Carme Riera: "For some feminists, an inclusive language is needed, but the focus should be on the equivalence of wages"

The Spanish narrator and essayist Carme Riera she became the first guest writer to open the language congress, a step that she noticed as the correlate of a stage in which women "stop being spoken to start speaking" although it has moved away from certain phenomena such as inclusive language, because "the focus should be on the equivalence of wages, rather than matching the terms"

The Majorcan woman born in 1928 is the author of essays and novels such as Nature almost dead, The last words and I will avenge his death, and deploys his literary career as a professor of Hispanic philology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​parallel to his activities as a member of the Royal Academy of Language, which has been part of since 2012.

–First writer invited to open the Congress of Languages, what interested him the most in his speech today?

– What excited me the most which means that women do not talk anymore and start talking.

–Write in two languages ​​and take care of the translation of your books yourself.

– In my case, the rewrite is clear and clear, nothing secret. Translation is fundamental. This makes it possible to reach many more people. Also from the literary point of view, it is a very creative work. Translating the works I write in Catalan into Spanish allows me to recognize my writing defects. As I said in my opening speech to Congress, for me languages ​​are crystals with which we see the world. This other crystal of the new language, that of Castilian, offers me the possibility of correcting Catalan.

– C & # 39; was a friend of Ernesto Sabato. How was this link?

– Sabato is one of my favorite authors and the only man to whom I sent flowers anonymously, by pure literary fascination. I knew him very much, I admired him very much and I am very happy to be friends with his partner, Elvira González Fraga, with whom I continue to dialogue. He was eager to see some of his books translated into Catalan. I offered myself. The Planeta editorial was interested in the subject, but I was not able to stay true to the text because I was always trying to change things and I left it. I think it would have been a deadly sin to amend the great Sabato.

– As a member of the Royal Academy, he works on the neologism committee. With criteria, the Academy believes that the time has come to accept a new mandate?

– The language evolves with the use. The technical details invade it because we are in a change of the times. We accept the inclusion of a new term when we find that its use is a majority, because this ongoing research is carried out via CORPES (Corpus del Español of the 21st century).. On one side, technology brings new terms that are incorporated, while allowing people to use fewer words.. And this is related to another phenomenon: People write more and more on social networks but write very badly.

– What impact do you think this phenomenon of social networks can have on the flow of language?

– A huge impact. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer terms are used and even these tend to be replaced by emoticons. When we use the language, we can choose between twenty synonyms, but all of these possibilities are limited to the minimum expression when we opt for the emoticon who blinks with the eye or smiles. When we choose an emoticon, we leave aside an interesting nuance of language that consists of making the effort to choose the precise word.

– How do you position yourself in the face of inclusive language when you declare yourself a feminist and at the same time part of the Royal Spanish Academy, which has so far been published unfavorably on this subject?

– Feminism is more than a linguistic problem: it's a moral problem. If a politician repeats all his actions a thousand times, but still does not consider that gender-based violence is a state affair or says the wage gap must persist, it hides something, even offending women. After listening to the plenary session, the director of the RAE is responsible for publicizing the views of society, but each academic or academic is free to give his opinion. In this direction, For some feminists, it is necessary to use an inclusive language. It seems to me that the focus should be on matching wages rather than equality of terms.. Once we get a concierge to win the same thing as a goalkeeper, we can devote to the language.

– For some, matching bad with language changes can help equalize wages …

– The visibility of women must be transversal, but I'm afraid it's expensive for women to have the same power and the same opportunities as men.