pluma atómica for the ballpoint pen (Lope Blanch: 474) suggeststhat a generation ago pluma atómica was much more common in Mexico than it is today.The notion that, in Mexico, pluma atómica’s star has been waning, and that of pluma rising,is also supported by dictionary evidence: The Diccionario del español usual en México (LaraRamos 1996) defines pluma atómica and not pluma in the sense of ballpoint pen, whereas

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the Diccionario inicial del español de México (Ávila 2003) defines pluma as a ballpoint penand does not list pluma atómica. Does pluma atómica derive from a former brand name, orfrom la bomba atómica and/or la era atómica given that the ballpoint pen came intowidespread use at about the same time the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945?

Dominican Republic: The respondents who offered the term felpa (7 out of 15) all stated that thiswas a fancier, smoother-writing pen (such as a rollerball pen) than a lapicero, which theysaid was a traditional ballpoint pen. In other words, felpas are fancier, smoother-writing, andsomewhat more expensive than lapiceros, but are not necessarily luxury ballpoint pens suchas Parkers or Montblancs.

Puerto Rico: Bolígrafo and pluma are the dominant terms according to this study’s respondents, butin the Léxico del habla culta de San Juan de Puerto Rico study, published in 1986, 5 out of12 educated persons from San Juan indicated “ball point” (in quotes) as the term forballpoint pen (López Morales: 168). Has the use of the term ball point in Puerto Ricodeclined between 1986 and 2006? If so, is this due to the fact that the ballpoint pen itself hasevolved into the rollerball pen and other newer technologies, or is it because many educatedPuerto Ricans, fed up with being unfairly labeled as Spanglish speakers8, have made aspecial effort to purge Anglicisms from their speech in an attempt to speak a more “castizo”variety of Spanish?

Colombia: How are the different words for ballpoint pen distributed within Colombia? This is a keyquestion in the field of Colombian Spanish lexical dialectology as it relates to school- andoffice-supply terminology. Let us try to partially address this issue by examining some ofthe available evidence.

The Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos indicates that bolígrafo is used throughoutthe country, that esfero, esferográfico and/or esferógrafo are used in various parts of interiorColombia (Antioquia, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Santander, el Valle) and that the truncatedform, esfero, is more common than the full form, esferográfico (Haensch and Werner1993a). The 32 respondents who participated in the present study do not account for allregions of Colombia, and are not that well distributed across the ones they do represent, butthey refuted Haensch and Werner’s findings in some respects and confirmed them in others.They consisted of 9 from Cundinamarca, 4 from Santander, 6 from el Valle, 4 fromAntioquia, 4 from the Atlantic Coast region or Costa (1 from Cartagena, Bolívar, 2 fromBarranquilla, Atlántico, and 1 from Santa Marta, Magdalena), 3 from Quindío, and 1 eachfrom Boyacá and el Chocó; their answers are broken down by region as follows: bolígrafo(4 from Cundinamarca, 3 from Santander, 2 from el Valle, 3 from Antioquia, and 1 eachfrom Atlántico and el Chocó); lapicero (4 from Santander, 6 from el Valle, 3 fromAntioquia, 3 from Quindío, and 1 each from Boyacá, el Chocó and Cundinamarca); esfero(9 from Cundinamarca and 1 from Boyacá); plumero (4 from the Costa); esferográfico (2from Cundinamarca); and bic, kilométrico and papermate (1 each from el Valle).

We note that lapicero is not defined in the Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos(Haensch and Werner 1993a), which is somewhat surprising given how thorough these twodialectologist-lexicographers are, and given that the use of lapicero (‘ballpoint pen’) is notnew in Colombia but has probably been around for many decades: Several of the olderColombian respondents in this study indicated that lapicero has been in use for as long asthey could remember, and it was certainly used in Colombia when I lived there in the mid1980s. The other sticking point on which Haensch and Werner’s assertions are called intoquestion is that esferógrafo did not turn up at all in the present study or in the Léxico delhabla culta de Santafé de Bogotá study, whose 25 educated Bogotanos gave the following

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answers: esfero (16), bolígrafo (11), esferográfico (4), lapicero (2), and kilométrico (1); oneother Bogotano in that study was apparently confused and indicated marcador (Otálora deFernández: 839). While the data from all of these studies are clearly limited in scope, wemay extrapolate, make some tentative findings and pose additional questions:

a) Bolígrafo, as we would expect, is not regionally marked within Colombia but isa parallel word that is used alongside several terms that are regionally distributed within thecountry.

b) Lapicero appears to be common in many if not most regions of the country outsideof Cundinamarca and the Costa. In fact, lapicero appears to be the most widespread regionalusage in Colombia as it is found in large areas of both eastern and western interior Colombia.

c) Esfero and its longer and less common etymological variant, esferográfico,appears to be much more common in Cundinamarca than in many other parts of the countrysuch as the Costa, Santander, and much of western interior Colombia (departments such asel Valle, Quindío and Antioquia, and probably Caldas and Risaraldas, which are located inbetween Quindío and Antioquia).

d) Plumero is, in all likelihood, a Costeñismo (a usage typical of Colombia’s AtlanticCoast region), but the question remains as to whether it is used throughout the Costa or onlyin certain departments. Is plumero also common in the western Costa, in departments suchas Córdoba, Sucre, and the Caribbean parts of Antioquia and el Chocó along the Golfo deUrabá? (Some Colombians this author spoke to do not even consider the Caribbean parts ofAntioquia and el Chocó to be part of “La Costa”: well, geographically perhaps, butculturally, no.) What about in the extreme eastern end of the Costa, in the Guajira, or movinginland into el Cesar?

e) Brand names such as bic, kilométrico and papermate are probably not regionallyweighted within Colombia but are (or were) occasionally used throughout the country asgeneric terms.

f) The issue of how frequently and where esferógrafo (‘ballpoint pen’) is used inColombia clearly requires further research. Haensch and Werner claimed in 1993 thatesferógrafo was used in several interior departments, including Cundinamarca, but noevidence of its use was encountered among the 25 Bogotanos in the Léxico del habla cultade Santafé de Bogotá study of 1997 or among any of the respondents in the present one.

g) Usage in many departments remains to be determined. In addition to the areasmentioned previously, no data were collected in this study from Tolima, Huila, Norte deSantander, Cauca, Nariño, Los Llanos, San Andrés y Providencia, and the ColombianAmazon, though usage in Leticia and other recently settled areas is probably a mixture ofdifferent varieties of Colombian Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Indigenous terms.

h) Based on the evidence examined, we can propose the following tentativeColombian ballpoint-pen bottom line: esfero (mostly Bogotá and surrounding areas),plumero (Costa), lapicero (most of the rest of the country), and bolígrafo (Pan-Colombianusage, not regionally weighted).

We began this subsection by asking a “key question” in the field of ColombianSpanish lexical dialectology regarding how the terms for ballpoint pen are regionallydistributed, and so we shall end it with a few more that are of a speculative nature: Willesfero, lapicero, and plumero all continue to coexist in Colombia, each within its own sphereof influence (like “soda,” “pop” and other regionally weighted names for ‘soft drink’ do inthe United States), or will one of the regional terms for ballpoint pen eventually squeeze outthe others and gain the upper hand throughout Colombia? Or will all regional words

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eventually fall prey to bolígrafo given that Colombia presents a fractured rather than a unitednational front and the fact that bolígrafo is already a serious competitor? Regional words forballpoint pen have thus far proven to be quite resilient and resistant to the unifying forcesof commercialization and globalization, even in cases such as Colombia, Ecuador andpossibly Bolivia that present a regionally divided rather than a united front. If the termlapicero survives and continues to thrive in Colombia, will one of its two commonly usedsenses, ballpoint pen and mechanical pencil (see section A9), smother the other, or can thispolysemy within the same country and within the same domain of office supplies remainstable? To the extent both esfero and lapicero (‘ballpoint pen’) continue to coexist andcompete in Colombia, how are the two viewed by Colombians from different regions whoare familiar with both usages? Which is considered más fino or “higher-class” and by whom?

Ecuador: In earlier unpublished surveys of Ecuadoran usage I conducted between 1990 and 1992,Costeños (Ecuadorans from the Costa or Coastal Region) offered me the term pluma almostexclusively, and Serranos (Ecuadorans from the Sierra or Highlands) gave esfero and, lessoften, esferográfico. However, this distinction between Costeño usage (pluma) and Serranousage (esfero) may no longer be as true as it once was: In the current study, conducted in2005-2006, quite a few educated Costeños offered esfero and/or esferográfico, sometimesin addition to pluma, and sometimes alone, that is, with no mention of pluma. It is thereforepossible that today, in the year 2006, educated Guayaquileños and other Costeños use esferoand esferográfico much more so than they did in 1990 and earlier. Quiteños and otherSerranos, on the other hand, do not appear to have acquired Costeño usage and haveremained steadfast in their use of and preference for esfero.9

Bolivia: There is limited evidence from this study to indicate that puntabola may be used more inLa Paz, lapicero more in Cochabamba, and mango perhaps more in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.Such evidence, however, is sketchy since most respondents were Paceños, and only ahandful were Cochabambinos or Cruceños. Mango and tinta seca, offered by only a fewinformants, may be shortened forms of mango de tinta seca, a term one person indicatedused to be somewhat common in Bolivia.

Argentina & Uruguay: The Diccionario del español de Argentina defines lapicera as “Se usa parareferirse genéricamente a instrumentos para escribir con tinta, especialmente bolígrafos y ÷lapiceras fuente” (Haensch and Werner 2000a). Some Argentines and Uruguayans indicatedthat a birome connotes an inexpensive ballpoint pen such as a Bic, whereas a lapicera refersmore to a fancier one. See General above.

Spelling & Variants: Lápiz de tinta (Honduras) and lápiz de pasta (Chile) are often shortened tolápiz tinta and lápiz pasta, respectively, in a process I call “de-dropping.” See Spelling &Variants in section A7.3, and Related concept, “binder clip” in section B6.3 below for otherpossible examples of this phenomenon.

Related concept, the pen’s “cap”: The terms referring to the “caps” used to cover ballpoint pens (orfountain pens) were not researched in this study in any systematic way. However, tapaappears to be the most frequently used word in everyday language in most countries,whereas capuchón appears to be more common in some countries such as Argentina andSpain. Is tapa the General Spanish term, and where is capuchón commonly used in thissense? In which countries, if any, is there diglossia such as capuchón (high-register term)vs. tapa (common term)?

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A6.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: birome (A), boli (C), bolígrafo (A), esfero (F), esferográfico (A), felpa (D),lapicera (B), lapicero (B), pluma (D), pluma atómica (A), puntabola (F). GPA = B!

DRAE definitions: bolígrafo, “(De bola y ́ -grafo). Instrumento para escribir que tiene en suinterior un tubo de tinta especial y, en la punta, una bolita metálica que gira libremente”; birome,“(Acrón. de L. Biró, 1899-1985, inventor húngaro-argentino, y J. J. Meyne, industrial húngaro ysocio del anterior; marca reg.). f. Arg., Par. y Ur. bolígrafo”; boli, “(Acort.). coloq. bolígrafo”;esferográfica, “Col. y Ecuad. bolígrafo”; esferográfico, “Col. y Ecuad. bolígrafo”; lapicera, “(Delapicero). 3. Ur. bolígrafo”; lapicero, “3. C. Rica, Guat. y Hond. bolígrafo”; pluma atómica, “Méx.bolígrafo.”

Questions/Comments: With regard to this item, the DRAE depicts Peninsular Spanish usageaccurately and Rioplatense Spanish usage fairly accurately, but its coverage of the rest of theSpanish-speaking world is spotty. The most glaring deficiency is the DRAE’s failure to include asense of pluma that reads “Cuba, Ecuad. Hond., Méx., Pan., P. Rico y Ven. bolígrafo.” Also, theregional specifications of lapicero’s definition need to be considerably expanded so that they includeEl Salvador, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and perhaps Cuba andVenezuela, in addition to Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras, countries that the DRAE does list.The DRAE also indicates that esferográfica (‘ballpoint pen’) is used in Colombia (and Ecuador), butno evidence of its use in Colombia is found in the Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos (Haenschand Werner 1993a), the Léxico del habla culta de Santafé de Bogotá study (Otálora de Fernández)or the present study. Do the DRAE authors know something in this regard that we don’t, or are theyjust blowin’ smoke?

A7 PEN B - FOUNTAIN PEN

A7.1 Summary

Pluma fuente and/or pluma are the most frequently used terms in most countries and can beconsidered the General Spanish terms, though the former is clearly more precise than the latter.Lapicera, with the modifier fuente or standing alone, is used in the Southern Cone. In Spain,Honduras, Cuba and Colombia more regionally marked terms are common.

A7.2 Terms by Country (c. 10 terms plus variants)

SPAIN pluma (16/20), (pluma) estilográfica (12/20), estilógrafo (1/20).MEXICO pluma fuente (43/56), bolígrafo (4/56), pluma (3/56), pluma de tinta china (3/56), pluma

estilográfica (2/56), estilográfica (1/56), pluma de fuente (1/56), pluma de tinta (1/56), plumade tintero (1/56).

GUATEMALA pluma (8/12), pluma fuente (4/12).EL SALVADOR pluma (13/16), pluma fuente (3/16), pluma de fuente (1/16).HONDURAS canutero (6/12), pluma fuente (3/12), pluma (2/12), chinógrafo (1/12), plumero (1/12).NICARAGUA pluma (11/12), pluma fuente (3/12).COSTA RICA pluma (11/15), pluma fuente (3/15), pluma de fuente (2/15), plumilla (1/15).PANAMA pluma fuente (5/10), pluma de tinta (mojada) (3/10), pluma (2/10), estilográfica

(1/10).

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CUBA pluma de fuente (12/16), pluma (5/16), estilográfica (1/16), estilógrafo (1/16).DOMIN. REP. pluma (10/10), pluma fuente (1/10).PUERTO RICO pluma fuente (8/17), pluma (5/17), pluma de caligrafía (3/17), estilográfica (1/17),

pluma de fuente (1/17), pluma de tinta (1/17), pluma de tintero (1/17).VENEZUELA pluma fuente (13/22), pluma (12/22), pluma de fuente (1/22), pluma de tinta (1/22).COLOMBIA estilógrafo (18/18), pluma (6/18), pluma (de) fuente (2/18), estilográfico (1/18).ECUADOR pluma fuente (5/14), pluma (4/14), canutero (2/14), estilógrafo (2/14), pluma de tinta

(1/14), plumero (1/14).PERU pluma (7/17), lapicero de tinta líquida (3/17), lapicero de tinta (china) (2/17), pluma de tinta

china (2/17), pluma fuente (2/17), lapicero de pluma (1/17), pluma de tinta líquida (1/17).BOLIVIA pluma fuente (9/15), pluma (7/15), pluma de escribir (2/15), estilete (1/15).PARAGUAY lapicera (6/12), pluma (5/12), pluma fuente (3/12), lapicera (a) fuente (2/12),

lapicero (2/12), lapicera pluma (1/12), pluma a fuente (1/12).URUGUAY pluma fuente (7/10), lapicera fuente (5/10), pluma (3/10), lapicera (2/10),

lapicera de pluma (1/10), lapicera de tinta (1/10).ARGENTINA lapicera fuente (9/22), lapicera (6/22), pluma (5/22), estilográfica (4/22), pluma

fuente (4/22), lapicera de tinta (2/22), lapicera a pluma (1/22), pluma de tinta (1/22).CHILE pluma (7/15), lapicera fuente (5/15), lapicera (3/15), lapicera a tinta (1/15), lapicera

pluma (1/15).

A7.3 Details

General: Today, in the early 21st century, fountain pens are much less common than they were inthe first half of the 20th, and they are also considerably more expensive than ballpoint pens.As a result, many of the younger and/or less educated respondents in this study were unableto name the fountain pen, or they offered the same term for the fountain pen that they hadpreviously given for the ballpoint pen. When this happened, the answer given for the formerwas discarded and was not counted as part of the data that appear in section A7.2 above.Given that the fountain pen itself is somewhat of a status and/or identity symbol (unlike anyof the other items discussed in this article), it seems likely that most Spanish speakers whoregularly use fountain pens instead of ballpoint pens are familiar with what is arguably thehigh-prestige term for the former, (pluma) estilográfica, but the extent to which this is reallytrue needs to be researched. See Questions/Comments in section A7.4 below.

Cuba: The Diccionario del español de Cuba indicates that pluma fuente and pluma de fuente arevariants (Haensch and Werner 2000b), but in this study only the form with the de wasoffered by Cuban respondents. See Spelling & Variants below.

Colombia: The Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos confirms that estilógrafo is used throughoutthe country and states that plumero (‘fountain pen’) is used in the Atlantic Coast region(Haensch and Werner 1993a). However, the small amount of data collected from Costeñosin the present study indicates that plumero refers to a ballpoint pen in the Costa (seeColombia in section A6.3 above).

Spelling & Variants: Some respondents in this study, including educated ones, spelled pluma fuenteas a single word, plumafuente. To determine the extent to which this term is generallyconsidered a single unit, a compound term consisting of a noun modified by an adjective, ora principal noun used with an appositive noun, it would be worthwhile to investigate whichplural form is most common in both speech and writing, something respondents were notasked about in this study.10 Pluma fuente and pluma de fuente can also be considered variants

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of each other, and it is interesting to note that the former was given much more often thanthe latter in all countries in which one or both of these terms were offered, with one glaringexception, Cuba. This poses the following questions: Were the two variants, pluma fuenteand pluma de fuente, coined at more or less the same time, both being calques of “fountainpen” and both deriving independently from English, or is pluma de fuente the older of thetwo terms, and does pluma fuente derive from pluma de fuente by a process of “de-dropping”? (See Spelling & Variants in section A6.3 above, and Related concept, “binderclip” in section B6.3 below for other possible examples of this phenomenon.) If so, is theprevailing usage in Cuba (pluma de fuente) an “archaism” that has survived in Cuba but isdying out in most of the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, and can this be explained byCuba’s economic, cultural and linguistic isolation? Regardless of the origin of the differencebetween Cuba’s current usage and that of countries where pluma fuente is predominant, willCuba eventually drop the de from its pluma de fuente and bring its usage in line with that ofmost other countries, or will the Cubans stand firm in their use of pluma de fuente as wellas in their political and economic system? Further research needs to be done to try to resolvethe linguistic issues. See Presilla in section B6.3 below for information on another case inwhich Cuban usage stands out from the rest.

A7.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: canutero (D), estilográfica (C), estilógrafo (A or B?), lapicera (B), lapicerade tinta (F), lapicera fuente (F), lapicero de tinta líquida (F), pluma de fuente (F), pluma de tinta(F), pluma de tinta china (F), pluma de tinta mojada (F), pluma estilográfica (C?), pluma fuente (A).GPA = D+

DRAE definitions: pluma estilográfica, “pluma de escribir que lleva incorporado un depósitorecargable o un cartucho para la tinta”; estilográfica, “2. pluma estilográfica”; estilógrafo, “Bol.,Col. y Ecuad. pluma estilográfica”; lapicera, “(De lapicero). 2. Arg. y Ur. pluma estilográfica”;pluma fuente, “Am. pluma estilográfica.”

Questions/Comments: An argument can be made that pluma fuente should be the lead termto which all other more regional synonyms would be cross-referenced since pluma fuente appearsto be the most international and least regionally marked term.11 Regardless of which term is selectedas the lead, pluma de fuente and lapicera fuente should be cross-referenced to it and given theregional specification labels of “Cuba” and “Arg., Chile, Par. y Ur.,” respectively. With regard toterms such as lapicera de tinta, lapicero de tinta líquida and pluma de tinta mojada, etc. it remainsto be seen how often these are used in the sense of fountain pen, but regardless of their frequencyof use, an argument can be made that they should not be defined in dictionaries on the grounds thatthey are imprecise: Ballpoint pens and other types of pens also have ink in them and, in order tofunction, all inks must be wet at the time one puts pen to paper, though the ink used with fountainpens and rollerball pens is generally more liquid, wetter, than that used with ballpoint pens. Shouldthe question of whether to include these terms in a dictionary be made on the basis of their frequencyof use or the accuracy of their coinage? This boils down to a more general philosophical question:To what extent should a dictionary be prescriptive or descriptive?

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A8 PENCIL A - REGULAR PENCIL

A8.1 Summary

Lápiz is the General Spanish term. Regionally marked usages are common in Spain, Honduras,Nicaragua and Chile.

A8.2 Terms by Country (5 terms plus variants)

SPAIN lápiz (18/20), lapicero (6/20).MEXICO lápiz (58/58).GUATEMALA lápiz (13/13).EL SALVADOR lápiz (16/16), lápiz de grafito (1/16).HONDURAS lápiz (de) carbón (11/22), lápiz (9/22), lápiz (de) grafito (5/22).NICARAGUA lápiz (9/14), lápiz (de) grafito (6/14), lápiz de carbón (1/14).COSTA RICA lápiz (11/11).PANAMA lápiz (12/12).CUBA lápiz (17/17).DOMIN. REP. lápiz (13/13).PUERTO RICO lápiz (17/17).VENEZUELA lápiz (23/23), lapicero (1/23).COLOMBIA lápiz (17/17).ECUADOR lápiz (14/14).PERU lápiz (16/16).BOLIVIA lápiz (16/16).PARAGUAY lápiz (10/10).URUGUAY lápiz (10/10).ARGENTINA lápiz (21/21).CHILE lápiz (7/15), lápiz grafito (4/15), lápiz (a) mina (3/15), lápiz de mina (3/15).

A8.3 Details

General: The word lápiz by itself has several meanings throughout the Spanish-speaking world,where it could conceivably refer to a lápiz de labios (‘lipstick’), a lápiz de ojos (‘eyebrowpencil’) and other types of lápices that are not standard lead pencils, but in most countriescontext generally makes the meaning clear. In Honduras and Chile, however, the term lápizis quite ambiguous as it can refer to two different objects within the school- and office-supply domain. See Honduras and Chile below.

Spain: How common is lapicero (‘pencil’) in Spain? Sense 2 of the DRAE’s definition of lapiceroindicates that it is simply a synonym of lápiz (see section A8.4 below), but how do Spaniardstend to view this usage, i.e., neutro, raro, rebuscado? How, if at all, is its use distributed ormarked in Spain, that is, socially, regionally, by age, etc.?

Honduras: Lápiz refers to a pencil when modified by (de) carbón or (de) grafito, and to a ballpointpen when modified by (de) tinta (see section A6). Therefore, if you go to Honduras and asksomeone ¿Me puede(s) prestar un lápiz?, you may get a ballpoint pen, or a pencil, or youmay be asked, ¿De qué tipo lo quiere(s)? ¿de carbón o de tinta?

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Chile: Lápiz by itself has about the same level of ambiguity in Chile as it has in Honduras, and theclarifying modifiers added to it in Chile are grafito, de mina or a mina; the latter two oftenget reduced to just mina. In other words, if you ask a Chilean for a lápiz, he or she mayrespond impatiently ¿lápiz mina o lápiz pasta?

A8.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: lapicero (C), lápiz (A), lápiz carbón (F), lápiz de carbón (F), lápiz grafito (F),lápiz de grafito (F), lápiz mina (F), lápiz a mina (F), lápiz de mina (F). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: lápiz, “(Del lat. lapis, piedra). 2. Barra de grafito encerrada en un cilindroo prisma de madera, que sirve para escribir o dibujar”; lapicero, “2. lápiz (|| barra de grafito).”

Comments: The DRAE’s coverage is limited to General Spanish usage, lápiz, and Spain’sown regional usage, lapicero. It needs to address the regional usages of Honduras, Nicaragua andChile. The DRAE’s definition of lápiz could also stand for some slight modernizing since the“cilindro o prisma” in which the lead of many pencils is now encased is not made of pure wood butof a recycled and partially synthetic material.

A9 PENCIL B - MECHANICAL PENCIL, AUTOMATIC PENCIL or SELF-SHARPENING PENCIL

A9.1 Summary

Portamina(s) is commonly used in about half the Spanish-speaking world and can perhaps beconsidered the General Spanish term. Lápiz de mina(s), lápiz mecánico, lapicero and lapicera arealso used in a number of countries.

A9.2 Terms by Country (c. 15 terms plus variants)

SPAIN portaminas (15/20), lapicera (3/20), lápiz automático (2/20).MEXICO lapicero (55/57), portaminas (3/57), lápiz de puntilla (1/57), lápiz mecánico (1/57).GUATEMALA portamina(s) (10/12), lápiz de mina (1/12), lápiz portaminas (1/12).EL SALVADOR portamina(s) (5/14), lápiz de mina(s) (4/14), lápiz mecánico (2/14), lápiz con filmina

(1/14), portalápiz (1/14), puntamina (1/14).HONDURAS portamina(s) (7/9), lápiz (de) grafito (2/9).NICARAGUA lápiz de ceba (3/8), lápiz de mina (3/8), lápiz mecánico (3/8).COSTA RICA lápiz de mina(s) (7/13), portaminas (4/13), cargaminas (1/13), lapicero (1/13), lápiz

con minas (1/13), lápiz mecánico (1/13).PANAMA lápiz mecánico (7/9), lapicero (1/9), lápiz de mina (1/9).CUBA lapicero (11/16), portamina(s) (5/16).DOMIN. REP. portaminas (4/8), lápiz de punta (3/8), lápiz de mina (1/8).PUERTO RICO lápiz mecánico (10/13), lapicero (2/13), lápiz automático (1/13).VENEZUELA portamina(s) (21/22), lapicero (1/22).COLOMBIA portaminas (13/20), lapicero (8/20), lápiz mecánico (2/20).ECUADOR lapicero (9/12), lápiz de mina(s) (2/12), portaminas (2/12), lapicero de mina (1/12).PERU portamina(s) (11/16), lapicero de minas (1/16), lápiz de mina (1/16), lápiz mecánico (1/16).

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BOLIVIA portamina(s) (4/16), lapicera (3/16), lapicero (3/16), lápiz con mina (2/16), lápiz de mina(2/16), micropunta(s) (2/16), lapicera micropunta (1/16), lápiz mecánico (1/16), lápiz portamina(1/16).

PARAGUAY portamina(s) (6/9), lápiz mecánico (2/9), lápiz a mina (1/9).URUGUAY lápiz mecánico (7/9), lápiz de mina (1/9), portaminas (1/9).ARGENTINA portamina(s) (9/19), lápiz mecánico (8/19), lápiz a mina (1/19), lápiz automático

(1/19).CHILE portamina(s) (9/15), lápiz (a) mina (3/15), lápiz mecánico (2/15), lápiz de mina (1/15).

A9.3 Details

General: Given that portaminas, lápiz de mina(s) and lápiz mecánico appear to be used in much ofthe Spanish-speaking world (though not with equal frequency), perhaps all three can beconsidered General Spanish terms for mechanical pencil. The use of lapicero (‘mechanicalpencil’), in contrast, is more regional since in some countries this term generally refers toa ballpoint pen, and in others to a pencil or pencil holder. (See the DRAE’s definitions oflapicero in sections A6.4 and A8.4 above, and A9.4 below.) In this study, many respondentswere unable to name the mechanical pencil, or offered the same term for this item that theyhad previously given for the regular pencil (typically lápiz). When this occurred, the answersfor the mechanical pencil were discarded and are not included in the data presented insection A9.2 above. Are there Spanish-speaking specialists who distinguish between aportaminas, a lápiz mecánico, and/or other terms, that is, in technical usage do the baseterms refer to different types of mechanical pencils?

Venezuela: In this study, 21 out of 22 Venezuelan respondents, mostly Caraqueños, indicatedportaminas, and only 1 out of 22 gave lapicero. However, the Léxico del habla culta deCaracas study, published in 1998, suggests that lapicero is the dominant usage in this citysince 10 out of 12 educated Caraqueños offered it, whereas portaminas was given by only1 out of 12 (Sedano: 428). What factors can explain this significant difference in results intwo studies that were conducted only eight years apart? What do Caraqueños and otherVenezuelans today generally call a mechanical pencil? A lapicero, a portaminas, or are bothterms used with about equal frequency?

Colombia: In this study, most but not all of the Colombians who offered lapicero (‘mechanicalpencil’) were from Cundinamarca. For information on the use of lapicero in the sense of‘ballpoint pen,’ see section A6 above.

Argentina: In the Léxico del habla culta de Buenos Aires study, published in 1998, all 6 respondentswho answered the question offered lápiz automático, and in the Léxico del habla culta deCórdoba, Argentina study, published in 2000, portaminas was given by 7, lápiz automáticoby 4, and lápiz de mina by 2 (Academia Argentina de Letras: 325; Toniolo: 537). In contrast,the Argentines in the present study were almost equally divided between portamina(s) andlápiz mecánico, and only one born in 1937 offered lápiz automático. Do Argentines who arefamiliar with mechanical pencils generally prefer one term over the other, or is there seriouscompetition in Argentina among portamina(s), lápiz mecánico and/or lápiz automático? Islápiz automático used more by older Argentines?

Chile: In the Léxico del habla culta de Santiago de Chile study, published in 1987, 11 out of 12educated Santiaguinos indicated lápiz automático for a mechanical pencil (Rabanales: 528),whereas in this study portaminas was given by a majority of Chilean respondents. Whichterm is more prevalent?

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Spelling & Variants: This study’s respondents often spelled and/or pronounced portaminas as portaminas, porta mina, porta-mina, porta-minas or portamina. Similarly, lápiz de minas wasfrequently offered in the variant form of lápiz de mina. In section A9.2 above, portamina(s)and lápiz de mina(s) are umbrella terms used to represent all of the respective variants.

A9.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: lapicera (D), lapicero (B), lápiz a mina (F), lápiz automático (F), lápiz deceba (F), lápiz de mina (F), lápiz de punta (F), lápiz mecánico (F), portaminas (A). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: portaminas, “Instrumento de metal, madera o plástico, que contiene minasde recambio y se utiliza como lápiz”; lapicero, “4. Méx. portaminas.”

Questions/Comments: Lápiz mecánico (‘mechanical pencil’) is quite common in Panama,Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Argentina and should be defined in the DRAE in this sense withappropriate regional specifications if this usage is found to be regional and without any if it is foundto be General Spanish. Does the DRAE not define lápiz mecánico because its editors are simplyunaware of its existence, or do they consider its meaning to be too easily deduced from itscomponent parts to warrant an explanation? Or have they suppressed lápiz mecánico because theyconsider it a calque of English “mechanical pencil,” that is, due to a mortal fear of Anglicisms?Whether or not lápiz mecánico actually derives from “mechanical pencil” is debatable as the formercould just as easily have been coined independently within the normal processes of term formationin Spanish. Lápiz de mina(s) (‘mechanical pencil’) is also common in a number of countries andperhaps should be defined as well, but DRAE editors may be unaware of the term’s existence or mayobject to it on the grounds that it lacks specificity insofar as all pencils used for writing (not onlymechanical pencils) have a mina (‘lead’). Finally, the regional specifications of lapicero(‘mechanical pencil’) need to be expanded to include, at a minimum, Cuba, Colombia and Ecuador,in addition to Mexico, which the DRAE does list.

A10 PENCIL ERASER and/or PEN ERASER

A10.1 Summary

Borrador is dominant in about twice as many countries (13) as goma (de borrar) (6), and the formerperhaps should be viewed as the General Spanish term. On the other hand, both terms are probablyused to some extent throughout the Spanish-speaking world and can also be considered co-GeneralSpanish terms. In most countries there are clear preferences for one or the other term. Borra is usedin the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, especially in informal language, and Boliviahas a unique usage, jebe, albeit one that appears to be less common there than the General Spanishterms.

A10.2 Terms by Country (4 terms plus variants)

SPAIN goma (de borrar) (19/20), borrador (2/20).MEXICO borrador (55/58), goma (de borrar) (25/58).GUATEMALA borrador (14/14).EL SALVADOR borrador (14/14).HONDURAS borrador (15/15), goma de borrar (1/15).

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NICARAGUA borrador (14/14), goma (1/14).COSTA RICA borrador (14/15), goma (1/15).PANAMA borrador (14/14).CUBA goma (de borrar) (16/17), borrador (1/17).DOMIN. REP. borrador (10/14), borra (7/14), goma (de borrar) (4/14).PUERTO RICO goma (de borrar) (13/16), borra (6/16), borrador (4/16).VENEZUELA borrador (18/24), borra (11/24), goma (de borrar) (9/24).COLOMBIA borrador (17/17).ECUADOR borrador (14/14), goma para borrar (2/14).PERU borrador (16/16).BOLIVIA borrador (14/20), goma (de borrar) (11/20), jebe (6/20).PARAGUAY borrador (10/12), goma (de borrar) (5/12).URUGUAY goma (de borrar) (10/10).ARGENTINA goma (de borrar) (22/22).CHILE goma (de borrar) (14/15), borrador (2/15).

A10.3 Details

General: Goma de borrar is often shortened to goma, and borrador can be expanded to borradorde goma, borrador de caucho, borrador de hule, borrador de lápiz, etc., depending onwhether the speaker or writer is favoring precision or efficiency; caucho and hule (‘rubber’)are themselves somewhat regionally weighted terms, the former being more common in partsof South America and the latter in Mexico and most of Central America. A less commonvariant of goma de borrar is goma para borrar, and one can also specify goma de lápiz,goma de tinta, etc.

Borrador vs. goma de borrar: Goma (de borrar) is more common than borrador in Spain, Cuba,Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, that is, in 6 countries. Borrador is morecommon than goma (de borrar) in Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, theDominican Republic, Venezuela and Paraguay, that is, in 13 countries, but in Mexico, theDominican Republic, Venezuela and Paraguay goma (de borrar) competes with borrador,though not very successfully. The only country from which respondents in this study werealmost evenly divided between the two terms was Bolivia, and more research is needed todetermine whether Bolivians are in fact split down the middle between borrador and goma(de borrar), with many Bolivians using and accepting both terms (as was revealed in thisstudy), or whether preferences exist within the population as a whole or among specificsectors of society such as educated vs. uneducated, etc. Despite borrador’s overalldominance when viewing the Spanish-speaking world as a whole, goma de borrar may enjoya higher level of prestige or acceptability than borrador due to the following factors:

a) Goma de borrar sounds more “specific,” that is, it is a less polysemous term thanborrador which can refer to a chalkboard eraser, a rough draft, a sketch, a scratch pad, adaybook, etc.

b) Goma de borrar is the term used in Spain and perhaps enjoys what we might call“the madre patria mystique.”

However, the first argument, that goma de borrar is more specific, immediately fallsby the wayside when it gets shortened to its habitual form goma, in which case goma(‘rubber,’ ‘gum,’ ‘glue,’ ‘rubber band,’ ‘tire,’ ‘hangover,’ ‘condom,’ etc.) is arguably lessspecific than borrador. More research needs to be done to determine whether or not it is true

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that those who use borrador (‘pencil/pen eraser’) tend to have a neutral attitude toward gomade borrar, whereas those who use goma de borrar tend to have a negative attitude towardborrador.

Borra: Borra (‘pencil/pen eraser’) is common in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico andVenezuela. The term is defined by the Diccionario de venezolanismos, published in 1983,as “jerg[a] esc[olar] Goma para borrar” (Tejera), which suggests that it pertains to a very lowregister, but the Diccionario del habla actual de Venezuela, published in 1994, defines borrain neutral terms as “2 Pieza de goma que se utiliza para borrar trazos hechos con lápiz sobrepapel” (Núñez). It often happens that words that start out as slang manage to gainrespectability as time goes on. However, based on comments made by this study’sDominican, Puerto Rican and Venezuelan respondents, I would split the baby and describeborra as colloquial usage. In other words, it is probably fair to say that in these Caribbeancountries borra (‘pencil/pen eraser’) enjoys low prestige vis-à-vis both borrador and goma(de borrar), but that borra is by no means limited to student slang.

Jebe: More research needs to be done to determine how common the use of jebe (‘pencil/peneraser’) is in Bolivia, and whether or not this usage is regionally marked within this country.The very limited data collected in this study suggest that it may be more common inCochabamba than in La Paz as most of those who offered it were Cochabambinos.

A10.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: borra (D), borrador (A), goma (A), goma de borrar (A), jebe (D). GPA = BDRAE definitions: goma de borrar, “La [goma] elástica preparada especialmente para borrar

lo escrito con lápiz o con tinta”; borrador, “6. goma de borrar”; goma, “3. goma de borrar.”Comments: As illustrated in section A10.2 above, there are clear regional preferences in the

use of borrador and goma (de borrar). However, because each term is used in over half the Spanish-speaking world and is probably well-known among educated speakers throughout the Spanish-speaking world, I agree with the DRAE’s decision not to include regional specifications in thedefinitions of either term. Selecting goma de borrar as the lead term (to which all others are cross-referenced) also makes sense since it is the more specific term, whereas choosing borrador as thelead term could be ambiguous. However, using borrador de goma as the cross-reference would workjust as well as goma de borrar except that it occupies more space as it has two more letters. Thedefinitions of borra and jebe need to be expanded so that they include a sense corresponding to‘pencil/pen eraser’; I would define borra as “10. coloq. P. Rico, R. Dom. y Ven. goma de borrar”and jebe as “3. Bol. goma de borrar.”

A11 PENCIL SHARPENER

A11.1 Summary

Sacapuntas and its twin brother sacapunta are the General Spanish terms, but tajador and/or itscousin tarjador are common in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru and Bolivia. Spain, Costa Rica andColombia have highly regional usages some of which appear to be regionally marked within therespective country.

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A11.2 Terms by Country (c. 7 terms plus variants)

SPAIN sacapuntas (20/20), afilalápices (3/20), afilapuntas (1/20), maquineta (1/20).MEXICO sacapunta(s) (58/58).GUATEMALA sacapunta(s) (14/14).EL SALVADOR sacapunta(s) (14/14).HONDURAS sacapunta(s) (15/15).NICARAGUA tajador (10/15), tarjador (8/15), sacapunta (2/15).COSTA RICA tajador (11/18), sacapuntas (6/18), maquinilla (5/18).PANAMA sacapunta(s) (14/14).CUBA sacapunta(s) (17/17).DOMIN. REP. sacapunta(s) (17/17).PUERTO RICO sacapunta(s) (17/17).VENEZUELA sacapunta(s) (24/24), afilador (1/24).COLOMBIA sacapunta(s) (16/17), tajalápiz (9/17).ECUADOR sacapunta(s) (14/14).PERU tajador (15/17), tarjador (3/17), sacapuntas (2/17).BOLIVIA tajador (17/17), sacapuntas (1/17).PARAGUAY sacapunta(s) (10/10).URUGUAY sacapunta(s) (10/10).ARGENTINA sacapunta(s) (21/21).CHILE sacapunta(s) (15/15).

A11.3 Details

General: Respondents were asked to identify both a hand-held pencil sharpener like the one depictedin figure A11 and a desk- or wall-mounted one with a crank like the one that appears infigure A11', but they were not asked about electric pencil sharpeners. The data presented insection A11.2 above are those obtained for the hand-held pencil sharpener, but see Relatedconcept, “desk- or wall-mounted pencil sharpener” below for information on the type witha crank.

Spain: All Spaniards in this study gave sacapuntas and by all accounts this is the dominant term forthis item in Spain. In addition, the DRAE defines afilalápices in this sense with no regionalspecification (see section A11.4 below), and the 3 respondents in this study who gaveafilalápices were from far-flung regions of the country, Galicia, Barcelona and Granada.This suggests that afilalápices is, or at one time was, commonly used in many if not mostregions of Spain. However, there also appear to be several regional words for pencilsharpener that are floating around in various parts of the country. For example, the DRAEdefines tajalápices in this sense as a regionalism of Asturias (see section A11.4 below), andin the Léxico del habla culta de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria study, half of the respondentsindicated that afilador is the word they use for pencil sharpener (Samper Padilla: 480-481).In the present study, two respondents from Barcelona offered maquineta and of these, onesaid maquineta was the Catalán term and the other that it was the term she would use evenwhen speaking Spanish; a respondent from León indicated afilapuntas. As it seems likelythat some of these madre patria regionalisms will soon die out, if you are a regionalismenthusiast, you had better enjoy them while they last as their days may be numbered.

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Colombia: Is tajalápiz regionally marked within Colombia, and if so, in what regions of the countryis this term commonly used? The evidence reviewed in this study suggests that tajalápiz isregional. For example, the Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos indicates that tajalápiz isused in the departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca (Haensch and Werner 1993a), and inthe Léxico del habla culta de Santafé de Bogotá study, tajalápiz was given by 22 out of 25educated Bogotanos (Otálora de Fernández: 840). In the present study, tajalápiz was offeredby 6 respondents from the department of Cundinamarca (all of whom were Bogotanos), butalso by 2 from Santander and by 1 from el Chocó; most of these persons also offeredsacapuntas or sacapunta. Other respondents from the departments of Santander (2),Atlántico (1), Antioquia (2), el Valle (3) and Quindío (1) gave only sacapunta(s). However,to the extent the standard of a country’s capital frequently gets adopted by people from theprovinces, it may be hard to pin down the use of tajalápiz as being limited to any specificregions of Colombia, even if this term is shown to be used more often in Cundinamarca,Boyacá and other eastern interior departments than elsewhere. Can the use of tajalápiz inColombia or parts of Colombia be linked to a large number of immigrants from Asturias orother regions of Spain where tajalápices is or was commonly used (see Spain above), or isthe use of tajalápiz in Colombia best attributed to a process of word formation withinColombian Spanish that is independent of settlers’ origins or other outside influences?

Sacapuntas vs. sacapunta: Both the form with a word-final s (sacapuntas) and the one without it(sacapunta) appear to be common in much of the Spanish-speaking world, thoughsacapuntas is probably the higher-prestige variant in most countries. Sacapuntas is the onlyform listed in many dictionaries, but the Diccionario del español de Cuba not only definessacapunta but also indicates it is the standard term in Cuba, the Cuban equivalent ofPeninsular Spanish sacapuntas (Haensch and Werner 2000b). In this study, sacapuntas wasoften spelled and/or pronounced sacapunta, saca puntas and saca punta, as well asoccasional instances of zacapuntas and zacapunta, etc., by uneducated respondents. Insection A11.2 above, sacapunta(s) is an umbrella term used to represent all of these variants.The actual ratios of sacapunta and other variants without a final s to all variants of the termwere as follows: Spain (0/20), Mexico (4/58), Guatemala (3/14), El Salvador (8/14),Honduras (11/15), Nicaragua (2/2), Costa Rica (0/6), Panama (6/14), Cuba (6/17),Dominican Republic (12/17), Puerto Rico (7/17), Venezuela (10/24), Colombia (2/17),Ecuador (7/14), Peru (0/2), Bolivia (0/1), Paraguay (1/10), Uruguay (2/10), Argentina (1/21)and Chile (5/15). This means that none of the 20 Spaniards queried offered sacapunta orother variants without a final s, and all of them gave sacapuntas or other variants with a finals, 4 out of 58 Mexicans indicated sacapunta, and so on for the respondents from othercountries. However, I would not attach too much weight to these ratios for several reasons:

a) As explained in this article’s Introduction, respondents’ educational levels variedconsiderably;

b) Responses were obtained by two different methods, orally and in writing; and, c) I am neither a phonetician nor a phonologist (the lexicon is my “shtick”12), and it

is possible that some of the responses I recorded orally as sacapunta were in fact sacapuntaswith a heavily aspirated word-final /s/, that is, with a barely perceptible [h] that I failed toperceive. In other words, even though the words were often pronounced in isolation or semi-isolation, sometimes sacapuntas may have been pronounced with a word-final [h] that Iperceived as [i] and therefore wrote down sacapunta.

However, even with these caveats, sacapunta does appear to be much more commonin some countries than in others: Compare, for example, the ratios of sacapunta responses

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to combined sacapunta and sacapuntas responses for Honduras (11/15) and the DominicanRepublic (12/17) to those of Spain (0/20) and Argentina (1/20). More research needs to bedone to determine how common the form sacapunta is in speech and in writing amongdifferent layers of society in different regions and whether or not, or the extent to which,sacapunta is more frequent in areas where word-final /s/ tends to be aspirated or deleted thanin ones where it is more often retained.

Tajador vs. tarjador: Tajador and/or tarjador were found to be used in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peruand Bolivia, and a number of respondents indicated that tajador is considered the prestigeform and tarjador is viewed as “incorrecto” or a “barbarismo.” Further studies need to bedone to determine where tarjador is used and its level of acceptance or stigma vis-à-vistajador. For example, the results of this study suggest that in Nicaragua tarjador may beused by large numbers of educated speakers but that its use may be more stigmatized in Peru.

Related concept, “desk- or wall-mounted pencil sharpener”: Respondents generally offered the samebase term for the desk- or wall-mounted pencil sharpener as they had for the hand-held one,sometimes adding a modifier such as de mesa, de escritorio, de manivela, de pared ormecánico for purposes of differentiation. In the case of Costa Rica, many respondents statedthat a tajador or a maquinilla was the hand-held device and a sacapuntas the desk- or wall-mounted one. A few from Nicaragua, Peru and Bolivia also made this distinction betweenta(r)jador (hand-held pencil sharpener) and sacapunta(s) (desk- or wall-mounted one), butin these 3 countries those who used a different base term for each type were a smallminority; most Nicaraguans, Peruvians and Bolivians just said ta(r)jador for both types, orta(r)jador modified by de mesa, de escritorio, etc., for the larger one.

A11.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: afilalápices (C), maquinilla (A), sacapunta (F), sacapuntas (A), tajador (B),tajalápiz (F), tarjador (D). GPA = C

DRAE definitions: sacapuntas, “Instrumento para afilar los lápices”; afilalápices,“sacapuntas”; maquinilla, “2. C. Rica. sacapuntas”; tajador, “5. C. Rica. sacapuntas”; tajalápices,“Ast. sacapuntas.”

Comments: The regional specifications in the DRAE’s definition of tajador need to beexpanded to include Nicaragua, Peru and Bolivia, in addition to Costa Rica, which the DRAE doesmention. Tajalápiz also needs to be included as an entry and defined as “Col. sacapuntas” as wellas tarjador, perhaps with a definition of “2. pop. Nic. y Per. sacapuntas.” If afilador is as commonin the Canary Islands as Samper Padilla’s study suggests (see Spain in section A11.3 above), thenthis term should be defined (under afilador, ra) as “6. m. Can. sacapuntas.”

B FASTENERS

B1 RUBBER BAND

B1.1 Summary

There is no General Spanish term. The words with the greatest following in terms of the number ofcountries where they are frequently used are liga (commonly used in about 8 countries), gomaand/or gomita (6 countries), and hule (4 countries). Colombia and Chile have highly regional usages.

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B1.2 Terms by Country (c. 10 terms plus variants)

SPAIN goma (17/20), goma elástica (6/20), banda elástica (2/20), gomilla (2/20).MEXICO liga (58/58), banda de hule (3/58), banda (1/58), liga de hule (1/58).GUATEMALA hule (13/14), amarrador (1/14), cinta de hule (1/14).EL SALVADOR hule (15/16), banda (de hule) (2/16), liga (2/16), elástico (1/16).HONDURAS hule (14/15), banda de hule (1/15).NICARAGUA hule (14/14).COSTA RICA liga (13/14), hule (2/14), liga de hule (1/14).PANAMA liga (14/15), elástico (1/15).CUBA liga (16/17), banda elástica (1/17), elástico (1/17), goma (1/17).DOMIN. REP. gomita (13/16), goma (9/16), banda elástica (1/16), elástico (1/16), liga (1/16).PUERTO RICO gomita (10/17), goma (8/17), gom(it)a elástica (2/17), liguilla (2/17), rubber band (2/17),

bandita de goma (1/17), caucho (1/17).VENEZUELA liga (22/24), gom(it)a (2/24), banda de goma (1/24), elástica (1/24).COLOMBIA caucho (11/17), cauchito (5/17), liga (4/17), banda de caucho (3/17), gom(it)a

(2/17), banda elástica (1/17), elástico (1/17).ECUADOR liga (13/16), elástico (4/16), goma (1/16).PERU liga (15/17), jebe (3/17), liga de jebe (2/17), banda (1/17), cinta elástica (1/17).BOLIVIA liga (13/18), banda (elástica) (2/18), elástico (2/18), goma (1/18).PARAGUAY gomita (6/12), goma (5/12), banda de goma (2/12), liga (2/12), caucho (1/12), elástico

(1/12), gomita elástica (1/12).URUGUAY band(it)a elástica (7/10), gomita (6/10), bandita (1/10), elástico (1/10), goma (1/10).ARGENTINA gomita (14/22), band(it)a elástica (12/22), bandita (1/22), cinta de goma (1/22),

goma (1/22), gomita elástica (1/22).CHILE elástico (12/15), elástico de billete (4/15), goma (1/15).

B1.3 Details

General: Given the fractured nature of the international panorama with respect to this item, and thefact that each of the “big three” usages–liga, gom(it)a and hule–can be easily objected tobecause the terms have other meanings, it is possible that each will eventually fall prey tomore “precise-sounding” (if less colorful) terms such as banda de goma, banda elástica orsimilar forms which are in fact used by some speakers and are probably preferable from amarketing and corporate-model industry standpoint.

Spain: Goma is the dominant term in Spain but the 2 Spaniards who gave gomilla were both fromAndalucía.

Colombia: The Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos confirms that caucho and cauchito are thegeneral Colombian Spanish terms, i.e. that the diminutive does not necessarily refer to asmall rubber band. This source also indicates that resorte (‘rubber band’) is used in Nariño(Haensch and Werner 1993a), a department in the extreme southwest part of the countrybordering Ecuador.

Argentina: In addition to General Argentine Spanish gomita, the Diccionario del español deArgentina indicates that gomilla is used in northwest Argentina and elastiquín in the Cuyoregion (Haensch and Werner 2000a).13

Diminutives: The standard diminutive forms bandita elástica, cauchito, gomita, hulito and liguitaappear to be used quite often by Spanish speakers who are not necessarily referring to a

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small rubber band. In this study, liguita or hulito was offered by Mexicans, CentralAmericans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, Peruvians and Bolivians, but less frequentlythan the base terms liga and hule, and in section B1.2 above the latter are umbrella terms thatrepresent both liga/liguita and hule/hulito, respectively. In contrast, in Argentina andUruguay, gomita is a diminutive form that has taken on its own separate meaning (it is a“lexicalized diminutive”), and it is used much more often in the sense of rubber band thanthe base form, goma. In other regions, such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico andColombia, the diminutives and base forms__goma/gomita or caucho/cauchito__compete. Ingeneral, much research remains to be done on the issue of when Spanish speakers fromdifferent regions use diminutives for affective reasons, that is, for purposes other than torefer to small versions of the base term. One common example of this is when makingrequests, sometimes obsequiously, as in ¿No tienes una liguita que me prestes? or Ay, no seamalito, présteme una liguita. In these cases, the requester uses the diminutive form of liga(in addition to the phrases’ particular syntax, morphology and intonation, etc.) not to obtaina small rubber band, but to try to soften and minimize the request and to curry favor with therequestee.

B1.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: banda (D), banda de caucho (F), banda de goma (F), banda de hule (F),banda elástica (F), caucho (D), cauchito (F), elástico (D?), goma (C), gomita (B), hule (D), jebe(D), liga (D). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: goma, “2. Tira o banda elástica”; elástico, “6. Cinta o cordón elástico”;gomita, “Arg. y Ur. goma (|| tira o banda elástica).”

Questions/Comments: The DRAE’s definitions of goma and elástico are somewhat vague.Compare how much more helpful and precise the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of“rubber band” is to a dictionary user, whether a native or nonnative speaker of English, who did notalready know the meaning of the term: “An elastic loop of natural or synthetic rubber used to holdobjects together. Also called regionally gum band” (Pickett). The DRAE should define this objectas “Banda elástica, de forma circular u ovalada, que se usa para sujetar objetos.” Wouldn’t this bea lot clearer than “Tira o banda elástica”? Also, the DRAE tells us that a goma can be a “tiraelástica” and an elástico a “cinta elástica,” but because the two terms are not cross-referenced toeach other we are not told that they are (geo)synonyms. Yet from the data presented in section B1.2above we know they are. With regard to coverage, the DRAE once again defines Peninsular Spanishusage (goma) as if it were General Spanish usage and fails to address those found in large swathsof the Spanish-speaking world, including Mexico, Central America, Cuba and all of South Americawith the exception of the River Plate region. Even in the case of gomita, which the DRAE doesdefine, the regional specifications are far too restrictive as they fail to include the DominicanRepublic, Puerto Rico and Paraguay. Sería prematuro declarar acabada la época de los lexícografosque no se mueven de su despacho o biblioteca, pero si los autores del DRAE nunca han pisado unaescuela u oficina en un país de habla hispana que no sea España, lo cual parece ser el caso, ya eshora de que lo hagan.

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B2 STAPLE (noun)

B2.1 Summary

Grapa is the General Spanish term. Its variant, grampa, is commonly used in a half dozen or morecountries in popular speech and in several cases, it would appear, also in standard speech. Panama,Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile have highly regional usages.

B2.2 Terms by Country (c. 7 terms plus variants)

SPAIN grapa (20/20).MEXICO grapa (58/58).GUATEMALA grapa (12/14), grampa (3/14).EL SALVADOR grapa (9/14), grampa (5/14).HONDURAS grapa (12/18), grampa (5/18), clip/clic (2/18).NICARAGUA grapa (14/14).COSTA RICA grapa (13/14), grampa (6/14).PANAMA clip/clic (7/13), grapa (7/13).CUBA presilla (16/17), grapa (1/17).DOMIN. REP. grapa (10/16), grampa (5/16), clip/clic (3/16).PUERTO RICO grapa (10/16), clip/clic (9/16), staple (1/16).VENEZUELA grapa (23/24), grampa (1/24).COLOMBIA gancho (9/16), grapa (9/16), ganchito (1/16), presilla (1/16).ECUADOR grapa (12/15), grampa (3/15).PERU grapa (13/17), grampa (7/17).BOLIVIA grampa (15/17), grapa (2/17).PARAGUAY presilla (7/12), grampa (4/12), ganchito (1/12), grapa (1/12).URUGUAY grampa (5/10), ganchito (4/10), grapa (2/10), gancho (1/10).ARGENTINA ganchito (14/24), broche (12/24), gancho (6/24), grapa (2/24), grampa (1/24),

presilla (1/24).CHILE corchete (15/15).

B2.3 Details

General: Respondents were asked to identify standard office staples used for fastening sheets ofpaper together and these were shown next to a manual desk stapler. Research needs to bedone to determine whether some speakers use different base terms for other types of staplessuch as industrial staples used in construction or medical staples used in surgery, but seeAgrafe and Presilla below for very limited information regarding possible ways someSpanish speakers may differentiate. All of the sociolinguistic issues described in this sectionsurrounding the use of grampa and clip apply equally to the terms derived from them forstapler and staple remover that are addressed below in sections B3 and B4, respectively.

Agrafe: The Diccionario del español de Argentina states that in Argentina agrafe (‘staple’) is asynonym of General Argentine Spanish broche and gancho (Haensch and Werner 2000a),and the Nuevo diccionario de uruguayismos indicates that agrafe was once used in this sensein Uruguay but describes this usage as obsolete (Haensch and Werner 1993b). However,none of the Argentine respondents in the present study offered agrafe in response to the

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question on staples, and this usage appears to be obsolete in Argentina as well, if it was evercommon. The 1981 edition of the Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado dictionary defines agrafe as“Med. Galicismo por grapa” with no regional specification.

Clip vs. clic: In Panama and Puerto Rico, clip is generally written with a p and pronounced clip inmore careful speech, but in normal speech it is more often pronounced as if it were writtenclic or cli. Regardless of how it is pronounced or written, cli(p) or cli(c) is a somewhatstigmatized usage in Panama and Puerto Rico and grapa is the high-prestige term.

Grapa vs. grampa: Grampa was offered by a nontrivial number of respondents from El Salvador,Honduras, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, andsome respondents from almost all of these countries objected to the use of this term andmade statements such as “la gente dice grampa, pero es incorrecto, lo correcto es grapa” or“grampa es un barbarismo,” etc. This same linguistic insecurity applies to the terms derivedfrom grampa such as engrampador(a) and sacagrampa(s), etc., that are addressed in sectionsB3 and B4 below. We note, however, that the DRAE defines grampa as simply a synonymof grapa (see section B2.4 below) with no indication such as “familiar,” “colloquial,”“substandard,” etc. that its use is restricted to any particular style, register or group. Moreresearch needs to be done to determine the level of acceptance or stigma grampa has in thecountries where it is used. Based on the responses and comments offered by this study’srespondents, it appears that grampa is stigmatized in Central America (grapa being theprestige form), but may enjoy a relatively high level of acceptance in Peru, Bolivia, Paraguayand Uruguay.

Presilla: Some Paraguayan respondents indicated they distinguish between a presilla (office staple)and a grampa (industrial staple). In Cuba, presilla can also refer to a paper clip (see sectionB6 below).

B2.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: broche (D), clip (D), corchete (D), ganchito (B), gancho (D), grampa (A orC?), grapa (A), presilla (B). GPA = C+

DRAE definitions: grapa1, “(Del cat. grapa, y este del franco *krâppa, gancho). Pieza dehierro u otro metal, cuyos dos extremos, doblados y aguzados, se clavan para unir o sujetar dostablas u otras cosas. || 2. Pieza metálica pequeña que se usa para coser y sujetar papeles”; ganchito,“2. Cuba y Ur. grapa (|| pieza metálica para sujetar papeles)”; grampa, “grapa1”; presilla, “(Deldim. de presa). 3. Cuba. grapa (|| pieza metálica pequeña que se usa para sujetar papeles).”

Questions/Comments: Once again the DRAE fails to address usage found in large tracts ofthe Spanish-speaking world. In this case, its definitions do not accurately reflect or describe usagein Panama, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile. The DRAE also claims thatganchito is used in the sense of staple in Cuba, but no evidence of this was encountered in this study(see section B2.2 above), nor is this usage listed in the Diccionario del español de Cuba (Haenschand Werner 2000b). The DRAE should also make the glosses in the cross-references uniform; seethe definitions of ganchito and presilla above for inconsistencies in this regard. Should the DRAEindicate that the use of grampa is restricted (perhaps in certain countries) by including in itsdefinition of this term a usage mark such as “Pop.” or a narrative explanation? See Grapa vs.grampa in section B2.3 above.

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B3 STAPLER

B3.1 Summary

Grapadora and/or engrapadora are commonly used in about 13 countries and can be considered co-General Spanish terms. Variants of these such as engrampadora and engrapador are also frequentin several countries. Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina andChile have highly regional usages that in most cases involve terms that do not derive from grapaor grampa.

B3.2 Terms by Country (c. 10 terms plus variants)

SPAIN grapadora (20/20).MEXICO grapadora (38/58), engrapadora (27/58), engrapador (1/58).GUATEMALA engrapadora (11/14), engrampadora (3/14), engrampador (1/14), grampadora (1/14).EL SALVADOR engrapadora (10/21), engrampador (4/21), engrampadora (3/21), engrapador (3/21),

grampador (2/21), grapadora (1/21).HONDURAS grapadora (12/20), engrapadora (3/20), engrampadora (2/20), grampador (2/20),

grampadora (2/20).NICARAGUA engrapadora (14/14).COSTA RICA engrapadora (12/15), engrampadora (6/15), grapadora (2/15).PANAMA engrapadora (9/17), clipsadora/clicsadora (5/17), ponchadora (5/17),

grapadora (3/17), clipeadora (1/17).CUBA presilladora (15/17), engrapadora (1/17), presillador (1/17).DOMIN. REP. grapadora (10/16), grampadora (4/16), engrapadora (2/16), clipeadora (1/16),

engrampadora (1/16).PUERTO RICO grapadora (15/17), clipeadora (8/17), engrapadora (1/17).VENEZUELA engrapadora (20/23), grapadora (2/23), engrampador (1/23).COLOMBIA cosedora (12/18), grapadora (8/18), engrapadora (3/18), engrampadora (1/18),

presilladora (1/18).ECUADOR grapadora (8/18), engrampadora (7/18), engrapadora (4/18), engrapador (1/18).PERU engrapador (13/17), engrampador (3/17), engrapadora (3/17), engrampadora (2/17).BOLIVIA engrampadora (14/20), engrampador (5/20), engrapadora (2/20).PARAGUAY presilladora (11/13), grampadora (2/13), engrampadora (1/13), abrochadora (1/13),

presillador (1/13).URUGUAY engrampadora (7/10), engrapadora (2/10), abrochadora (1/10).ARGENTINA abrochadora (20/22), abrochador (1/22), engrapadora (1/22).CHILE corchetera (15/15).

B3.3 Details

General: The item shown to respondents was a manual desk stapler (see figure B3), not an electricstapler or other non-office types such as an industrial staple gun, etc. To a large extent, theregional distribution in Spanish of the words for stapler closely mirrors that of the words forstaple. For example, where speakers say broche, corchete or presilla for staple, theypredictably say abrochadora, corchetera or presilladora, respectively, for stapler. However,to use a concept from mathematics, we can say that there is not a “one-to-one and onto”

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dialectal mapping of the terms for the two items. First, because people from Spain,Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia and coastal Ecuador who saygrapa or grampa for staple tend to say grapadora or grampadora for the stapler, whereaspeople from most of Central America, Venezuela, Highland Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia andUruguay, who also say grapa or grampa, tend to use engrapador(a) or engrampador(a).Mexicans, also of the grapa persuasion, are pretty much split down the middle betweengrapadora and engrapadora. And then there are the many Colombians and Argentines whosay gancho or ganchito for the staple and cosedora and abrochadora, respectively, for thestapler.

Spain: All 20 respondents in this study offered grapadora as did the overwhelming majority of theeducated Madrileños, Granadinos and Gran Canarios queried in the corresponding Léxicodel habla culta studies (Torres Martínez: 589; Salvador: 750; and Samper Padilla: 481).However, in two of these Léxico del habla culta studies, 1 out of 16 Madrileños and 1 outof 12 Gran Canarios indicated cosedora. Thus it would appear that in 1981, when the Madridstudy was published, and in 1998, the year of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria study,cosedora (‘stapler’) was already a marginal usage at best in Madrid and in the CanaryIslands, respectively. If this usage is either dying out or dead throughout Spain, it wouldmake sense that it might have lasted a little longer in Spain’s periphery than in its capital.The 22nd edition of the DRAE, published in 2001, makes no mention of cosedora (‘stapler’).Considering all of the above evidence in the aggregate, it seems likely that the use ofcosedora (‘stapler’) in Spain, if not already kaput, will soon kick the bucket.

Colombia: In the Léxico del habla culta de Santafé de Bogotá study, published in 1997, cosedorawas the overwhelming favorite among educated Bogotanos: 21 out of 25 said cosedora vs.only 6 out of 25 who said grapadora. In this study, Colombians from different regions werequeried, though about half were from the capital or from surrounding areas in the departmentof Cundinamarca; based on their responses (cosedora by 12 out of 18 and grapadora by 8out of 18), it appears that cosedora and grapadora are the two dominant usages in Colombiaand that the former may be more common in Cundinamarca and perhaps neighboringdepartments such as Boyacá and the latter more frequent in much of the rest of the country.

Ecuador: The data from this study suggest that grapadora is more common in the Costa or coastalregion and engrampadora and engrapadora more frequent in the Sierra or Highlands. Is thisso?

Related concept, the verb “to staple”: The terms for “stapler” presented in section B3.2 above derivefrom regionally weighted verbs for “to staple,” most of which in turn derive from a regionalnoun for “staple.” In the following list of verbs, countries with a question mark next to themindicate that in this study few respondents from that country offered the corresponding verb,and more research needs to be done to determine how common these verbs are in thecountries in question: abrochar (Argentina, from broche), corchetear (Chile, from corchete),coser (Colombia), clipear (Puerto Rico, from clip), clipsar/clicsar (Panama, from clip),engrampar (Guatemala?, El Salvador?, Honduras?, Costa Rica, Ecuador?, Peru, Bolivia,Uruguay, from grampa), engrapar (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras?, Nicaragua,Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia?, Uruguay?, from grapa),grampar (Honduras?, Dominican Republic?, Paraguay?, from grampa), grapar (Spain,Mexico, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Ecuador, from grapa),ponchar (Panama, from English “punch”), and presillar (Cuba, Paraguay, from presilla). Itshould be noted that while most Spanish speakers use a word for stapler that derives fromthe verb they use for “to staple” and which, in turn, derives from their word for the noun

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“staple” (e.g. they say engrapadora, engrapar and grapa, or grapadora, grapar and grapa),some speakers in this study “mixed and matched” or “blended,” that is, they offerednonparallel combinations, saying grapadora was the stapler but indicating engrapar was theverb, or saying that grapas were staples but engrampar was the verb, etc. More researchneeds to be done to determine how prevalent this type of “mixing and matching” or“blending” is among speakers from the different regions of the Spanish-speaking world.

B3.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: abrochadora (F), clipeadora (F), clipsadora (F), corchetera (F), cosedora (F)engrampador (F), engrampadora (B), engrapador (F), engrapadora (A), grampador (F),grampadora (F), grapadora (A), ponchadora (F), presilladora (B). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: engrapadora, “Máquina que sirve para engrapar papeles”; grapadora,“Utensilio que sirve para grapar”; engrampadora, “El Salv., Hond. y Ur. grapadora”; presilladora,“Cuba. grapadora.”

Comments: Engrapadora is defined differently from grapadora, neither is cross-referencedto the other, and there is no statement in the definitions that the two terms are synonyms, which weknow to be the case. The DRAE’s failure to inform us that engrapadora and grapadora aresynonyms could easily lead a dictionary user to believe that the two refer to distinct, though perhapsrelated items. (Though it defines them similarly, the DRAE also does not cross-reference the verbsengrapar, defined as “Asegurar, enlazar o unir con grapas,” and grapar, defined as “Sujetar congrapas.”) In addition to the problems with the definitions of grapadora and engrapadora discussedabove, most of the regional terms for stapler are either not defined at all in the DRAE or are definedwith inaccurate regional specifications.

B4 STAPLE REMOVER

B4.1 Summary

Sacagrapa(s) is the dominant term in 10 countries, and is used to some extent in most of the rest.It can therefore be considered the General Spanish term. People in Spain, Cuba, Bolivia, Paraguay,Uruguay, Argentina and Chile tend to use terms that are more regional in nature.

B4.2 Terms by Country (c. 40 terms plus variants)

SPAIN quitagrapas (13/20), desgrapadora (2/20), sacagrapas (2/20), cerdito (1/20), escarabajo(1/20), extraegrapas (1/20), pinza para desgrapar (1/20).

MEXICO sacagrapa(s) (29/57), quitagrapa(s) (12/57), uña(s) (8/57), desgrapador (6/57),desgrapadora (6/57), desengrapadora (3/57), desengrapador (1/57), perro (1/57), vampirito(1/57).

GUATEMALA sacagrapa(s) (10/13), desengrampador (1/13), desgrapador (1/13), quitagrapas (1/13).EL SALVADOR sacagrapa(s) (7/14), desengrampador (3/14), quitagrapa(s) (3/14), uñas (2/14),

desengrampadora (1/14), sacador de grapas (1/14).HONDURAS sacagrapa(s) (10/15), uña(s) (5/15), desgrampadora (1/15), desengrampadora (1/15),

quitagrapa (1/15), sacagrampa (1/15).NICARAGUA sacagrapa(s) (10/14), desengrapadora (2/14), desengrapador (1/14), quitagrapa (1/14).

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COSTA RICA sacagrapa(s) (11/14), uña(s) (6/14), sacagrampas (2/14).PANAMA sacaclip/sacaclic (5/14), sacagrapa(s) (4/14), uñas (4/14), desengrapador (1/14),

uñero (1/14).CUBA sacapresilla(s) (10/15), quitapresilla (4/15), desengrapadora (1/15).DOMIN. REP. sacagrapa(s) (8/11), desclipeador (1/11), quitagrapas (1/11), sacador de grampas (1/11).PUERTO RICO uña(s) (6/12), sacagrapa(s) (4/12), sacaclips (2/12), desgrapadora (1/12), removedor

de clips (1/12), removedor de grapas (1/12).VENEZUELA sacagrapa(s) (23/24), removedor de grampas (1/24).COLOMBIA sacaganchos (6/16), sacagrapas (6/16), quitagrapas (3/16), quitaganch(it)os (2/16),

descosedora (1/16), removedor de presillas (1/16), uñas (1/16).ECUADOR sacagrapa(s) (12/15), sacagrampas (3/15).PERU sacagrapa(s) (10/16), sacagrampas (4/16), desengrampador (2/16), desengrapador

(1/16), quitagrampas (1/16), removedor de grampas (1/16).BOLIVIA sacagrampa(s) (10/17), desengrampador (2/17), quitagrampa(s) (2/17), sacagrapa(s)

(2/17), desengrampadora (1/17), perrito (1/17), sacador de grampas (1/17).PARAGUAY desgrampador (2/11), desgrampadora (2/11), quitapresillas (2/11), sacapresilla(s) (2/11),

desprendedor de presillas (1/11), despresillador (1/11), despresilladora (1/11), sacaganchitos(1/11), sacapresillas (1/11).

URUGUAY sacaganchos (4/8), desengrampadora (1/8), quitagancho (1/8), removedor de grampas(1/8), sacagrampas (1/8).

ARGENTINA sacaganch(it)os (9/19), sacabroches (8/19), desabrochador (2/19), desengrapadora(1/19), quita-abroches (1/19).

CHILE sacacorchete(s) (14/15), desengrapadora (1/15), quitacorchetes (1/15).

B4.3 Details

General: The item shown to respondents was a “jaws type” staple remover (see figure B4). Thewords for staple remover generally derive from the words for staple, and as is to be expected,the regional distributions for the former item closely mirror those of the latter. In otherwords, those who say grapa for staple generally say sacagrapa(s) or quitagrapa(s) for stapleremover, and those who use corchetes or presillas to bind sheets of paper together will forthe most part use a sacacorchete(s) or a sacapresilla(s), respectively, to unstaple them.Words such as sacagrapa(s), quitagrapa(s), sacapresilla(s) and sacacorchete(s), etc. arestandard terms, whereas uña(s) probably occupies a middle register as it sounds less formaland “official” than the standard terms. A very small number of respondents offered whatappear to be slang, colloquial and/or humorous words such as cerdito and escarabajo(Spain), perro (Bolivia, Mexico), and vampirito (Mexico), but it remains to be seen howextensive a following such usages have and in what contexts they are used. Lastly, there arespeakers who, having no idea what these devices are called, resort to periphrasis, that is,circumlocution, and accurately describe the object as el aparatito (que se usa) para sacarlos/las __ or other similar phrases, with the blank space being filled in with whatever termthey use for staples. Such periphrastic and non-aerodynamic expressions were offered onlyoccasionally in this study but were not included in the data presented in section B4.2 above.

Spelling & Variants: Sacagrapas is often spelled and/or pronounced sacagrapa, saca grapas, sacagrapa, saca-grapas, and saca-grapa, and the other compound terms quitagrapa(s),quitagancho(s), quitapresilla(s), sacabroche(s), sacacli(ps), sacacorchete(s), sacagancho(s),sacagrampa(s), sacapresilla(s), etc. also have the same types of variants: Sometimes they

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are written as one word, sometimes as two, sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes without,and most appear to occur with or without a final s. Sacaclip was also offered in the form ofsacaclic and sacaclick. (See the comment about the use of block, instead of bloc, in the entryfor “notepad, pad of paper” in Appendix below.) The term uñas can be singular or plural or,put another way, a single pair of staple removers can be called either uña or uñas. It is thesame type of singular-plural variation that occurs with terms such as alicate(s), pinza(s) andtijera(s).

B4.4 Real Academia Regional Review

Questions/Comments: None of the 40 plus terms for staple remover presented in section B4.2above is defined in the DRAE, including the most frequently used term overall, sacagrapas, or theone most often used in Spain, quitagrapas. However, perhaps we should not judge the DRAE tooharshly for these lacunae since the meanings of the Spanish-language words for staple remover canall be deduced from the meanings of their components. In other words, if readers understand whatquitar or sacar and grapas or broches mean, they can probably deduce what sacagrapas,quitagrapas or sacabroches mean. On the other hand, a term like sacabroches is not at alltransparent to Spanish speakers who do not know the Argentine meaning of broche in an office-supply context. More importantly, if a dictionary is supposed to be a repository of the words in alanguage, how can we justify the omission of sacagrapas, sacabroches, and the other geosynonyms?In comparing the contents of the American Heritage Dictionary (Pickett) of more or less the sameyear, 2000, we note that this source also does not define “staple remover” or even “remover”although, again, one can argue that the meaning of “remover” (which we could perhaps define as“a device, substance or person that removes something”) is easily deduced from the meaning of theverb “remove,” and from there it is merely a matter of adding modifiers to form “staple remover,”“paint remover,” “nail polish remover,” etc. There is, however, arguably a greater need to includea term like sacagrapas in a Spanish-language dictionary than there is to include “staple remover”in an English-language one due to the fact that the former is a separate word whereas the latter issimply a two-word term.

B5 THUMBTACK

B5.1 Summary

Tachuela is common in about 15 countries, chinche in about 11, and together they can be consideredthe General Spanish terms. Spain and Paraguay have regionally marked usages.

B5.2 Terms by Country (4 commonly used terms)

SPAIN chincheta (19/20), tachuela (3/20).MEXICO tachuela (43/55), chinche (16/55), chincheta (3/55), pulga (1/55).GUATEMALA tachuela (13/14), chinche (1/14).EL SALVADOR tachuela (11/14), chinche (5/14).HONDURAS tachuela (9/15), chinche (3/15), chincheta (3/15), atache de presión (1/15).NICARAGUA chinche (13/14), tachuela (2/14).COSTA RICA chinche (12/14), tachuela (3/14), pega (1/14).

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PANAMA tachuela (12/14), chinche (3/14).CUBA tachuela (10/15), chinche (3/15), chincha (2/15).DOMIN. REP. tachuela (7/12), chinche (2/12), clavito de color (1/12), pinche (1/12).PUERTO RICO tachuela (16/16).VENEZUELA chinche (21/24), tachuela (7/24), chincheta (3/24), pincho (1/24).COLOMBIA chinche (12/17), tachuela (6/17), tache (1/17).ECUADOR tachuela (13/14), chinche (1/14).PERU chinche (11/15), tachuela (5/15).BOLIVIA chinche (11/16), tachuela (6/16).PARAGUAY pinche (7/12), tachuela (4/12), chinche (3/12).URUGUAY chinche (6/10), tachuela (4/10), chincheta (1/10), tacha (1/10).ARGENTINA chinche (17/21), tachuela (6/21), pincho (1/21).CHILE chinche (13/15), tachuela (2/15).

B5.3 Details

Gender of chinche: The gender of chinche is ambiguous when considering the Spanish language asa whole and a question of dialect when looking at its different varieties. The DRAE andmany other dictionaries define chinche as a feminine noun, the Diccionario del habla actualde Venezuela (Núñez) defines it as masculine, and the Diccionario ejemplificado dechilenismos y de otros usos diferenciales del español de Chile (Morales Pettorino) definesit as of ambiguous gender. In this study, chinche (‘thumbtack’) was offered as a masculinenoun by almost all respondents from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru,Bolivia, and Chile, and as a feminine noun by almost all from Mexico, El Salvador, Uruguayand Argentina. In the case of the remaining countries, I was unable to draw a conclusionregarding the gender of chinche when it refers to a thumbtack as the term was offered by toofew respondents, no respondents, or the respondents who offered it did not indicate theterm’s gender. When asked about the gender of chinche, most of those who participated inthis study told me that it was definitely masculine or definitely feminine, but there were alsomany who refused to answer the question or answered it evasively, and I had quite a fewconversations like the following:

Moskowitz (pointing to a picture of a thumbtack): –¿Cómo se llama este aparatitopara fijar, por ejemplo, avisos a un tablero o a una cartelera?Respondent: –Chinche.Moskowitz: –Chinche. ¿Y se dice el chinche o la chinche?Respondent: –No, se dice chinche nomás.Moskowitz: –Sí, pero, ¿es un chinche o una chinche?Respondent: –No, chinche.

Research also needs to be done to determine whether or not speakers from some regions usegender to distinguish meaning, i.e. whether for some individuals chinche (‘bedbug’) isfeminine and chinche (‘thumbtack’) is masculine, or vice versa; the gender of chinchemeaning persona chinchosa naturally depends on whether the individual referred to is maleor female.

Gender of pinche: All of the Paraguayans who offered pinche (‘thumbtack’) indicated that it is amasculine noun (el pinche).

Related concept, “pushpin”: Many respondents were also asked to identify a picture of a “pushpin”(see figure B5'), and the base terms offered for it were typically the same as those given for

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the regular thumbtack, but sometimes with modifiers added such as de plástico, de cabezagrande, con cabeza de taco, con cabeza de plástico, and other similar descriptive qualifiers.Several Argentines, however, offered chinche galera or chinche con galera, and respondentsfrom different countries offered the Anglicism pushpin or, more often, its reduced form, pin.

B5.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: chinche (A), chincheta (C), pinche (D), tachuela (D). GPA = CDRAE definitions: chincheta, “(De chinche). Clavo pequeño, metálico, de cabeza circular

y chata y punta acerada, que sirve para asegurar el papel al tablero en que se dibuja o calca, o paraotros fines parecidos”; chinche, “f. chincheta”; tachuela1, “(Del dim. de tacha, clavo). Clavo cortoy de cabeza grande.”

Questions/Comments: A basic issue concerning the definition of this item is whether or notit is necessary or desirable to define the thumbtack as an object that is affixed apretándolo con eldedo. The DRAE describes chincheta as a small clavo but does not mention how the thumbtack iscrucially different from other clavos in the manner in which it is set. Indeed, some Spanish speakersmight even dispute the DRAE’s point of departure, that is, its characterization of chincheta orchinche as a type of clavo, and might very well assert that “Chinches son chinches y clavos sonclavos: los primeros no se meten con un martillo, los segundos sí, las formas son diferentes, ¡nadaque ver!” The reverse argument is that the two items are both similar in appearance and serve similarpurposes so that it is useful to describe a thumbtack as falling within the more general category ofnails or tacks in order to provide us with a reference or a link, something to hang our hat on, as itwere. Many Spanish speakers may also object to the use of tachuela in the sense of thumbtack byclaiming that this term “really means” a tack, and not a thumbtack, but willing this to be so will notmake it so. The fact of the matter is that many Spanish speakers use tachuela in the sense ofthumbtack, while others maintain the distinction between tachuela (‘tack used by carpenters,cobblers, etc.’) and chinche or chincheta (‘thumbtack’). Of the three terms, only chincheta is definedin the DRAE as having a single referent whereas tachuela and chinche are both polysemous.Therefore, an argument can be made that chincheta should be the lead term to which all otherswould be cross-referenced, as the DRAE has done. However, since chinche is much morewidespread in the Spanish-speaking world than chincheta (which appears to be essentially anespañolismo seldom used outside of Spain), one can also argue that chinche should be the lead termand that all other synonyms should be cross-referenced to it and defined as “chinche (|| clavopequeño)” or, dare we save some space and say “chinche (|| clavito)”? ¿Se vale emplear diminutivosen el metalenguaje lexicográfico, o no se permiten? Parece que sí son válidos. Véase, por ejemplo,la definición de bolígrafo, citada arriba en la sección A6.4, en la que el DRAE se vale de la palabrabolita al escribir “...una bolita metálica que gira libremente”.

B6 PAPER CLIP

B6.1 Summary

Clip is the most commonly used term in all countries except Cuba and can be considered the GeneralSpanish term. However, some Spanish speakers prefer avoiding this Anglicism and opt for more“castizo” words, such as sujetapapel(es), that have been built out of traditionally Spanish stock usingstandard Spanish-language word-formation processes.

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B6.2 Terms by Country (c. 10 terms plus variants)

SPAIN clip (19/19), sujetapapeles (1/19).MEXICO clip (58/58), sujetador de papel (1/58), sujetapapel (1/58).GUATEMALA clip (9/13), gancho (1/13), paperclip (1/13), prensapapel (1/13), sostenedor de papel (1/13).EL SALVADOR clip (15/15).HONDURAS clip (12/13), prensapapel (1/13).NICARAGUA clip (12/14), clíper (1/14), prensapapel (1/14).COSTA RICA clip (11/11).PANAMA clip (10/14), ganchito (1/14), gancho de papel (1/14), sujetador de papeles (1/14),

sujetapapeles (1/14).CUBA presilla (16/16), ganchito (1/16).DOMIN. REP. clip (12/13), pisapapel (1/13).PUERTO RICO clip (12/17), presilla (5/17), paperclip (3/17), prensilla de papel (1/17), sujetador de

papeles (1/17).VENEZUELA clip (23/24), sujetapapeles (2/24).COLOMBIA clip (15/16), ganch(it)o (de/para papeles) (7/16), sujetapapeles (1/16).ECUADOR clip (12/13), sujetador (1/13), sujetapapeles (1/13).PERU clip (16/17), gancho para papel (1/17), sujetador (1/17).BOLIVIA clip (14/15), sujetador (1/15).PARAGUAY clip (10/10), ganchito (1/10).URUGUAY clip (6/8), ganchito (4/8), sujetador (1/8).ARGENTINA clip (16/20), ganchito (sujetapapeles/para papeles) (8/20), sujetapapeles (1/20).CHILE clip (14/14).

B6.3 Details

Clip vs. alternate terms: The term clip is often pronounced clic or cli. Despite its status as anAnglicism, clip (‘paper clip’) appears to be fully accepted as standard Spanish-languageusage as evidenced by the fact that it was offered by the vast majority of respondents in thisstudy from almost all countries. The only other terms that appear to have some significantregional following are ganchito in Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina, and presilla in Cubaand Puerto Rico. However, even in the latter countries clip generally outpaced ganchito orpresilla by at least two-to-one, with Cuba the sole exception (see presilla below). The resultsfrom the Léxico del habla culta studies also confirm that clip was the most commonly usedterm in all of the Spanish-speaking cities that were surveyed at the times the studies wereconducted with the exception of Madrid; Havana, however, was not one of the cities tested.In the Madrid study, published in 1981, 9 out of 16 respondents offered sujetapapeles and8 out of 16 gave clip (Torres Martínez: 588-589). Assuming sujetapapeles (‘paper clip’) wasas frequent among educated Madrileños of the late 1970s and early 1980s as the TorresMartínez study results suggest__well, at least in their careful speech__in the intervening 25or 30 years since then, it appears that sujetapapeles, in terms of its frequency of use inMadrid, has become but a shadow of its former self.

Sujetapapel(es) and prensapapel: In this study, these compound terms were often spelled as twowords, sujeta papel(es) and prensa papel, respectively. The one-word forms presented insection B6.2 above are umbrella terms used to represent both the one- and two-wordvariants.

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Presilla: What can explain the fact that Cuba is the only country in which a word for paper clipother than clip dominates the landscape? Is this due to Cuba’s isolation, and perhaps frequentshortages of paper clips? It seems unlikely that it could be the result of a campaign by theCuban government to root out Anglicisms as such attempts generally prove futile. SeeSpelling & Variants in section A7.3 above for information on another case in which Cubanusage stands out from the rest.

Related concept, “binder clip”: Respondents from diverse regions offered clip in the sense of binderclip (see figure B6'), though often with a modifier added, thereby resulting in terms such asclip de agarradera, clip (de) mariposa, clip de pinza, clip de presión, clip de resorte, clipgrande, clip gordo, clip grueso, clip mordaza, clip negro, clip sujetador, super clip and clipde los negros. Dropping the de in clip de mariposa to form clip mariposa appears to beespecially common, and clip (de) mariposa also gets further reduced to mariposa. Moreresearch needs to be done to determine how frequent “de-dropping” is in other compoundterms such as clip de agarradera ÷ clip agarradera, etc. Other terms for binder clip offeredby respondents from diverse regions are gancho de presión, gancho de mariposa, ganchopara papel, gancho prensa, gancho sujetador, prensapapel(es) and sujetapapel(es). Lastly,there are terms for this item that were given by respondents from far fewer countries, suchas agarrapapeles (Dominican Republic), aguantapapeles (Puerto Rico), apretador(Paraguay, Chile), apr(i)etapapel(es) (Cuba, Argentina), broche (para sujetar papeles)(Mexico, Paraguay, Argentina), caimancito (Colombia, humorous), cogepapeles (Ecuador),manito(s) (Uruguay, Argentina, colloquial), perro negro (Chile), pinche (de papel) (PuertoRico), pinza (sujetapapeles) (Spain, Ecuador), portapapeles (Mexico, Dominican Republic),prendedor de papel (Ecuador), prensa (de papel) (Peru, Bolivia), prensador (de papel)(Nicaragua, Colombia, Paraguay), presilla mordedora and presilla de mariposa (Panama,Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Bolivia), sujetador (de papel) (Puerto Rico, Colombia, Peru,Paraguay), and vincha (Ecuador). We note that in Chile perro can refer to a ‘clothespin,’ andin Ecuador vincha is a ‘lady’s hair clip’, and that both of these objects, like binder clips, grabthings.

B6.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: clip (A), ganchito (D), gancho (D), paperclip (F), prensapapel (F), presilla(D), sujetador de papel(es) (F), sujetapapeles (D). GPA = D

DRAE definitions: clip1, “(Del ingl. clip). m. Utensilio hecho con un trozo de alambre, u otromaterial, doblado sobre sí mismo, que sirve para sujetar papeles. || 2. Sistema de pinza para fijarmediante presión broches, horquillas, etc. Pendientes de clip”; sujetapapeles, “Pinza para sujetarpapeles. || 2. Instrumento de otra forma destinado al mismo objeto.”

Comments: While the DRAE’s editors realize that it would be futile to try suppress the useof clip (‘paper clip’), or even attempt to promote one or several of the “castizo” alternatives bycross-referencing clip to sujetapapeles or prensapapel, it is somewhat surprising that an institutionas conservative as the Real Academia would not at least offer dictionary users the option of usinga castizo term or terms instead of clip. No such alternative is provided. Gancho, presilla,sujetapapeles and all other commonly used synonyms should be cross-referenced to clip and theirdefinitions should include regional specifications, if applicable.

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C MISCELLANEOUS

C1 PAPER PUNCH or HOLE PUNCH

C1.1 Summary

Perforadora and/or perforador are used everywhere and sacabocado(s) is used in at least half theSpanish-speaking world in the sense of paper punch. Other terms, such as abrehoyo(s), abrehueco(s)and ponchador(a), appear to be more regionally weighted, and Spain and Puerto Rico have uniqueusages not commonly found elsewhere.

C1.2 Terms by Country (c. 18 terms plus variants)

SPAIN taladradora (6/17), perforador (5/17), perforadora (5/17), agujereador(a) (2/17),taladro (2/17), sacabocados (1/17), troqueladora (1/17).

MEXICO perforadora (51/56), perforador (8/56), sacabocados (1/56).GUATEMALA abrehoyo(s) (10/16), sacabocados (7/16), perforador (1/16), perforadora (1/16).EL SALVADOR sacabocado(s) (7/13), abrehoyo(s) (4/13), perforador (2/13), sacahoyo(s) (2/13),

abridor de hoyos (1/13), perforadora (1/13).HONDURAS perforadora (10/16), sacabocado(s) (4/16), abrehoyos (3/16), abrehuecos (1/16).NICARAGUA perforadora (7/15), sacahoyo(s) (4/15), abrehoyo(s) (3/15), perforador (2/15),

ponchadora (2/15), ponchador (1/15), sacabocados (1/15).COSTA RICA perforadora (5/14), ponchadora (3/14), huequeadora (2/14), sacabocados (2/14),

abrehuecos (1/14), hacehuecos (1/14), perforador (1/14), sacahuecos (1/14).PANAMA abrehueco(s) (13/15), perforadora (3/15), abrehoyos (1/15), ponchador (1/15).CUBA ponchadora (9/15), abrehueco(s) (5/15), ponchador (5/15), perforador(a) (2/15).DOMIN. REP. perforadora (7/10), perforador (3/10).PUERTO RICO perforadora (9/15), rotera (5/15), ponchador(a) (2/15), agujereador (1/15), perforador

(1/15).VENEZUELA abrehueco(s) (16/23), perforador (5/23), perforadora (4/23), sacahuecos (1/23).COLOMBIA perforadora (11/16), sacabocados (4/16), abrehueco(s) (4/16), perforador (1/16).ECUADOR perforadora (10/13), perforador (3/13), ponchador (1/13).PERU perforador (13/15), perforadora (2/15), hacehuecos (1/15).BOLIVIA perforadora (11/16), perforador (4/16), agujereador (1/16).PARAGUAY perforadora (8/12), perforador (4/12), agujereadora (1/12).URUGUAY perforadora (9/10), sacabocados (2/10), agujereador (1/10).ARGENTINA perforadora (14/21), agujereadora (12/21), sacabocados (5/21).CHILE perforador (8/15), perforadora (8/15), sacabocados (2/15).

C1.3 Details

General: Respondents were shown a two-hole paper punch, like the one depicted in figure C1, anda one-hole paper punch, like the one in figure C1', but were not specifically asked todifferentiate between them. Some did anyway and offered separate terms for the two items(see Sacabocado(s) below). Respondents were not shown a three-hole paper punch.

Perforadora vs. perforador: For the two types of paper punch that were tested (see General above),perforadora, the feminine form, appears to be the preferred term in most countries, to wit,

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Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. In this study, perforadorwas offered by a majority of respondents from only one country, Peru, and both perforadorand perforadora were offered by an equal number of respondents from Spain and Chile,countries in which the masculine and feminine forms appear to be in stiff competition. In thecase of the remaining countries__Guatemala, Panama, Cuba and Venezuela__both perforadoraand perforador were offered by too small a percentage of the respondents to draw anyconclusions regarding which term is more frequent or is preferred, and in these 4 countriesother terms, such as abrehoyo(s), abrehueco(s), and ponchador(a), appear to be used muchmore often than either perforadora or perforador. Research needs to be done to determinewhether the same or different preferences for perforadora or perforador hold when Spanishspeakers from different regions refer to larger hole punches such as three-hole paperpunches, or industrial perforators, items that were not tested in this study.

Sacabocado(s): Many respondents from different countries indicated that a sacabocados (oftenpronounced and spelled sacabocado) only refers to a one-hole paper punch, but not to a two-hole paper punch. Others, however, stated that a sacabocado(s) can refer to any paper punch,and still others said that a sacabocado(s) does not refer to any type of paper punch, but onlyto a leather punch of the type used by cobblers and other artisans.

Spelling & Variants: In this study, sacahoyos was often spelled and/or pronounced sacahoyo, sacahoyos, saca hoyo, saca-hoyos and saca-hoyo; abrehoyo(s) and abrehueco(s) had similarvariants. Agujereadora and agujereador were sometimes pronounced as if writtenaujereador(a) or aujeriador(a), especially in less educated and/or relaxed speech.

C1.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: abrehoyos (F), abrehuecos (F), agujereador (F), agujereadora (F), perforador(A), perforadora (A), ponchador (F), ponchadora (F), rotera (F), sacabocado (A), sacabocados (A),sacahoyos (F), taladradora (A, C or D?). GPA = C!

DRAE definitions: perforador, ra, “adj. Que perfora u horada. U. t. c. s. [Usado tambiéncomo sustantivo]”; sacabocados, “Instrumento de hierro, calzado de acero, con boca hueca y cortesafilados, que sirve para taladrar. Los hay en forma de punzón, de tenaza, etc.”; sacabocado,“sacabocados”; taladrador, ra, “adj. Que taladra. U. t. c. s.”

Comments: A number of important regional usages need to be incorporated into the DRAE,including abrehoyo(s), abrehueco(s), agujereadora, ponchadora and rotera. Also, the DRAE’sminimalist definition of the noun sense of perforador and perforadora (“U. t. c. s.”) is notparticularly helpful to dictionary users who do not already know what these devices are, and it failsto tell readers whether the noun is masculine, feminine or both. Therefore, the definition of the nounsense of perforador, ra needs to be considerably beefed up so that it contains a full description suchas “m. o f. Aparato o máquina que se usa para hacer hoyos, huecos o agujeros: perforadora operforador de papel, de cuero, hidráulica/o.”

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C2 INK PAD or STAMP PAD

C2.1 Summary

Almohadilla is the General Spanish term; tampón is commonly used in Spain, Peru and Chile; andMexico and Bolivia have unique usages not common elsewhere.

C2.2 Terms by Country (c. 15 terms plus variants)

SPAIN tampón (7/20), tinta (5/20), almohadilla (4/20), cojín de tinta (3/20), esponja de tinta(1/20).

MEXICO cojín (de tinta) (35/54), esponja (de tinta) (7/54), almohadilla (6/54), tinta (4/54), cojinete(3/54), colchón para tinta (1/54).

GUATEMALA almohadilla (12/14), esponja para sellos (1/14), tintero (1/14).EL SALVADOR almohadilla (7/16), tinta (5/16), esponja (de tinta) (2/16), tintero (2/16).HONDURAS almohadilla (13/15), tinta (2/15), tintero (1/15).NICARAGUA almohadilla (10/15), tinta (3/15), cojín de sello (1/15), cojín para sellos (1/15), tintero

(1/15).COSTA RICA almohadilla (11/13), tintero (2/13), tinta (1/13).PANAMA almohadilla (8/16), pad (3/16), tintero (3/16), stamp (1/16), stamp pad (1/16), tinta (1/16).CUBA almohadilla (6/11), estampa (1/11), estampilla de tinta (1/11), gomígrafo (1/11), tinta

(1/11), tintero seco (1/11).DOMIN. REP. almohadilla (11/13), esponja (1/13), tinta (1/13), tintero (1/13).PUERTO RICO tinta (7/14), almohadilla (5/14), pad (de tinta) (2/14), almohada de tinta (1/14),

esponjita de tinta (1/14), parcho de tinta (1/14).VENEZUELA almohadilla (21/24), cojín (de tinta) (2/24), almohada de tinta (1/24), esponja para sello

(1/24).COLOMBIA almohadilla (16/17), tinta (1/17), tintero (1/17).ECUADOR almohadilla (9/12), tinta (3/12).PERU tampón (11/13), almohadilla (1/13), tinta (1/13).BOLIVIA tampo (11/16), estampador (2/16), tampón (2/16), almohadilla (1/16), portatinta (1/16).PARAGUAY almohadilla (8/11), tinta (3/11).URUGUAY almohadilla (10/10).ARGENTINA almohadilla (20/21), tintero (1/21).CHILE tampón (10/15), tinta (3/15), almohadilla (2/15), tintero (2/15).

C2.3 Details

Almohadilla: Some respondents from all Spanish-speaking countries offered almohadilla andvariants of this term such as almohadilla de tinta, almohadilla con tinta, almohadillaentintada, almohadilla para sello(s), almohadilla para huellas, etc., but for the sake ofbrevity and compactness all of these variants are represented in section C2.2 above as simplyalmohadilla, an umbrella term. To the extent the word for ‘rubber stamp’ varies regionally,other combinations are also possible such as almohadilla de or para cuño (Cuba) andalmohadilla para matasello(s) (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico).

Tinta, tintero: Tinta, with the modifiers para sello(s), para huellas, etc., added for clarification, wasalso offered by at least a few respondents from most countries, arguably by those who do not

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know one of the “real names” for ink pad. These variants are represented in section C2.2above by tinta, the short-form umbrella term. Tintero, given by a few respondents from anumber of countries, has a similar knock against it insofar as this term refers to an inkwellor an inkstand, not an ink pad.

C2.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: almohadilla (B), cojín (de tinta) (D), cojinete (D), esponja (D), pad (F), tampo(F), tampón (C), tinta (para sello) (D), tintero (D). GPA = D+

DRAE definitions: tampón, “(Del fr. tampon). Almohadilla empapada en tinta que se empleapara entintar sellos, estampillas, etc.”; almohadilla, “12. Hond. y Ven. tampón (|| almohadillaempapada en tinta).”

Comments: As we see from the data in section C2.2 above, the DRAE’s claim thatalmohadilla (‘ink pad’) is a regionalism of Honduras and Venezuela alone is absurd. Not only isalmohadilla used in most if not all of Spanish America, but it was also offered by 4 out of 20Spaniards in this study. Tampón, in contrast, is presented as General Spanish usage when in fact itsreach is rather limited as it appears to be the most frequently used term for ink pad in only threecountries, Spain, Peru and Chile. The predominant usages in Mexico (cojín de tinta) and Bolivia(tampo) have been left out in the cold entirely.

C3 NOTEBOOK A - SPIRAL NOTEBOOK

C3.1 Summary

Cuaderno, with the modifiers de espiral, con espiral, en espiral or just espiral added forclarification, is the most commonly used base term everywhere with the exception of Mexico, Cuba,Puerto Rico and perhaps parts of Spain, where libreta appears to be more frequent. Therefore,cuaderno can be considered the General Spanish base term. The Dominican Republic has a uniqueusage not found elsewhere.

Note: In section C3.2 below, terms other than cuaderno, and cuaderno with various espiral-typemodifiers, appear in italics, and majority regionalisms in boldface and italics; when cuaderno ismodified by a non-espiral qualifier, only the qualifier appears in italics.

C3.2 Terms by Country (4 commonly used base terms and c. 10 modifiers plus variants)

SPAIN cuaderno (12/20), bloc (de notas) (6/20), libreta (6/20), cuaderno de espiral (1/20),libreta de espiral (1/20).

MEXICO libreta (35/58), cuaderno (22/58), cuaderno de espiral (4/58), cuaderno con espiral(3/58), cuaderno espiral (2/58), cuaderno de argollas (1/58), cuaderno professional (1/58),libreta de espiral (1/58).

GUATEMALA cuaderno (5/12), cuaderno de espiral (3/12), cuaderno espiral (3/12), cuadernocon espiral (1/12), cuaderno universitario (1/12).

EL SALVADOR cuaderno (5/14), cuaderno de espiral (3/14), cuaderno espiral (4/14), cuadernode anillos (1/14), libreta (1/14).

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HONDURAS cuaderno (8/16), cuaderno de espiral (3/16), cuaderno espiral (3/16), libreta (2/16), cuadernocon resortes (1/16).

NICARAGUA cuaderno (10/13), cuaderno universitario (4/13), cuaderno con espiral (1/13),cuaderno de espiral (1/13).

COSTA RICA cuaderno de resorte(s) (7/13), cuaderno (3/13), cuaderno (de) espiral (2/13), agenda(1/13).

PANAMA cuaderno (7/16), libreta (6/16), cuaderno de espiral (4/16), agenda (1/16),cuaderno de anillos (1/16), cuaderno en espiral (1/16).

CUBA libreta (12/13), libreta de notas (1/13).DOMIN. REP. cuaderno (10/16), mascota (9/16), libreta (5/16), mascota de alambre (2/16),

mascota espiral (2/16), cátedra (1/16), mascota de espiral (1/16).PUERTO RICO libreta (12/16), libreta de alambre (1/16), cuaderno (1/16), libreta de argollas (1/16), libreta

de espiral (1/16).VENEZUELA cuaderno (12/24), cuaderno de espiral (10/24), cuaderno con espiral (1/24), cuaderno

de resortes (1/24).COLOMBIA cuaderno (10/18), cuaderno de espiral (5/18), cuaderno anillado (1/18), cuaderno de

argollas (1/18), cuaderno de ganchos (1/18).ECUADOR cuaderno espiral (9/15), cuaderno (3/15), cuaderno de espiral (1/15), cuaderno

universitario (1/15), libreta (1/15).PERU cuaderno (8/17), cuaderno espiral (6/17), cuaderno con espiral (2/17), cuaderno

anillado (1/17), cuaderno de anillos (1/17), cuaderno de espiral (1/17), cuaderno espiralado(1/17).

BOLIVIA cuaderno (6/16), cuaderno con espiral (5/16), cuaderno espiral (2/16), cuadernoanillado (1/16), cuaderno de espiral (1/16), cuaderno en espiral (1/16).

PARAGUAY cuaderno (10/12), anotador (1/12), cuaderno con espiral (1/12).URUGUAY cuaderno espiral (5/12), cuaderno (3/12), cuaderno de espiral (3/12),

cuaderneta (2/12), cuadernola (2/12).ARGENTINA cuaderno (10/20), cuaderno con espiral (5/20), cuaderno de espiral (4/20), anotador

con lomo en espiral (1/20), cuaderno “avon” (1/20), cuaderno espiralado (1/20), libreta (1/20).CHILE cuaderno (7/16), cuaderno con espiral (5/16), cuaderno universitario (4/16),

agenda (1/16), libreta (1/16).

C3.3 Details

General: Respondents were asked to identify a picture of a 5-subject, 180-page spiral-boundnotebook, and a majority offered cuaderno, libreta or mascota with no qualifier, but aminority gave a base term, usually cuaderno, modified by de espiral, con espiral, espiral,de resortes, or universitario. This raises the following questions: Is it the case that becausespiral notebooks are now the most common type of notebook in much of the Spanish-speaking world, the base term (cuaderno, libreta or mascota) by default tends to refer to thistype and therefore specification is generally superfluous? Or is it that those who offered anunmodified term were being less precise (or are generally less precise in their use oflanguage) than those who offered one with an espiral-type qualifier? Given the large numberof respondents who gave unmodified base terms, I believe the former explanation has moremerit, but research needs to be done to determine how people call notebooks other thanspiral notebooks and loose-leaf notebooks, especially the traditional type of notebook, nottested in this study, in which the pages are sewn into the binding. The notebook was also one

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of the items surveyed in the Léxico del habla culta studies (the corresponding sections wereentitled “CUADERNO”), but it is not clear what type of notebook respondents in thosestudies were asked to identify. It was most likely a sewn notebook, rather than a spiralnotebook, as none of the respondents in the Léxico del habla culta studies offered a termwith an espiral-type modifier. The DRAE’s definition of libreta indicates it is a smallcuaderno, and a number of respondents in the present study who offered cuaderno for thelarge spiral notebook they were shown stated that they would call smaller spiral notebookslibretas, regardless of whether the spiral was on the top or on the side. O sea, que dijeron queuna libreta es un cuaderno pequeño con el espiral arriba o en el costado.

Spain: The three Léxico del habla culta studies conducted on respondents from Spanish citiessuggest important regional preferences within Spain for the terms used to refer to notebooks,with the slight caveat again being that we do not know for certain what type of notebook ornotebooks the respondents in those studies were shown. I will therefore summarize the actualLéxico del habla culta results:

a) From Madrid, the most common term was cuaderno, offered by 15 out of 16respondents, and bloc(k) was a distant second, given by 3 out of 16 (Torres Martínez 1981:558).

b) From Granada, cuaderno was also the most common term, indicated by 17 out of25 respondents, libreta was second, offered by 10 out of 25, and bloc was a distant third,given by 4 out of 25 (Salvador 1991: 750).

c) And from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, libreta was offered by 12 out of 16, blocwas given by 9 out of 16 but most of these said bloc was their second choice, and cuadernowas proposed by 7 out of 16 and most of these indicated that cuaderno was their second orthird choice (Samper Padilla 1998: 481).

In other words, if we extrapolate a bit, libreta (‘notebook’) appears to be morecommon in southern Spain than in northern and central Spain, and much more common inthe Canary Islands than in any part of Peninsular Spain, or at least this appears to have beenthe case at the times the respective studies were published and perhaps for many decadesprior to the 1980s and 1990s. This information is important not only for the study ofPeninsular Spanish dialects, but also for the field of Spanish dialectology as a whole as itmay explain why libreta (‘notebook’) is also frequently used in Cuba and Puerto Rico,countries which over the last two centuries have received large amounts of immigration fromthe Canary Islands (Lipski: 56-61).

Mexico: The Diccionario inicial del español de México defines libreta as a “Cuaderno pequeño,casi siempre con tapas o cubiertas duras...” (Ávila), and Lara Ramos’ Diccionario delespañol usual en México has no entry for libreta; both dictionaries define cuaderno as aregular, standard notebook. In the present study, in which Northeasterners made up themajority of Mexican respondents, over three times as many from the state of Nuevo León(capital Monterrey) offered libreta in response to the image they were shown as those whogave cuaderno, while respondents from Mexico City all offered cuaderno or cuaderno (de)espiral. Is libreta used more in the sense of a general notebook in some parts of (northern)Mexico, but is a small notebook elsewhere?

Dominican Repubic: Mascota is commonly used in the sense of notebook, and many Dominicansuse this term as simply a regional synonym of cuaderno. For other Dominicans, however,mascotas are specifically thick spiral notebooks, generally having separate sections fordifferent subjects, whereas cuadernos are thinner ones which usually have just a singlesection. Perhaps for these Dominicans, a mascota is equivalent to what Spanish speakers

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from some countries would call a cuaderno universitario (see separate paragraph below).One Dominican interviewed even indicated a three-way distinction among the terms cátedra(thickest notebook), mascota (somewhat thick notebook) and cuaderno (thin notebook), butshe was the only one queried to offer cátedra. Was mascota originally a brand name?

Uruguay: A couple of respondents indicated that a cuaderneta is a small notebook and a cuadernolais a large one, but two others said a cuaderneta was larger than a cuaderno and cuadernolawas not common. Which, if any, of these terms/usages is common in Uruguay andelsewhere?

Cuaderno universitario: The Diccionario ejemplificado de chilenismos y de otros usos diferencialesdel español de Chile (Morales Pettorino14) defines cuaderno universitario as “Cuaderno másgrande que el ordinario, armado en un espiral metálico o plástico, que usan los estudiantespara obtener apuntes en determinados cursos, especialmente en la Universidad...” In thisstudy, cuaderno universitario was offered by between 1 and 3 respondents from Guatemala,Nicaragua, Ecuador and Chile. Where else is the term cuaderno universitario commonlyused, and where does it refer to a large spiral notebook, a thick spiral notebook, a multi-subject spiral notebook, any spiral notebook or any large notebook, spiral or otherwise?

C3.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: bloc (D), cuaderno (A or D?), libreta (A or D?), mascota (D). GPA = B!DRAE definitions: cuaderno, “(Del lat. quaterni). Conjunto o agregado de algunos pliegos

de papel, doblados y cosidos en forma de libro”; libreta2, “(De libro). Cuaderno o libro pequeñodestinado a escribir en él anotaciones o cuentas.”

Questions/Comments: The DRAE’s definition of cuaderno works well for a notebook whosepages are sewn together, but when one adds the qualifier de espiral (or con espiral, espiral, etc.),one quickly discovers that the base term has been defined too narrowly to describe or accommodatea notebook with a spiral binding since spiral notebooks do not consist of “pliegos de papel, dobladosy cosidos en forma de libro.” Compare the DRAE’s overly narrow definition of cuaderno to theAmerican Heritage Dictionary’s open-ended definition of “notebook”: “1. A book of blank pagesfor notes.” The DRAE’s definition of libreta suffers from the same defect as that of cuaderno sinceit refers the reader back to cuaderno and also to libro. Because spiral notebooks are currently themost popular kind of notebooks in use, any definition of cuaderno or libreta needs to be broadenough to cover this type. Al igual que hemos visto en otros casos, los lexicógrafos del DRAE aveces parecen estar anclados en el pasado y da pena ver cómo dejan que sus definiciones caduquen.Tampoco se trata aquí de un aparato de última tecnología que se fabrique en el Valle de Silicio, pueslos cuadernos de espiral están con nosotros desde hace muchos años, o más bien, decenios.

C4 NOTEBOOK B - LOOSE-LEAF NOTEBOOK or (THREE) RING BINDER

C4.1 Summary

Carpeta, with different (regionally weighted) modifiers such as de anillas, de anillos or de argollasadded for clarification, is commonly used in over half the Spanish-speaking world and can beconsidered the General Spanish base term. Other usages, such as fólder, archivador, cartapacio,pióner and portafolio, are more regional in nature.

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C4.2 Terms by Country (10 commonly used terms plus variants)

SPAIN carpeta (8/20), archivador (6/20), cuaderno de anillas (4/20), bloc (de anillas) (2/20),archivadora (1/20), carpesaro (1/20), clasificador (1/20).

MEXICO carpeta (37/55), cartapacio (15/55), báinder/binder (2/55), cuaderno con argollas(2/55), fólder (2/55), recopilador (2/55), tráper/trapper (2/55).

GUATEMALA cartapacio (12/13), carpeta (2/13), fólder (1/13), leitz (1/13), portapapeles (1/13),portafotos (1/13).

EL SALVADOR cartapacio (9/14), fólder (5/14), portafolio (3/14), carpeta (1/14), tráper/trapper(1/14).

HONDURAS fólder (8/16), cartapacio (2/16), albun/álbum (1/16), archivador manual (1/16),báinder/binder (1/16), carpeta (1/16), libreta (1/16), portafolio (1/16).

NICARAGUA báinder/binder (8/13), fólder (5/13), portafolio (1/13).COSTA RICA portafolio (10/14), cartapacio (5/14), fólder (3/14), ampo (1/14).PANAMA portafolio (10/13), archivador (1/13), carpeta de anillos (1/13), cartapacio (1/13).CUBA carpeta (13/15), albun/álbum (1/15), fólder (1/15), portahojas (1/15), portapapel (1/15).DOMIN. REP. carpeta (8/11), fólder (2/11), báinder/binder (1/11).PUERTO RICO carpeta (11/15), báinder/binder (3/15), cartapacio (2/15), libreta de argollas (2/15),

portafolio (1/15).VENEZUELA carpeta (23/23).COLOMBIA fólder (16/18), pasta de argollas (3/18), carpeta (de anillos/de argollas) (2/18), A-Z (1/18).ECUADOR carpeta (11/16), fólder (5/16), archivador (2/16), albun/álbum (1/16).PERU pióner (9/15), fólder (5/15), archivador (1/15), binder/báinder (1/15), portafolio (1/15).BOLIVIA carpeta (7/16), archivador (4/16), cartapacio (4/16), cuaderno carpeta (1/16),

fólder (1/16), portafolio (1/16), tráper/trapper (1/16).PARAGUAY carpeta (7/12), bibliorato (4/12), almacenador de carpeta (1/12).URUGUAY bibliorato (7/10), carpeta (6/10), albun/álbum (1/10).ARGENTINA carpeta (21/21), bibliorato (3/21), cartapacio (1/21).CHILE archivador (14/16), carpeta (2/16).

C4.3 Details

General: Respondents were shown a picture of a three-ring loose-leaf notebook or three-ring binderwith fairly large rings in proportion to the binder (perhaps three-inch rings). Many of theterms listed in section C4.2 above are actually the base or umbrella terms to which modifierssuch as de (tres) aros, de (tres) anillas, de (tres) anillos, de (tres) argollas, etc. are oftenadded for clarification. Some discussion of how these modifiers may vary by region isaddressed in the paragraphs that follow.

Spain: The modifier most often added to the base terms was de anillas, and in this study onlyrespondents from Spain used this qualifier. Thus the terms most commonly offered bySpaniards were carpeta de anillas, cuaderno de anillas and archivador de anillas, inaddition to the three base terms standing alone.

Mexico & Puerto Rico: The modifier most often added to the base terms was de argollas (e.g.carpeta de argollas).

El Salvador: Most respondents did not add a modifier to the base terms listed above, but the fewwho did offered cartapacio de (tres) anillos.

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Venezuela: Carpeta, with no qualifier, was the most commonly used term, but it was also offeredwith a variety of modifiers: carpeta de (tres) hueco(s), carpeta de (tres) anillos, carpeta conargollas, carpeta de aros, carpeta dura, carpeta de gancho and carpeta negra. Therespondent who offered carpeta negra when shown a black-and-white picture of a three-ringbinder stated, “carpeta negra porque en Venezuela son todas negras.” ¿Será cierto que enVenezuela no las hay de otro color, o era nada más idea de ese señor? Bueno, si ayer noexistían de otros colores, tal vez mañana sí.

Peru: Pióner, I am told, comes from “Pioneer,” a popular brand of notebooks.Uruguay & Argentina: The Diccionario del español de Argentina and the Nuevo diccionario de

uruguayismos both define bibliorato as “Carpeta de cartón de lomo ancho, provista deanillos metálicos, en la que se archivan cartas, facturas, legajos y otros documentos” andindicate that archivador, the Peninsular Spanish equivalent, is also used in this sense inUruguay and Argentina (Haensch and Werner 2000a and 1993b). In this study severalrespondents from both countries stated that a bibliorato was a thick ring binder, but otherssaid it could refer to any loose-leaf notebook, regardless of the width of its spine.

Spelling & Variants: The Anglicisms binder and folder are often written as they are in English, butare generally pronounced as if they were written báinder and fólder, respectively. In otherwords, while the terms’ pronunciations have been fully Hispanized or domesticated, theirwritten forms are often taken from English unaltered. Spanish speakers also vacilate whenwriting albun/álbum and tráper/trapper.

C4.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: archivador (D), bibliorato (F), báinder (F), binder (F), carpeta (D),cartapacio (D), cuaderno de anillas (F), fólder (D), pasta de argollas (F), pióner (F), portafolio (D).GPA = D

Questions/Comments: Alas, there appears to be nothing in the DRAE that describes a loose-leaf notebook or ring binder. Compare the DRAE’s failure to address this item with the AmericanHeritage Dictionary’s helpful definitions of the relevant terms pertaining to United States English,a source in which “binder” is defined as “3. A notebook cover with rings or clamps for holdingsheets of paper” and “loose-leaf” as “Relating to, having, or being leaves that can be easily removed,rearranged, or replaced: a loose-leaf notebook; loose-leaf paper.” How did the DRAE guys and gals(mostly guys) miss this one? Were they sleeping on the job? Surely, they do not lead such cloisteredlives as to never have seen or used a loose-leaf notebook.

C5 PENCIL CASE

C5.1 Summary

Cartuchera is commonly used in most of South America, Cuba, Puerto Rico and parts of CentralAmerica (in at least 12 countries). In most of the other countries, speakers tend to use a more generalterm, such as bolsa, cartera or estuche, that is made specific by adding a modifier such as de/paralápices, de/para plumas, etc. Portalápiz and/or portalápices are also heard practically everywherebut appear to be less common than cartuchera, bolsa, cartera and estuche. In Spain, Mexico andHonduras, usages that are more regional in nature are somewhat common.

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C5.2 Terms by Country (c. 14 terms plus variants)

SPAIN estuche (17/20), plumier (7/20), (bolsa) portatodo (2/20), cartuchera (1/20), lapicera(1/20), portalápices (1/20), portalápiz (1/20).

MEXICO lapicera (21/55), bols(it)a (16/55), portalápices (13/55), estuche (12/55),caj(it)a (2/55), guardalápices (1/55).

GUATEMALA estuche (8/13), bols(it)a (6/13), portalápices (1/13), portalapiceros (1/13).EL SALVADOR bols(it)a (6/15), estuche (5/15), portalápiz (3/15), portalápices (1/15).HONDURAS lapicera (4/17), lapicero (4/17), bols(it)a (3/17), cartuchera (3/17), portalápiz (3/17),

carter(it)a (2/17), estuche (1/17), portalápices (1/17).NICARAGUA cartuchera (5/13), bols(it)a (3/13), portalápiz (2/13), bolsito (1/13), bulto (1/13), cartera

(1/13), estuchera (1/13), portalapicero (1/13).COSTA RICA cartuchera (9/13), carter(it)a (3/13), bolsa (1/13), portalápiz (1/13).PANAMA bolsa (4/13), lapicero (3/13), cartuchera (2/13), lapicera (2/13), cartera (1/13), estuche

(1/13), portalápiz (1/13).CUBA cartuchera (8/17), carter(it)a (3/17), caja (2/17), estuche (2/17), portalápices (2/17),

portalápiz (1/13).DOMIN. REP. portalápiz (4/11), estuche (3/11), bultito/bultico (2/11), carter(it)a (2/11), bolsa (1/11),

portalápices (1/11), portalapiceros (1/11).PUERTO RICO cartuchera (12/14), carterita (1/14), lapicera (1/14).VENEZUELA cartuchera (22/24), estuche (1/24), portalápices (1/24).COLOMBIA cartuchera (11/18), estuche (2/18), portalápices (2/18), bolsa (1/18), bolso (1/18), bolsa

portalápices (1/18), cartera (1/18), guardalápices (1/18).ECUADOR cartuchera (7/16), portalápices (3/16), estuche (2/16), portalápiz (2/16), cartera (1/16), funda

(1/16), lapicero (1/16), portaplumas (1/16).PERU cartuchera (15/16), estuche (1/16).BOLIVIA estuche (13/16), portalápices (2/16), bolsa (1/16), portalapiceros (1/16).PARAGUAY cartuchera (10/13), portalápices (2/13), bolsa (1/13).URUGUAY cartuchera (10/10).ARGENTINA cartuchera (19/21), canopla (1/21), portalápices (1/21), portaútiles (1/21).CHILE estuche (12/15), cartuchera (1/15), lapicero (1/15), portalápices (1/15).

C5.3 Details

General: The item tested was a soft-case pencil case with a zipper. In a majority of countries aspecific term such as cartuchera, lapicera or lapicero is common, whereas in others nospecific word appears to be dominant, and more general terms are used such as estuche withclarifying modifiers added if necessary: estuche de lápices, estuche para lápices, etc. Termsthat require modifiers to make them specific are the most commonly used ones in Spain,Guatemala, El Salvador, Bolivia and Chile. Compound terms such as portalápiz,portalápices and others that begin with porta are also used to some extent everywhere.

Spain: Some Spaniards indicated that a plumier refers to a hard case for storing pens or pencils, nota soft case. If this is true, then plumier (‘pencil box’) would not be an exact PeninsularSpanish equivalent of Spanish American cartuchera (‘soft-case pencil case’). OtherSpaniards said the term plumier is used less often now than previously. Would this bebecause the word’s frequency of use is in decline, because hard-case pencil cases are lesscommon now than soft-case ones, or both?

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Uruguay & Argentina: The Diccionario del español de Argentina defines cartuchera as “Pequeñacartera, generalmente de plástico o tela, donde los alumnos guardan los útiles escolares,como por ejemplo los lápices, la goma de borrar, etc.” and the Nuevo diccionario deuruguayismos has a similar definition. According to these two sources, portaútiles is alsoused in this same sense in both countries (Haensch and Werner 2000a and 1993b).

C5.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: cartuchera (B), lapicera (D), lapicero (D), plumier (C), portalapicero (F),portalápices (F), portalápiz (D). GPA = D+

DRAE definitions: plumero, “2. Vaso o caja donde se ponen las plumas”; plumier, “(Del fr.plumier). m. Caja o estuche que sirve para guardar plumas, lápices, etc.”; cartuchera, “3. Arg. y Ven.plumier.”

Questions/Comments: By defining plumier as a case for pens and pencils and by definingestuche in a general sense, the DRAE has covered Peninsular Spanish usage with regard to this itemfairly well, but its coverage of the rest of the Spanish-speaking world needs shoring up. For example,the DRAE seems to be unaware of the terms used in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica,Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico and most of South America. Which is preferable, the DRAE’s moreconcise definition of plumier, or the Diccionario del español de Argentina’s more descriptive andexpansive definition of cartuchera? (See Uruguay & Argentina in section C5.3 above.)

C6 FILE FOLDER

C6.1 Summary

Carpeta can be considered the General Spanish term in that it is probably used to some extent in theentire Spanish-speaking world, especially in writing by educated speakers. For the populations atlarge, however, carpeta appears to be the dominant term (or a dominant term) in only about half ofthe countries, namely Spain and much of South America. Fólder is the dominant term in CentralAmerica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Peru and Bolivia, and is co-dominant (with anotherterm) or a serious contender in Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador. Fólder actually appears to be usedmore often in more countries (11 or 12) than is carpeta (7 or 8). Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico andColombia have usages that are more regional in nature.

C6.2 Terms by Country (c. 15 terms plus variants)

SPAIN carpeta (14/20), archivador (5/20), portafolios (3/20), clasificador (2/20).MEXICO legajo (31/58), fólder (29/58), carpeta (19/58), separador (1/58).GUATEMALA fólder (12/14), carpeta (1/14), porta-archivos (1/14).EL SALVADOR fólder (11/13), carpeta (1/13), cartapacio (1/13).HONDURAS fólder (12/15), archivador (2/15), carpeta (2/15).NICARAGUA fólder (13/14), portafolio (2/14), folio (1/14).COSTA RICA fólder (11/15), carpeta (3/15), archivador (2/15).PANAMA fólder (10/14), carpeta (2/14), cartapacio (1/14), portafolio (1/14).CUBA fail/file (8/17), carpeta (6/17), fólder (2/17), folio (2/17), separador (1/17).DOMIN. REP. fólder (13/16), archivo (1/16), carpeta (1/16), folio (1/16).

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PUERTO RICO fólder (10/15), cartapacio (8/15), carpeta (1/15).VENEZUELA carpeta (23/24), folio (1/24), portafolio (1/24).COLOMBIA carpeta (14/16), fólder (8/16), legajador (2/16), archivador (1/16).ECUADOR carpeta (8/16), fólder (8/16), papelero (1/16).PERU fólder (10/17), archivador (2/17), cartapacio (2/17), portapapel(es) (2/17), carpeta (1/17),

portafolio (1/17).BOLIVIA fólder (11/16), portapapeles (3/16), archivador (2/16), portadocumentos (2/16), carpeta

(1/16), portafolio (1/16).PARAGUAY carpeta (8/10), archivador (2/10).URUGUAY carpeta (9/11), carpetín (1/11), fólder (1/11).ARGENTINA carpeta (16/18), archivador (1/18), clasificador (1/18), legajo (1/18), portafolios (1/18).CHILE carpeta (11/15), archivador (2/15), ordenador (1/15), portadocumentos (1/15), portafolio

(1/15).

C6.3 Details

General: Respondents were shown an ordinary tabbed file folder, not a hanging folder (carpetacolgante, fólder colgante, etc.) or an accordion folder (archivador acordeón?), etc., and theywere specifically asked “¿Cómo se llama esta cubierta de cartulina que contiene losdocumentos, no el conjunto de la cubierta más los documentos?” I included this question orspecification in the hopes that respondents would not give me words for the entire file suchas expediente and archivo, but some did anyway and, with the exception of Cuba’s fail/file(offered by a substantial percentage of Cubans), such responses are not included in the dataappearing in section C6.2 above. See Related concept, “file” below.

Dominican Republic: Some of the respondents who offered fólder pronounced the word as if it werewritten fóider, and some fórder. This corresponds generally to Dominican Spanishphonetics/phonology in which the liquid consonants /l/ and /r/ tend to be exchanged,neutralized or vocalized (Lipski: 231-232, 239).

Colombia: The Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos indicates that legajador and carpeta are usedin the sense of file folder and does not define or mention fólder (Haensch and Werner1993a), whereas in this study carpeta was offered by 14 out of 16, fólder by 8 out of 16, andlegajador by only 2 of the 16 Colombian respondents. Has the use of legajador (‘file folder’)decreased in Colombia, losing ground to fólder, since the time Haensch and Werner did theirresearch on this topic (perhaps in the 1980s and early 1990s) and the time I did mine in2005-2006, or do educated Colombians still regularly use legajador, especially in writing?Has fólder gained ground in Colombia since the 1980s, or has it been in common use formany decades? In the Léxico del habla culta de Santafé de Bogotá study, published in 1997,15 out of 25 respondents said carpeta, 9 out of 25 fólder and 4 out of 25 legajador (Otálorade Fernández: 313), which suggests that by the end of the 20th century legajador wasalready on the decline and fólder was, if not a rising star, certainly an important player.

Related concept, “file”: Some of the respondents in this study were also asked to identify the fileitself. While this could refer to just what is contained in the file folder (the file contentswithout the jacket), I generally asked them “¿Cómo se llama la carpeta (or whatever wordthey had used for the file folder) más los documentos que ésta contiene, el conjunto, todo?”The information collected for the file, however, was limited and inconclusive, and moreresearch needs to be done to determine to what extent the different words for this item, suchas archivo, carpeta, expediente, dossier, ficha, file/fail, fólder, folio, legajo, legajador and

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récord, are regionally weighted, and to what extent they refer to different types of files suchas legal files vs. medical files, etc. Just as the term “folder” in English can refer to either afile folder or a file, it appears that in Spanish many speakers also blend or combine these twoclosely related items by using one or more terms in both senses. There is also the issue ofhow Spanish speakers refer to a computer file (archivo... ¿y qué más?), as well as folders,directories, drives, etc., and the action of saving files (almacenar, guardar, “salvar”, etc.).This discussion of files also leads us to another question that was not researched: What arethe different names in Spanish for “file cabinet” or “filing cabinet” (such as archivo,archivador, archivero, fichero, gabinete, etc.), and how, if at all, are these terms/usagesregionally weighted?

C6.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: archivador (A or C?), carpeta (A), cartapacio (D), file (F), fólder (A), folio(D), legajador (F), legajo (D), portadocumentos (F), portafolio (D), portapapeles (F). GPA = C!

DRAE definitions: carpeta, “(Del fr. carpette, tapete, y este del ingl. carpet). Útil deescritorio que consiste en una pieza rectangular, generalmente de cartón o plástico, que, doblada porla mitad y atada con cintas, gomas o cualquier otro medio, sirve para guardar o clasificar papeles,dibujos o documentos”; archivador, “3. Carpeta convenientemente dispuesta para tales fines [paraarchivar documentos, fichas u otros papeles]”; fólder, “(Del ingl. folder). Am. carpeta (|| cubiertacon que se resguardan los legajos).”

Comments: The definitions of cartapacio and legajo include a sense corresponding to ‘filecontents’ but not to ‘file folder,’ and the latter sense with regional specifications needs to be addedto the definitions of these terms.

C7 BRIEFCASE

C7.1 Summary

Maletín and portafolio(s) can be considered the General Spanish terms as both are commonly usedin this sense in most of Spanish America. Regional usages are common in Spain and Nicaragua, andpossibly in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Chile as well.

C7.2 Terms by Country (c. 8 terms plus variants)

SPAIN cartera (14/20), maletín (9/20), portafolios (1/20).MEXICO portafolio(s) (48/58), maletín (25/58).GUATEMALA portafolio(s) (6/11), maletín (5/11).EL SALVADOR portafolio(s) (11/16), maletín (5/16), cartapacio (1/16), carterón (1/16).HONDURAS portafolio(s) (11/17), maletín (8/17), portapapeles (1/17).NICARAGUA cartapacio (9/16), maletín (7/16), portafolio(s) (5/16).COSTA RICA maletín (ejecutivo) (8/16), bulto (4/16), portafolio(s) (2/16), valija (ejecutiva) (2/16),

maleta (1/16).PANAMA maletín (11/13), bulto (1/13), maleta (1/13), portapapeles (1/13).CUBA maletín (11/17), portafolio(s) (9/17), maleta (2/17), maletica (1/17).DOMIN. REP. maletín (14/16), bulto (5/16), portafolio(s) (2/16).

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PUERTO RICO maletín (12/16), bulto (7/16), portafolio(s) (1/16).VENEZUELA maletín (21/24), portafolio(s) (5/24), bulto (4/24).COLOMBIA maletín (14/18), portafolio(s) (7/18), portapapeles (1/18).ECUADOR maletín (10/16), portafolio(s) (7/16), ejecutivo (1/16).PERU maletín (17/17), cartapacio (1/17).BOLIVIA maletín (13/17), portafolio(s) (6/17), portapapeles (1/17).PARAGUAY portafolio(s) (11/12), cartapacio (1/12), cartera (1/12), maleta de oficina (1/12), maletín

(1/12).URUGUAY portafolio(s) (10/10), maletín (3/10).ARGENTINA portafolio(s) (11/18), maletín (9/18), valija (3/18), cartera (2/18).CHILE maletín (10/16), portadocumento(s) (5/16), portafolio(s) (3/16), bolsón (1/16).

C7.3 Details

General: Respondents were asked to identify two pictures, one of a soft-case briefcase made out ofleather (see figure C7), and another of an attaché case or hard-case briefcase (see figure C7').The data presented in section C7.2 above are those corresponding to the soft-case briefcase,but see Related concepts, “attaché case” and “large portfolio” below for information onattaché cases and large portfolios. Many respondents were also asked questions such as¿Cuál es la diferencia entre un(a) __ y un(a) __? with some of the different terms forbriefcase placed in the blank spaces. More research needs to be done to determine whatdifferent Spanish speakers understand are the differences between maletines, portafolios,carteras, etc. Because the terms cover a range of different objects, a simple show-and-tellor onomastic approach will not suffice to determine usage. In fact, not using photographs atall and simply asking Spanish speakers to describe and contrast the terms might have beena better approach. One important research topic is to determine in which countries maletínis mostly associated with a briefcase, in which it generally refers to a small suitcase, and inwhich it can just as easily refer to a briefcase or a small suitcase to the point that the word,out of context, is highly ambiguous.15

Spelling & Variants: The vast majority of respondents in this study indicated that portafolio, andnot portafolios, is the singular form of the word__un portafolio, varios portafolios__and thiswas true in the case of all countries from which respondents offered this term. Only a verysmall minority of respondents from any country stated that they used portafolios as both thesingular and the plural form of the word (un portafolios, dos portafolios). The DRAE acceptsboth portafolio and portafolios as singular forms but indicates its preference for the formerby listing it first in the same entry, “portafolio o portafolios.”16

Related concepts, “attaché case” and “large portfolio”: Respondents from many countries indicatedthat a maletín and/or portafolio could refer to any type of briefcase whereas an ataché wasan attaché case, and many also identified the attaché case with the same name they hadoffered for the soft-case briefcase but with the modifier ejecutivo added, i.e. maletínejecutivo or portafolio ejecutivo. Spaniards, however, more often identified the soft-casebriefcase as a cartera and called the attaché case a maletín. Several Bolivians and Chileansoffered maletín James Bond and/or just James Bond (pronounced as if written yein(s) bon)for an attaché case, and one Chilean indicated that a maletín was a soft-case briefcase, aportadocumentos was an attaché case, and a portaplanos was a large portfolio, that is, oneof those extra-large rigid or semi-rigid briefcases that artists and architects use to transportdrawings, designs, blueprints, etc.

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C7.4 Real Academia Regional Review

DRAE grades: bulto ( D?), cartapacio (D), cartera (C or D?), maletín (F), portadocumentos(F), portafolio(s) (A or D?). GPA = C!

DRAE definitions: bulto, “7. C. Rica. y Ven. Bolso empleado por los niños para llevar losútiles escolares”; cartera, “3. Objeto de forma cuadrangular hecho de cuero u otra materiageneralmente flexible, que se usa para llevar en su interior documentos, papeles, libros, etc.”;maleta, “(Del dim. de mala1). Especie de caja o cofre pequeño de cuero, lona u otras materias, quesirve para guardar en viajes o traslados ropa u otras cosas y se puede llevar a mano. || 4. Cuba.Cartera que usan los niños para llevar los libros a la escuela”; portafolio o portafolios, “(Del fr.portefeuille). Cartera de mano para llevar libros, papeles, etc.”

Questions/Comments: Imagine you were a dictionary user who did not already know that theterms maletín, portafolio and cartera can refer to objects that in English are called briefcases. Wouldthe DRAE’s definitions of these terms lead you to that conclusion? Unfortunately, they would not,at least not by clear, convincing and unequivocal descriptions. Maletín, the most commonly usedterm for briefcase, is not even an entry in the DRAE, though it does define maletín de grupa as aspecial type of small suitcase used by people on horseback. The DRAE’s decision not to include adefinition of maletín may be on the grounds that it is a diminutive form of maleta, a small suitcaseas it were, and that a definition of the diminutive would therefore be superfluous, but such reasoningwould be specious: In most varieties of the Spanish language, a maletita or maletica could be amaleta pequeña, a small suitcase, and the meaning of these diminutives flows naturally from thatof maleta, thus eliminating the need to define maletita and maletica separately. But a maletín is aclassic example of a diminutive that in most varieties of Spanish has become lexicalized, that is, itno longer merely refers to a small maleta but has taken on the specific meaning of ‘briefcase’ (thisprobably occurred at least a century ago). And if we try to force the briefcase sense of maletín intoor onto the definition of (a small) maleta, we find that it fits poorly, as a maletín, for most Spanishspeakers, is not a smaller version of a “caja o cofre... para guardar en viajes o traslados ropa u otrascosas.” With regard to the DRAE’s definition of cartera, sense 3 describes a case used to hold booksand documents, but does not include a description that would specifically tell a reader that it canrefer to a briefcase. A separate definition of a case that includes the key element of a handle isneeded; ironically, “handle” is another important topic in Spanish lexical dialectology. Thedefinition of portafolio(s) has as its fulcrum the term cartera and thus suffers from the same defectas that of the latter term. The DRAE describes the term bulto in sense 7 as a bolso that schoolchildren use to carry their books, etc., but several Costa Ricans indicated that it can also be abriefcase that adults use. In short, none of the commonly used terms for briefcase is satisfactorilydefined with a clear description of this item. Compare the American Heritage Dictionary’s definitionof “briefcase”: “A portable, often flat case with a handle, used for carrying papers or books.” Whatcould be simpler?

APPENDIX: ADDITIONAL TOPICS

The following is a small selection of additional topics relating to school- and office-supplyterminology which are presented merely to call attention to their existence as possible dialectaland/or lexicographical issues that await in-depth investigation.

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Note: A country followed by a question mark means that in this study only 1 or 2 respondents fromthat country gave a particular response.

computer. This item was not tested and perhaps is no longer as much of a dialectal issue as it waspreviously insofar as a high percentage of Spanish-speaking computer users (or at leastprogrammers and vendors) are probably familiar with all three words forcomputer__computador, computadora and ordenador__though no doubt the frequency of useof these terms varies considerably in different countries. However, until not very long ago,the traditional view held that ordenador (influenced by French “ordenateur”) was PeninsularSpanish usage, and computadora and computador (influenced by English “computer”)pertained to Spanish American usage. To what extent is this still true? The DRAE definesordenador with the regional specification “Esp.” (¡Aleluya!), but defines computador, ra(‘computer’) with no regional mark, thus implying they are General Spanish terms.Surprisingly, computador(a) and ordenador are not cross-referenced to each other.

correction fluid (white-out, liquid paper). The most widespread and region-neutral terms arecorrector, corrector líquido and líquido corrector, all of which can be considered variantsof each other. Respondents from diverse regions also offered other descriptive terms suchas borrador de tinta, borrador líquido, corrector de pluma, corrector de tinta, líquidoblanco, líquido borrador, líquido de borrar, líquido para borrar (tinta), and tinta blanca(para borrar). The brand name liquid paper (along with “alternate” spellings, pronunciationsand/or variants such as of licuid péiper, liqui péiper, licuid and líqui(d)) was offered as ageneric word by respondents from most Spanish American countries. In addition, thefollowing terms, some of which are brand names that have become generics, and others ofwhich are colloquial, were offered by respondents from smaller sets of countries:blanqueador (líquido) (Venezuela?, Colombia?); blanquillo and blanquito (El Salvador,colloquial); chelito (El Salvador; colloquial, from chele, white, blond); liquidito (Cuba?,colloquial), rádex/radex (Nicaragua? Ecuador?, Bolivia?; is this brand still popular?); tipex(Spain; Venezuela, Bolivia; also spelled typex, tippex, típex and occasionally tipest; whereelse is this brand popular?); and white-out (Puerto Rico; also spelled whiteout, wite out).Some said rádex/radex is not correction fluid but those small correction papers people onceused (and in some countries still do!) to correct mistakes made with a typewriter by typingover the letters and whiting them out.

glue (Elmer’s glue, white glue). Pegamento and goma (de pegar), modified by blanco/a, escolarand/or other qualifiers, can be considered General Spanish terms for this type of glue. Othermore regionally marked terms for this item include a number of brand names that havebecome more or less generic words in certain regions of the Spanish-speaking world:carpicola (Bolivia; Bolivian brand?); cascola (Uruguay; Brazilian brand); cola (blanca)(Spain, Peru?, Argentina?); cola fría (Chile); colbón (Colombia; Colombian brand); ega, egapega, goma ega or pega ega (Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, andelsewhere?; ega is the Elmer’s brand name in Spanish America); gomero (Ecuador); pega(blanca) (Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Venezuela); pegante (Colombia, Ecuador); plasticola(Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina; Argentine brand); and resistol (blanco) (Mexico,Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua). Although resistol has become a genericword for glue in these 5 countries (and perhaps elsewhere), I am told the original Resistol(from English “resist all”?) was a Mexican brand of yellowish glue.

labels (self-adhesive labels). Etiqueta adhesiva, etiqueta autoadhesiva, etiqueta autoadherible,etiqueta engomada, etc., are General Spanish terms for self-adhesive labels, but in this

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survey other terms were also offered, some of which appear to have related meanings inGeneral Spanish: calcomanía (given by respondents from almost everywhere, but puristscontend that a calcomanía is not a “label” or a “sticker” but a “decal” or “transfer”); label(Puerto Rico, pronounced léibel); marbete (Colombia?; defined as a manufacturing label orluggage tag in the DRAE, among other meanings); membrete (Nicaragua?, Ecuador?,Bolivia? Argentina?); rotulador (Honduras?); rótulo (offered by Paraguayans in this studybut it is a General Spanish term); sticker or estíquer (again, almost everywhere, but this timepurists also object to it because it is an Anglicism); and viñeta (El Salvador, Honduras?).

letter opener. This item was not researched in this project but apparently has various names suchas abrecartas, plegadera, abridor (de cartas) and cortapapel(es) some of which may beregionally distributed. The Léxico del habla culta studies provide some information on thisobject and suggest that abrecartas and/or plegadera may be more common in some countries(perhaps Spain, Mexico, Peru), while cortapapel(es) may be more frequent in others(Colombia and perhaps Bolivia), but the data is generally inconclusive. Respondents fromArgentina and Chile were about equally divided between cortapapel(es) and abrecartas.

notepad, pad of paper. Bloc (de papel) appears to be the General Spanish term, though manySpanish speakers write it block, as it is written in English. Its variant bloque (de papel)seems to be less common than bloc(k). Libreta also appears to be somewhat common,especially in Spain and Puerto Rico, though some Spanish speakers claim that a libreta isa spiral notebook in which the spiral is at the top of the pages, whereas a bloc is a pad ofpaper (with the pages glued together). Many others, however, said a bloc was a spiralnotebook with the spiral on top (see section C3). Is the term taco (de apuntes) stillcommonly used in Spain? The DRAE defines taco with no regional specification as, “9.Conjunto de hojas de papel sujetas en un solo bloque” but this usage does not appear to becommon in most of the Spanish-speaking world.

post-it note (sticky note, “sticky”). The term post-it is the most commonly used term for this item,although it is often spelled and/or pronounced post it, postit, posti, posit, and due toconfusion (i.e. a little knowledge is dangerous) posted, etc. Other terms offered in this studyinclude (nota de) quita y pon (Spain, Costa Rica, Uruguay), and sticky or estiqui (PuertoRico).

protractor. Transportador is the General Spanish term but in Ecuador the word graduador is used.Semicírculo (graduado) was also offered by a few from Spain, Paraguay and Argentina, andby a majority from Cuba and Uruguay. The DRAE defines transportador as “Círculograduado... que sirve para medir o trazar los ángulos...” while the Diccionario inicial delespañol de México defines it as “Instrumento para medir ángulos... tiene la forma de unsemicírculo” (Ávila); many English-language dictionaries also define it as “a semicircularinstrument...” Since there are both half-circle and full-circle protractors, any definition thatsays it is circular or semicircular is too restrictive and needs to be made more general.

reinforcements (reinforcement rings, gummed reinforcements). Refuerzos (para hojas),refuerzos engomados, etiquetas circulares para hojas or protectores, may be, if not GeneralSpanish terms, at least neutral descriptive ones. Other terms, such as arandelas (adhesivas)(Spain), ojalillos (Peru?, Paraguay?, Argentina), ojetes (Cuba?, Venezuela) and ojetillos(Chile), appear to be more regional in nature.

tape A - scotch tape (transparent tape). Cinta adhesiva transparente and cinta de pegartransparente may be the “official” terms that professors of Spanish teach their students touse when seeking an equivalent of English “scotch tape,” and who can deny that these orsimilar neutral Spanish terms do not have some merit? They are not, however, what Spanish

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speakers typically use in their everyday language. The following are more common andregional names for this item: celo (Spain); celofán (Spain); celotape or celotei(p)(Venezuela); cinta escoch, cinta scotch or scotch/escoch (probably used almost everywherebut in this study it was found to be particularly common in Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica,Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile); cinta pegante (transparente)(Colombia); diurex (Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina; also sometimes spelled and pronounceddiúrex, durex, dúrex, yurex and yúrex; regardless of spelling the stress is always on the firstsyllable); fixo (Spain; also pronounced and occasionally spelled fiso); papel celo (Spain);tape, tei(p) or teipe (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,Venezuela; although in theory this Anglicism could refer to any type of “tape,” in practicethe term often refers specifically to scotch tape in the above countries); and teipa(Nicaragua? and elsewhere?). There is also the issue of how Spanish speakers distinguishbetween regular clear scotch tape and matte-finish “magic” scotch tape.

tape B - masking tape. The following terms were offered for this item: cinta de embalar or cintade embalaje (Spain, Peru?, Paraguay?, Argentina, Chile?; perhaps this is really “shippingtape” which is a lot heftier than “masking tape”); cinta de enmascarar (Colombia,Argentina?); cinta de papel (Ecuador, Argentina); masking tape or masquin teip (Mexico,Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile); papel precinta and precinta (Cuba); and tirro (El Salvador,Venezuela). The term masking tape often gets reduced to masking/masquin, and the variantcinta masquin sometimes gets expanded to cinta masquin teip (¡lo cual es llover sobremojado, “overkill” as it were, but who cares!). The s of masquin also sometimes getsreduced or eliminated, leaving maquin tei(p), which in turn can get reconfigured to marquintei(p), maquenté and other variants that members of the Real Academia would probably findtawdry, scandalous, base, contemptible, corrupt and a stinging insult to honorable and decentSpanish speakers everywhere.

typewriter. Máquina de escribir is the General Spanish term but the DRAE indicates thatmaquinilla is used in this sense in Puerto Rico. Is maquinilla commonly used in the senseof typewriter elsewhere? How much longer will typewriters be with us?

NOTES

1. From Abstract. An excerpt of this article is published in the printed edition of the Proceedingsof the 47th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association, and the complete versionin the CD ROM edition of the same publication. I would like to express my appreciation to SharleeMerner Bradley, Lucrecia Hug and Ketty Wong for reviewing earlier drafts and making valuablesuggestions, and to Teresa Kelly and Roshan Pokharel of the ATA for their support and technicalassistance. I would also like to thank the following people for going out of their way to put me incontact with informants/respondents for this study: María Barros, Eric Bye, Mónica Cicchetti, SusanCole, Camille Cook, María Fernández, Soledad Judge, Rachael Keast, Javier Labrador, Ilana Locker,Germán Eduardo Messidoro, Nancy Nash, Virginia Navarro, Kristen Nickel, David Pharies, MargotRevera, Rolando Roig, Rafael Saavedra, Leandro Wolfson, Leland Wright and Phyllis Zatlin.Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to all those who generously gave of their time to answer questionson usage. In addition to the works that appear in References below, information on items in otherdomains or semantic fields whose names in Spanish vary by region can be found in the followingworks by Andre Moskowitz:

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“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: time to retool.” Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conferenceof the American Translators Association, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., November 9-12,2005. Marian S. Greenfield, comp. American Translators Association, 2005. 295-417.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: wild kingdom.” Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conferenceof the American Translators Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 13-16, 2004.Marian S. Greenfield, comp. American Translators Association, 2004. 169-228.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: back to basics.” Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conferenceof the American Translators Association, Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A., November 5-8, 2003.Scott Brennan, comp. American Translators Association, 2003. 287-343.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: la ciudad y los fueros.” Proceedings of the 43rd AnnualConference of the American Translators Association, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., November6-9, 2002. Scott Brennan, comp. American Translators Association, 2002. 353-399.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: folks.” Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of theAmerican Translators Association, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., October 31-November3, 2001. Thomas L. West III, comp. American Translators Association, 2001. 268-301.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: kids’ stuff.” Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference ofthe American Translators Association, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A., September 20-23, 2000.Thomas L. West III, comp. American Translators Association, 2000. 328-366.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: food and drink.” Proceedings of the 40th AnnualConference of the American Translators Association, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., November3-6, 1999. Ann G. Macfarlane, comp. American Translators Association, 1999. 275-308.

“Topics in Spanish lexical dialectology: the home.” Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference ofthe American Translators Association, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, U.S.A.,November 4-8, 1998. Ann G. Macfarlane, comp. American Translators Association, 1998.221-253.

“Fruit and vegetable terminology in the Spanish-speaking world: regional variation.” Proceedingsof the 38th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association, San Francisco,California, U.S.A., November 5-9, 1997. Muriel M. Jérôme-O’Keeffe, comp. AmericanTranslators Association, 1997. 233-261.

“Clothing terminology in the Spanish-speaking world: regional variation.” Proceedings of the 37thAnnual Conference of the American Translators Association, Colorado Springs, Colorado,U.S.A., October 30-November 3, 1996. Muriel M. Jérôme-O’Keeffe, comp. AmericanTranslators Association, 1996. 287-308.

“Car terminology in the Spanish-speaking world.” Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference ofthe American Translators Association, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A., November 8-12, 1995.Peter W. Krawutschke, comp. American Translators Association, 1995. 331-340.

“Contribución al estudio del español ecuatoriano.” Unpublished M.A. thesis. Department ofRomance Languages and Literatures, University of Florida. Gainesville, Florida, U.S.A.1995.

“A box of office supplies: dialectological fun.” The Georgetown Journal of Languages &Linguistics. Vol. 1.3. Ed. Richard J. O’Brien, S.J. 1990. 315-344.

2. From section A1.3, Colombia. Andre Moskowitz taught middle-school and high-school Englishat the Colegio Panamericano, a bilingual semi-American-style school in Bucaramanga, Santanderin 1984, and English as a Second Language at the Centro Colombo Americano in Cali, el Valle,Colombia in 1985; he also taught ESL in Guayaquil, Ecuador from 1990-1992.

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3. From section A1.3, Attitudes toward tiza vs. alternate terms. Not only is Mexico the largestSpanish-speaking country in population, but it is also what we might call a “pop culture-exportingcountry.” This can be defined in a narrow way as a country that ships large quantities of pop cultureabroad such as popular music, film, advertising, and especially television programs. And there maybe a general tendency among educated people from large pop culture-exporting countries to be moreinsular and inward-looking as compared to their counterparts from smaller countries who are oftenmore cosmopolitan and outward-looking. Brazilians, and especially individuals from the UnitedStates, would be prime examples of people who, because their national cultures are so big andpowerful and constitute leaders within the Portuguese- and English-speaking worlds, respectively,are less likely on average to feel much of a need to look beyond their own borders for culture, or forguidance on language use. In the Spanish-speaking world, there is fortunately more of a balance ofcultural power and no country is as dominant as the United States, Brazil, France, Germany or Egyptare in their respective language groups. Nevertheless, there is still a high degree of asymmetrywithin the Spanish-speaking world. For example, no Spanish-speaking country, including Spain,exports more popular culture, especially television novelas, than Mexico. It is possible that educatedpeople from Mexico, and probably to a lesser extent those of Colombia and Argentina, insofar asthey are aware of foreign models of language use, especially Peninsular Spanish usage, more oftentake the position that “Así hablamos, y punto” than do people from smaller countries such asHonduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc. In all countries, the educated often look down on and attempt todistance themselves from the ways in which the uneducated masses speak the language, but insmaller nations in which the educated are only a tiny minority, those who have had the benefit ofhigher learning tend to be very uncomfortable with features of their own language that mirror thoseof the uneducated masses. While linguistic insecurity can be found everywhere, due to the vastlydifferent shapes of the different Latin American societies’ social pyramids, this phenomenon wouldbe very characteristic of small countries such as El Salvador and Honduras, in which a largepercentage of the population receives little or no schooling, but not of one like Uruguay that has ahigh literacy rate and a (relatively) solid middle class. Other small Spanish-speaking countriesprobably fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

4. From section A3.3, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru & Chile. The Diccionariodel habla actual de Venezuela (Núñez) describes the Andean region of Venezuela, where it indicatesthat almohadilla is used in the sense of chalkboard eraser, as consisting of the states of Trujillo,Mérida, Táchira, Barinas, Apure, the extreme western part of Portuguesa, and the extreme southernpart of Lara that borders Trujillo.

5. From section A3.3, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru & Chile. The Nuevodiccionario de colombianismos (Haensch and Werner 1993a) indicates that almohadilla(‘chalkboard eraser’) is used in the departments of Boyacá, Caldas, Cauca, Cesar, Córdoba,Cundinamarca, Magdalena, Norte de Santander, Quindío, Risaraldas, Santander and el Valle, as wellas in the Llanos Orientales or eastern plains that drain to the Orinoco (the region of Colombia thatlies between the Venezuelan border and the Amazon jungle). However, these areas are spread outover disparate parts of Colombia that include the eastern interior, the western interior, the Costa orAtlantic Coast region, and the Llanos, which would suggest that the use of almohadilla (‘chalkboarderaser’) is not regionally marked within Colombia. Is its use socially marked?

6. From section A5.3, Argentina. The Diccionario del español de Argentina (Haensch and Werner2000a) defines the northwest region of Argentina (el Noroeste), where it says felpa (‘marker’) is

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used, as that consisting of the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero,most of La Rioja, the northwest part of San Juan, the northwest corner of Chaco and the extremewestern part of Formosa.

7. From section A6.3, Spain. Boli, a shortened, colloquial form of bolígrafo, appears to be morecommon in Spain than in other Spanish-speaking countries. It would therefore be interesting to doa comparative study to determine how frequent forms such as la uni (la universidad), la bici (labicicleta), la pati (la patineta), and la tele (la televisión), etc., are in the different varieties of thelanguage, and to see if Spaniards generally have a greater penchant for lopping off the final syllablesof certain nouns to create colloquial forms of the same word than do Spanish speakers from othercountries. Or perhaps this phenomenon is equally common in all varieties of Spanish but differentwords are selected in each to undergo this process. An interesting example heard in Mexico,especially among Mexico City youth (perhaps in other countries and groups as well), and that occursnot with a noun but with an adjective-interjection-command is tranquis (‘tranquilo’), often with themeaning of ‘relax’, ‘chill out’ and sometimes in the adjectival sense. Examples include tranquis,tranquis, ya viene; quédate tranquis, no va a pasar nada; and estábamos muy tranquis, escuchandomúsica. I was told that tranquis is not used to describe an inherent characteristic as in es un hombremuy *tranquis. Does this process generally occur with words that have at least four syllables andmostly when at least two syllables at the end of the word are eliminated? Many of the shortenedforms such as bici have only two syllables, but others have three such as esfero (from esferográfico),and revolú or revulú (‘relajo, situación caótica’; se armó un revulú; perhaps from revolución or,according to the DRAE, from tótum revolútum). Are three syllables the short forms’ upper limit? Acommon example from English is paci (pronounced as if written passee, from baby’s pacifier). Inthe United States, paci now appears to be used in spoken language much more often than pacifier,and the short form is by no means limited to “baby talk.”

8. From section A6.3, Puerto Rico. For all the abuse Puerto Ricans have been subject to over theyears on account of their Spanish, my experience is that educated Puerto Ricans generally speak anelegant, classic and, in many respects, neutral variety of the language that often puts the Spanish oftheir critics to shame. In addition to a great many standard middle-of-the-road lexical preferences(as well as a large number of intriguing, enriching and colorful regionalisms), Puerto Rican Spanishincludes the following features:

a) The velar word-final or phrase-final n whereby the final consonant in a word like canciónis generally pronounced the way an English speaker would pronounce the final sound of “song” or“sing.” This feature is currently found in about half the Spanish-speaking world, or perhaps slightlymore than half, and appears to be gaining ground at the expense of the alveolar n (i.e. when the finaln in canción is pronounced like those in English “son” or “sin”).

b) No rehilamiento of ll and y nor phonological distinction between them. When ll and ycorrespond to separate phonemes, rallo is pronounced differently from rayo, and pollo from poyo.For a brief, nontechnical description of rehilamiento of ll and y, see Argentina in section A4.3above. Both of these features, which are lacking in Puerto Rican Spanish, are regional in nature andnot part of General Spanish.

c) No shortening, weakening, or devoicing of unstressed vowels typical of “highland”Spanish such as that found in the Andes and in interior Mexico.

d) Not pronouncing words ending in -illo or -illa as if they ended in -ío or ía (such that pilloand pío are homophones, as well as la silla and la CIA), or doing the opposite due tohypercorrection, features that are common in many Central American varieties.

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e) Pronouncing the jota sound as a simple aspiration ([h]). This feature is found in manyareas of the Spanish-speaking world, but is admittedly at one of the far ends of the spectrum of jotas:It is not as “middle-of-the-road” as the jota heard in the Spanish of Mexico City, Lima or BuenosAires, but (according to my own highly subjective sense of aesthetics) is much more pleasing to theear than the Castilian clearing-of-the-throat jota.

f) Pronouncing the /rr/ sound (carro, reto, Israel) with aspiration which causes it to bevoiceless. There is also the velarized or uvular r used by many Puerto Ricans such that Ramónsounds similar to jamón (Lipski: 333). Both are aspects of Puerto Rican pronunciation that lieoutside of the Spanish language’s “mainstream.”

g) The exclusive use of tú and usted as singular and plural familiar second-person pronouns,along with their corresponding verb forms, that is, no voseo or “vosotroseo,” both of which areregionally marked features outside the confines of standard General Spanish (although voseo isfound in a majority of Spanish-speaking countries).

h) The non-inversion of WH questions accompanied by subject pronouns such as ¿Qué túquiere(s)? and ¿Pa’ ónde tú va? (¿Para dónde/Adónde vas?). This phenomenon occurs with a veryhigh frequency throughout the Spanish-speaking Antilles, but is also not uncommon in otherCaribbean nations such as Panama and Venezuela (Lipski: 233, 242, 300, 335, 351).

Al hacer este breve recuento mayormente encomiástico del español puertorriqueño, en el cualse han sacado a relucir algunas características presentes y otras ausentes, debo confesar mi propioprejuicio en el asunto ya que, por lo general, soy de la barra del español antillano y partidario de sussonidos, cadencias y giros lingüísticos. Pero sobre los gustos no hay nada escrito, o __poniéndoleenmienda al refrán__, sobre ellos no hay nada escrito en forma objetiva. La aspiración de las eses quese da en el habla de los puertorriqueños cultos no me molesta. Es más, la prefiero a esas esesarrastradas que se oyen en algunas zonas de América (generalmente en las tierras altas donde lasvocales átonas se reducen y se ensordecen), y a las eses apicales o “espesas” del centro y norte deEshpaña. Dos aspectos que le tacharía al español puertorriqueño, y que sí me sacan de quicio, sonla pronunciación uvular de la erre (suena algo similar a una jota castellana), y la neutralización delas eles y las eres en posición final de palabra (mujel por mujer, caminal por caminar) ypreconsonántica (alma por arma), rasgos que se dan mucho menos en el habla culta de Puerto Ricoque en el habla popular, y menos todavía en su habla culta cuidadosa o esmerada. Partiendo de estaúltima característica fonética puertorriqueña (que hasta cierto punto la comparten las hablas cubanay dominicana también), han salido numerosos chistes como el siguiente: En diciembre de 1989 losEstados Unidos invade Panamá en una operación militar denominada “Causa Justa”, cuyo objetoinmediato es derrocar al general Manuel Antonio Noriega, antiguo colaborador de la CIA, y en estaoperación participan soldados puertorriqueños. Al gritar éstos a sus adversarios panameños yaderrotados “¡Entreguen las armas!”, las tropas panameñas renegaban y refunfuñaban, “¡Quédesgraciados que son estos soldados americanos, si quieren que entreguemos hasta nuestras almas!”

9. From section A6.3, Ecuador. Unfortunately, no Esmeraldeños were queried in this study andcomments regarding “Costeño usage” made in this article may not apply to the predominant usagein Esmeraldas. Until fairly recently the only paved roads connecting Esmeraldas with the rest of theCosta, or coastal region, passed through Santo Domingo de los Colorados, which is in the Sierra orhighland region. Thus Esmeraldas has been physically connected more to the Sierra than to the restof the Costa and may share a number of lexical features with the Sierra. Just so you have a lay ofthe land, the Costa is generally considered to consist of the provinces of Esmeraldas and Manabí (theCosta Norte), and Guayas, Los Ríos and El Oro (the Costa Sur). The Sierra is made up of a seriesof provinces which El gran libro de la cocina ecuatoriana (Rojas) subdivides into Carchi and

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Imbabura (the Sierra Norte), Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Chimborazo and Bolívar (the SierraCentral), Cañar and Azuay (the Austro), and Loja (the Sierra Sur), though others probably combinethese last two regions into a single area, Sierra Sur. Some from the Península de Santa Helena arecurrently involved in a bid to break away from el Guayas and create a new province (“Peninsularespor la Provincia 23”), but whether or not this campaign will be successful remains to be seen; in thepast, a similar initiative by Santo Domingo de los Colorados to secede from el Pichincha failed. Inaddition to longstanding border disputes with Peru, within Ecuador some of the provincial bordersare also in dispute as indicated by shaded areas on national maps. It should be noted that the definitearticles in the Ecuadoran provinces of “El Oro” and “Los Ríos” are spelled with initial uppercaseletters because they are considered inseparable from and part of the names, whereas those of “elCarchi,” “el Guayas” and “el Pichincha,” etc., can be spelled with a lowercase e since the article isoften optional and is not considered part of the provinces’ names, although it is obligatory in somecontexts such as “La Dirección Provincial del Guayas.”

¿Cómo explicar el hecho de que en el Ecuador algunos costeños parecen haber cedido anteel uso serrano al adoptar esfero mientras que los serranos no han adquirido pluma? Esto puederesultarnos más sorprendente aún si consideramos que entre los dos términos, esfero y pluma, es ésteel de mayor difusión a nivel internacional. Mientras que Guayaquil es la ciudad más grande del país,Quito es la capital, y cabe preguntar si el uso capitalino en este caso se está imponiendo en toda lanación. También hay quienes sostienen que el carácter serrano suele ser más terco y menos flexibleque el del costeño. ¿Serán los serranos menos propensos a ceder ante el uso costeño que vice versa?Otra explicación más sencilla es que, por razones comprensibles, a los ecuatorianos de ambas zonasles suena más fino (y más chévere) el término esfero, en tanto que la voz pluma les suena máschapada a la antigua.

10. From section A7.3, Spelling & Variants. Although respondents were not asked about the pluralform of pluma fuente or plumafuente, an Internet search on Google conducted in mid 2006 generated4 different written plural forms, to wit, plumas fuente (2,240 hits), plumas fuentes (1,410 hits),plumafuentes (122 hits) and plumasfuentes (3 hits). A search of the corresponding plural forms oflapicera fuente produced lapiceras fuente (86 hits), lapiceras fuentes (14 hits), lapicerafuentes (0hits), and lapicerasfuentes (0 hits). In the phrases plumas fuente and lapiceras fuente the modifierfuente appears to function as an invariable adjective that does not exhibit grammatical number orgender agreement. However, many prefer to view this fuente as an appositive noun that is used toexplain another noun. Another somewhat prescriptive analysis is that fuente is an appositive nounand therefore is not governed by the other noun, but is sometimes “incorrectly” interpreted as anadjective and then is subject to (or is subjected to) agreement. The issue perhaps boils down to howbroadly one defines the word “adjective.” In either case, fuente operates the same way that claveworks when it modifies a noun, as in the phrases dos palabras clave, un factor clave, cases in whichthere is also an absence of number or gender agreement. Nevertheless, phrases such as factoresclaves and razones claves are also widely used. Other possible examples of this phenomenon arelímite (fecha límite, velocidad límite), ambiente (temperatura ambiente) and base (línea base). Wenote that all of these words have two things in common: They all end in e and, if consideredadjectives (in the broad sense of words that modify nouns), they are all derived without modificationfrom a noun. What other examples are there in Spanish of adjectives that do not show numberagreement? Do many of them end in e, and are they generally “nonproductive” adjectives, that is,do they only modify a very small set of nouns? Two examples of adjectives that also frequently lacknumber and gender agreement, may be somewhat productive, and do not end in an e are estándar,

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as in the phrase variedades estándar (though some also write and say variedades estándares), andporno, as in the phrase películas porno (películas *pornas would be considered ungrammatical).

11. From section A7.4, Questions/Comments: The issue of whether or not pluma estilográfica andestilográfica are primarily Peninsular Spanish usages__and therefore whether or not these termsshould be defined in Spanish dictionaries with a regional specification indicating Spain (“Esp.”)__isdebatable. In its Advertencias para el uso de este diccionario, the DRAE informs the reader that“Todas aquellas entradas de uso general en España cuyo empleo en otros países ha sidoexpresamente negado por las Academias correspondientes, llevan la marca Esp” (DRAE: xxxiv).However, this seems to be an overly restrictive criterion as it is unlikely that many members of thesister Academies would abjure most typically Peninsular Spanish usages. (Siendo miembroscorrespondientes de la Real Academia ¿acaso van a renunciar a los españolismos ante sus colegasde Madrid? ¡Por algo son buenos académicos!) In this study, few respondents from countries otherthan Spain offered pluma estilográfica and estilográfica. On the other hand, an Internet search onGoogle conducted in mid 2006 produced 52,300 hits for pluma estilográfica, 26,700 hits forestilográfica (without the word pluma), but only 18,800 hits for pluma fuente, which suggests thatin writing (pluma) estilográfica is the most frequently used term, and perhaps should be consideredthe General Spanish term and the lead term in Spanish-language dictionaries. Nevertheless, a cursoryperusal of the sites on which (pluma) estilográfica was found indicated that many were from Spain.If you take the position that primarily Peninsular Spanish usages that are part of the standardlanguage should not be considered españolismos since practically all are known to some SpanishAmericans, then there would be hardly any españolismos in existence, and hence exceedingly fewwould be defined with an Esp. regional specification. This is essentially what has happened in theDRAE and partially explains why the Esp. designation is used so sparingly. And if we extend thisargument a bit further, we can say that almost all regionalisms are known by some outsiders, andtherefore there is no need for a dictionary to have any regional specifications. This approach,however, would clearly be detrimental to dictionary users who are interested in knowing whereregionally weighted usages are primarily used.

12. From section A11.3, Sacapuntas vs. sacapunta: Alas, for most academic linguists the regionalvariation of the lexicon is an area of study that is entirely lacking in sex appeal. The vast majorityof Spanish dialectologists or Hispanic dialectologists, that is, dialectologists who study the Spanishlanguage (not ones who are necessarily Spanish or Hispanic) are interested in phonetics, phonology,morphosyntax or some aspect of sociolinguistics, but precious few are specifically interested in thelexicon and its variation. Notable exceptions include the German dialectologist-lexicographersGünther Haensch and Reinhold Werner (who are terrific all-around Hispanist-linguists), and theeminent Japanese scholar Hiroto Ueda. The latter has published extensively on Spanish lexicaldialectology and, along with Toshihiro Takagaki and Antonio Ruiz Tinoco, is in charge of animportant project called Varilex, which in mid 2006 was available online at http://gamp.c.u-tokyo-.ac.jp/~ueda-/vari-lex/in-dex.php (some of the dashes will need to be eliminated). However, whenI checked this website, I was unable to compare results to those of the present study and others citedin this article due to the fact that the Varilex site did not appear to indicate how many respondentsfrom each location had offered each term. The black and gray dots on the maps, indicating that eithera hit or no hit had been recorded for a given usage in a given city, were also hard to read. Throughthe San Francisco Public Library’s interlibrary loan program I tried to order printed versions ofvarious Varilex works and others that are listed on Hiroto Ueda’s website at http://gamp.c.u-tok-yo.ac.jp/~ueda/ken-kyu/gyoseki_s.pdf such as “Distribución de las palabras variables en España y

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en América. Léxico del transporte” in Estudios de Lingüística Hispánica. Homenaje a MaríaVaquero (2000, pp. 637-655), but was informed that my requests had been cancelled because therewere no US libraries that carried these works, or because they were available online; my onlinesearches also did not produce full versions of the articles I was seeking. Así que me quedé con lasganas. Si usted intenta obtener las obras de Hiroto Ueda, ojalá tenga más suerte, o más destreza enla búsqueda, y logre recibirlas para analizar y cotejar los resultados.

13. From section B1.3, Argentina. The Diccionario del español de Argentina (Haensch and Werner2000a) indicates that the Cuyo region of Argentina, where it says elastiquín (‘rubber band’) is used,consists of the province of Mendoza and most of the province of San Juan, except for its northwestcorner, which Haensch and Werner consider part of the northwest region.

14. From section C3.3, Cuaderno universitario. Al definir cuaderno universitario, Morales Pettorinoet al precisan que es un “cuaderno... armado en un espiral metálico o plástico...” con lo cual dan aentender que ellos consideran que espiral es voz de género masculino, mientras que el DRAE y losdiccionarios mexicanos de Lara Ramos y Ávila (entre otros) indican que espiral es un sustantivoexclusivamente femenino. ¿Nos encontramos ante otro tema dialectológico que aguarde nuestraatención? ¡Adelante, caro lector! ¿Nos hará el favor de investigarlo entrevistando a personas dediferentes partes y luego de avisarnos? Una búsqueda por internet, realizada a mediados de 2006,arrojó los siguientes resultados generales (las cifras entre paréntesis representan el número desucesos de cada frase): la espiral (505.000), las espirales (53.500), una espiral (459.000), unasespirales (812), el espiral (39.500), los espirales (13.100), un espiral (59.000), y unos espirales(992). Si bien es cierto que en esta búsqueda limitada espiral aparece como sustantivo femenino unnúmero de ocasiones (1.018.312) que es casi diez veces mayor que el número de veces en queaparece como masculino (112.592), la cantidad de sucesos masculinos no es despreciable ydifícilmente puede atribuirse a simples “errores” de parte de los escritores. Así que el interroganteplanteado arriba__quiénes dicen la espiral y quiénes el espiral__queda por resolverse, y no creo quela respuesta más acertada o iluminadora sea “Bueno, los que hablan correctamente dicen la espiraly los que no pueden decir el espiral o lo que les dé la gana”.

15. From section C7.3, General. With regard to the question of where the term maletín mostly refersto a briefcase and where it often conjures up a small suitcase, the distinction between the two itemsis often hazy. After all, where does a small suitcase end and a large briefcase begin? The briefcasespeople in some professions tote around certainly appear suitcase-ish or suitcasesque, while otherbriefcases made of canvas are essentially bags with zippers. Another classic topic in Spanish lexicaldialectology that is not strictly within the school- and office-supply domain but that needs to beresearched is the names for “wallet”: In which countries is this generally called a billetera, in whicha cartera, and in which a billetero? Although the DRAE defines all three in this sense withoutregional specifications, any attentive traveler in the Spanish-speaking world can tell you that thereare regional preferences. Is billetera more common in South America and cartera more prevalentin Mexico, Central America, the Antilles and Spain? An in-depth comparative study is needed.

16. From section C7.3, Spelling & Variants. In addition to portafolio(s), the DRAE listsportaequipaje(s), portalámpara(s), portaobjeto(s) and portarretrato(s) with both a final s andwithout one, and in each case the s-less form is preferred. With other compound words in which thefirst element is porta, however, the DRAE lists only a form with a final s, to wit, portaaviones,portabebés, portabrocas, portacartas, portacomidas, portaherramientas, portalibros, portaligas,

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portamaletas, portamantas, portamonedas, portapliegos, portaplumas, portarrollos andportaviandas; and in a few cases it lists only s-less forms such as portaalmizcle, portabandera,portacaja, portacarabina, portafusil and portalápiz. It is true that what is being transported in someof these examples is necessarily plural (e.g. portaaviones), whereas in others it is singular (e.g.portacarabina), but in other cases whether the object carried is generally singular or plural is lessclear and more open to interpretation. Examples include portabebé(s), portacomida(s), portamina(s)and portarrollo(s) all of which over the lifetime of the device may hold many of the objects inquestion but at any given time often hold only one. Regardless of semantic correctness, it would beinteresting to research usage to determine the frequency of forms with and without a final s, and itseems likely that in the case of some of the more common and popular ones, such as portacomida,portamaleta, portavianda, the singular form without a final s is heard more often. For example, theDiccionario del español de Cuba (Haensch and Werner 2000b) lists the following compound termswith no final s: portabala, portacartucho, portachernero, portafuente (glossed as Peninsular Spanishsalvamanteles) and portavaso (Peninsular Spanish posavaso). See the section on “Spelling andVariants” in this article’s Introduction.

REFERENCES

Academia Argentina de Letras. 1998. Léxico del habla culta de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires,Argentina: Academia Argentina de Letras.

Ávila, Raúl. 2003. Diccionario inicial del español de México. 1st edition. Mexico City, Mexico:Editorial Trillas.

Corominas, Joan and José A. Pascual. 1980. Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico.6 volumes. Madrid, Spain: Editorial Gredos.

García-Pelayo y Gross, Ramón, ed. 1981. Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado. Buenos Aires, Mexico City,Paris: Ediciones Larousse.

Haensch, Günther and Reinhold Werner. 1993. Nuevo diccionario de americanismos. Tomo I.Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos. Bogotá, Colombia: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.

Haensch, Günther, Reinhold Werner and Úrsula Kühl de Mones. 1993. Nuevo diccionario deamericanismos. Tomo III. Nuevo diccionario de uruguayismos. Bogotá, Colombia: InstitutoCaro y Cuervo.

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I speak for millions of Englishmen when I say that we are as sick and tired of this so-called English accent as you Americans are. It has far less right to be calledStandard English than Yorkshire or any other country dialect has – or than anyAmerican dialect. It is as alien to us as it is to you. True, some of my neighbors haveacquired it – for social and other reasons –, but then some of the Saxon peasantstook pains to acquire Norman French, which was also imposed on them from above.The advantages to be gained from its acquisition, if not wholly imaginary, are ofspecious value. Boys from the great public schools, the cradles of snobbery, find thattheir speech is a passport to jobs in motor showrooms in Great Portland street andthe Euston road, but even there its function is mainly decorative. As soon as thecustomer has been well slavered and purred over, he is passed on to a salesman who,whether he speaks broad Cockney or broad Northumbrian, knows something aboutcars.

H. W. Seaman, British journalist and social critic, 1933.