Don JULIO CASARES SPOKE JAPANESE AND 19 MORE LANGUAGES

 

I was twenty years old when Don Julio Casares, the lexicologist (1877-1964), died in Madrid on Felipe IV Street. Perpetual Secretary of the RAE. He was a man from Granada with a kind face and a humble appearance, who lived in the Royal Academy building like a recluse.

  I was in my second year of Commons at the Complutense.

I was lucky enough to attend an event in the auditorium

Which was like his spiritual testament admonishing young Spaniards to continue along the path full of the thorns of letters but capable of bringing happiness to human beings.

Philology is not an exact science nor does it have a practical application like engineering, medicine, pharmacology and all the mechanical arts.

We arts students were looked down upon and the girls didn't want to go out with us. “You will die of hunger” that was the axiom, that was the fixed one. However, my generation was fortunate to have illustrious teachers, wise references: in art history Azcarate and Angulo.

In literary criticism Almagro, Narciso Alonso Cortés. In Medicine Marañón, Tamarit, Carballo.

The novel and the poetic never enjoyed such excellent pens: Cela, Delibes, Umbral, Zunzunegui, Tomás Salvador, etc.

The author of the ideological dictionary was a true giant of paremiology, of good saying and good regret.

He spoke twenty languages, English without an accent, he seemed like a “don” or master from Oxford. In one of his articles in ABC's Tercera, I managed to find out that there is a great connection between the Spanish proverb “Birds of the same feather fly together”, or “God raises them and they come together”, and English.

Also with Russian: “I put a mouse in my barn, it became owner of the barn.” He had taken notes from the North American Webster's, the Oxford Dictionary and knew perfectly the Russian Dhal that Solyenitsin was so enthusiastic about.

  To the sadness of Spanish humanism, today there is no such desire to seek utterance perfection.

On the contrary, it leads to bad writing and bad speaking, introducing solecisms, foreign words and nonsense into the conversation.

  The forces that govern us have taken over Nebrija's phrase “the language is a companion of the empire” and they insult the Spanish language with all kinds of outbursts.

What it is about is making it disappear. Today the language of the empire is a tacky English that speaks or “spikes” half of humanity.

The Spanish emulators of Mephistopheles have sold their souls to the devil and his soul was the Spanish language.

However, there are still some of us who, like the last of the Philippines, do not surrender to the attacks of the Anglo aggressor who is besieging the square.

We will never give up and we will counterattack with the voices of Casares.

 

Saturday, January 13, 2024