Ravalejar

Nobody that it has taken a walk recently by the Raval will have been able to let notice the presence of posters, even t-shirts and other classic supports of the modern marketing research, which they raise, deliberately austere of manner, a strange word: to ravalejar in Catalan, to ravalear in Castilian. And I say of released because the design is evident that from those posters, and their content tries to send us to the manuals of spelling, the dictionaries, those containers of the linguistic knowledge that give prestige to the language.

Ravalejar is an invented, nonexistent, absurd word. A false and unnecessary word. I do not know what means: to take a walk by the Raval, to live in the Raval, to buy, to eat, to drink, to amuse themselves, to love in the Raval? Or perhaps everything simultaneously? To a false verb it is not possible to attribute to him meant. What we are suggesting to our children: that he is legitimate to create words of the anything, because if ‘? What will be the following thing: to Diagonalear, to Guineuetear, or, perhaps, to SantaColomear?

ANTONIO GUINOVART
Philologist
Barcelona