Who has not had doubts when it comes to spelling? And it is that there are morphological structures in Spanish that are complex enough to make us think a little. This is the case of this widely used interjection.
Spanish is a fairly productive language, but much more creative when it comes to complex formations. So that you don’t lose the thread of what we will explain to you next, first we are going to remind you of some language concepts that you have surely forgotten.
Even when are you going to settle for reading a post where they only tell you the correct way to write a word but they don’t explain why. They only tell you to write “like this” and “not like this”, leaving the information up to there. But, if you are really interested in learning about spelling and getting to know your language a little more, keep reading this post, because here we will explain in great detail how to write congratulations or congratulations and why.
Instructions to write congratulations or congratulations
At school they taught you that there are two types of words according to morphological criteria: simple and compound. That is something that no one forgets. However, there are other criteria for the formation of words in Spanish according to the Royal Spanish Academy.
The truth is that, in case you don’t remember, morphology as part of the grammar of the language, is in charge of studying the structure of the units known as words. Therefore, given the complexity that this implies, his studies have branched into two categories: lexical morphology and the well-known inflectional morphology; all from analysis and descriptions of both diachronic (evolutions over time) and synchronous (variations of the language within the same historical period) type.
Inflectional morphology basically studies the changes of grammatical content in the structure of words that affects their syntactic links. For example, the agreement between gender and number in the expression Ellas bailan. Note that the -s at the end of the pronoun expressed in the third person singular is linked to the verb that follows it from the final grapheme -n which also expresses plurality.
In this very superfluous way, we explain a little bit of the approach that the study of inflections gives to the morphology of words. That is to say, it is about something much more structurally grammatical, therefore it focuses on the productive nature of the language, leaving its creative nature to one side.
However, lexical morphology focuses more than anything on the study of lexical bases and not endings or derivational structures. Therefore, it is classified into derivational morphology and compositional morphology. This is what your teacher at school meant when she said simple and complex.
Derivational morphology studies the affixation processes that modify lexical bases. This was explained to you as a child when they taught you to identify the “family” of a word. Remember? For example, from the noun house derives casita, casero, casona, caserío, among others. This also happens with verbs, when we say that love derives from love, loving, I will love, we will love or in other cases as high from which we obtain haughty, haughty, highly, altitude or exalt.
So, knowing that every derived word consists of a lexical base or root and an affix that can be modifiable, it is the base that provides the real meaning of the concept that the word itself represents. Therefore, the Royal Spanish Academy has determined that there are three derivation processes in Spanish known as prefixation, suffixation, and the controversial parasynthesis. We say “controversial parasynthesis” because there is still much inequality of criteria among theorists regarding the processes and structures that this category of analysis encompasses.
What do you need to write congratulations or congratulations?
What you really need to internalize the spelling of words and not fall into mistakes is to know a little more about the processes of word formation and relate them to the social use that we give each expression and word every day.
Many theorists affirm that parasynthesis is a process of formation of complex structures where we find a mixture between derivation and composition. Now, understanding the composition as the union of two lexical bases for the formation of a new concept, we can say that the word quinceañera is a parasynthetic word. However, the controversy at this point focuses on whether a prefix is really a prefix or a compositional element, as in the case of the Greco-Latin lexemes logos, in speech therapy, or phylum in philologist. But, that is already another matter.
Now, after having reviewed the word formation processes in Spanish, you will realize that Congratulations does not belong to any of those categories. Originally, this structure was a syntactic group: en hora buena. Therefore, the process that has undergone is known as lexicalization.
Although the Royal Spanish Academy recognizes that the word and the lexicalized syntactic groups are different units, they still do not agree on the criteria to distinguish them in cases where intermediate units cannot be clearly differentiated.
It is said that when a syntactic group is lexicalized it is that the linking of the different elements that make it up becomes a single term from the conceptual perspective. This concentration of meaning is usually evidenced when the parts of the group are orthographically amalgamated as in Congratulations.
The so-called formulaic interjective expressions, such as congratulations, linguistically characterize the social behaviors of speakers. Therefore, they have a much more contextual and pragmatic conceptualization than a formal one.
Finally, now that you know the process of formation that the syntactic group En hora buena has undergone, until it became Congratulations, you can realize that the internal h that the term presents is due to the presence of the lexical base hora, and therefore so it should appear.
Tips for writing congratulations or congratulations
- When you have doubts about the proper way to write a word, do not hesitate to consult the dictionary. On the Internet you can get multiple options to investigate for free in official dictionaries such as DRAE.
- There are also specialized dictionaries for when a term is controversial. To learn much more about the use of words and their meanings, we recommend you consult the usual dictionary of the RAE or the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Dudas. In them you will find valuable information and descriptions for understanding the use and variants of a term or expression.
- Remember, you don’t have to settle for spelling the words correctly, you have to understand the process through which the terms have gone through in order to internalize the spelling of your language.
- Many criticize the rule that the Royal Spanish Academy has drawn up and compiled in the latest version of the spelling of Spanish because they think that they still have a traditionalist and arbitrary position. However, the truth is that this famous academy has the best linguists and language scholars, who are dedicated to analyzing, based on descriptive field work, the variations and regularizations of the language as a system.
- It is not that the norm is established according to what Ignacio Bosque determines it to be and full stop. It is not like that, it is not about affirming that such a term or expression is correct or not because the RAE says so, we must go a little further. Therefore, this post helps you get out of ignorance and stop being another one of the bunch.