Microplástico, word of the year 2018 for the Fundéu BBVA | Culture

Microplástico, word of the year 2018 for the Fundéu BBVA | Culture



Microplastic, voice that designates the small fragments of plastic that have become one of the main threats to the environment and to the health of human beings, has been chosen word of the year 2018 by the Fundéu BBVA, according to what the agency has announced this Saturday.

This is the sixth occasion in which the Urgent Spanish Foundation, promoted by Agencia Efe and BBVA, designate your word of the year between the outstanding terms of the news news and have, in addition, interest from the linguistic point of view. After choosing escrache in 2013, selfi in 2014, refugee in 2015, populism in 2016 Y aporophobia in 2017, the team of the Foundation has opted in this occasion for microplástico.

The Microplastics are small fragments of plastic -Five millimeter- that or were already manufactured with that size to be used in cleaning and hygiene products or have been fragmented from a larger plastic -of shopping bags, packaging ...- during its decomposition process.

Its presence in the sand of the beaches, in the organisms of the animals, in the sea salt that we consume and even in the water that we drink has set off the alarms and has forced to put in place measures to reduce the consumption of the plastics of only one use, responsible for a good part of the problem.

From the linguistic point of view, the Fundéu He dedicated one of his daily recommendations on October 26 to this term, which, although it does not yet appear in most Spanish dictionaries, is well formed from the "micro" compositional element and the "plastic" noun.

In this recommendation, the Foundation recalled that, as is generally the case with words formed with compositional elements, these are written together with the voice they accompany, without leaving a space in between or inserting a script (no micro-plastic or micro- plastic).

The Foundation's team, composed of linguists and journalists, announced a list of 12 candidates a few days ago, chosen from among more than 250 words, terms and expressions to which he has dedicated some of his recommendations for the use of the language over the last 12 months. To choose those candidates, as well as the final winner, factors of informative and linguistic interest are taken into account.

Among the candidates this year there was less presence of terms related to politics (nationalpopulism ") and more of the environmental (decarbonization, hybridization and microplastic itself) and social (mines or unaccompanied minors, anyone, micromachism). The world of sports brings the voice of the VAR (video-arbitration acronym) to the group of candidates, while the economy includes tariffs and super-tourism, and the list was completed by procrastination and dating.

"When a few weeks ago we began the process to choose the 12 candidates for the word of the year 2018, we found that, without intending to, most of the terms that seemed most appropriate to define somehow the year that ends were the social field (mena or minors unaccompanied, nobody, micromachism) or environmental ('microplastic', 'decarbonizing', 'hybridising' ...) ", explains the general director of the Fundéu BBVA, Joaquín Muller.

"We believe that this selection shows in some way the profile of a year in which, in addition to the major political and economic issues, we are all turning our attention to other matters of enormous importance that are sometimes eclipsed by other major media headlines. of communication ", he adds.

If you review the recommendations issued by the Foundation of Urgent Spanish, inspired in most cases by the doubts and inquiries of media professionals, there are dozens of terms related to the environment: "ecocide", "lengthening" , "ecoimpostura" or "ecopostureo", "espigar", "esmog", "Earth Hour" ... "

"So it's not uncommon that among the candidates for the word of the year there were several from that area or that the one finally chosen was 'microplastic,'" Muller says.

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