The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) celebrates this Thursday its usual plenary session with the academics that is expected to be “stormy”, as the writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte announced last week, due to the controversy that arose around the accent with the adverb ‘ only’.
Last week, after the plenary session was held, the RAE clarified that the use of the adverb ‘solo’, as well as the demonstrative pronouns ‘este’, ‘ese’ and ‘aquel’, with their feminine and plural forms, can only be used in contexts where the writer perceives risks of ambiguity, according to sources from the cultural institution to Europa Press.
In this way, the plenary agreed “unanimously” on a new wording that will be published in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts (DPD), which “does not modify the norm but makes it clearer,” the aforementioned sources highlighted. Thus, the RAE explained that it is “obligatory not to put the tilde if there is no ambiguity” and that it is “optional” to put it in contexts where the person who writes perceives risks of ambiguity.
In the last update of the general rules of accentuation, the RAE pointed out that the word ‘solo’, both when it is an adverb and is equivalent to only and when it is an adjective; as well as the demonstratives ‘este’, ‘ese’ and ‘aquel’, with their feminine and plural forms, whether they function as pronouns or as determiners, they must not have an accent mark, either because they are flat two-syllable words ending in a vowel or in ‘-s’ ; well, in the case of the former, because it is acute and ends in a consonant other than ‘n’ or ‘s’.
In addition, in a second explanation, the RAE insisted that “the option to mark these words or not when there is a risk of ambiguity is maintained” and the expression “in the opinion of the writer” was introduced so that the writer can assess “if there is ambiguity or not. Thus, he stressed that the speaker “will have to justify” the use of the tilde if he perceives the risk of ambiguity”. the most advisable option”, they pointed out on social networks.
However, this clarification was answered by the writer and academic Arturo Pérez-Reverte, accusing the RAE of giving “biased and inaccurate” information with the plenary decision. The journalist, as he criticized in a message on social networks, questioned the arguments of the RAE explaining the use of the accent, where they reiterated that what was approved in the plenary session on March 2 “does not modify” the doctrine of the ‘spelling’ of the year 2010 and its use is even expressed “in a clearer way”.
In this context, Pérez-Reverte made ugly the RAE’s explanations on Twitter. “Nothing new is added”? “Will you have to justify it”? I’m sorry to say that RAE, directed by an anti-tildista academic, is giving biased and inaccurate information,” said the writer, later clarifying that he was not referring to the director of the institution, Santiago Muñoz Machado.
In addition, the former correspondent insisted that the RAE did “approve an important modification” regarding the accent in ‘solo’ in its last plenary session, advancing that the next plenary session would be “stormy”.
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