Do you like being a model of selfies? Surely you've heard of this expression, haven't you? But do you know the origin of this little word that is in fashion? O kids school will explain this story to you: Selfie or self-portrait? What is the correct expression?
To do selfies has become a common habit among children, teenagers and even adults! Fashion is being a model and author of your own photography and rushing to post it on a social network. Behind this new craze, there is a linguistic problem (who would have guessed!). This is because the word selfie is a linguistic loan, that is, a foreignism that we use in place of the word self portrait. But if we have a corresponding term in the Portuguese language, why do we borrow a word from the English language?
Linguistic borrowings occur when there is no term in the language that has an appropriate meaning and even close to the original term. This is not the case with the expression in question, since the word self portrait does the job very well. It turns out that the use of the word
selfie it ended up becoming popular due to several factors, including the ease of pronunciation. To say selfie is much easier than saying self portrait, do not you think? Also, the word self portrait is not very nice, especially after it was rewritten after the new orthographic agreement. Before, "self-portrait", today, self portrait, with two “Rs”. The fact is that everyone prefers selfie!As you've read before, the origin of the word selfie is English, and English is the most influential language in the world. The expression comes from the word self-portrait (self-portrait) and was used for the first time, according to a survey of research in the area, in the early 2000s in a virtual chat environment. To give you an idea, in 2013, the Oxford dictionaries of the University of Oxford (the oldest university in the English-speaking world) chose the term selfie as the word of the year! That's because the increase in the number of searches for the word increased by an unbelievable 17,000%, thus proving its popularity. The term is used all over the world, including Brazil, one of the champion countries in the number of accesses to the Internet.
Many linguists turn up their noses when it comes to linguistic borrowing, but we must take into account the linguistic variations and especially the concept of language mutability. The Portuguese language is a living organism, subject to changes according to the needs of its speakers. Each era launches a fashion, and some terms, slang and expressions end up falling into disuse because new expressions emerge to replace them. It may be that in a few years no one will remember the word anymore selfie and it ends up being forgotten in some old dictionary. We must not forget that the language belongs to the speakers, we are the ones who make the vocabulary choices of the language. However, common sense is always welcome, even when it comes to Portuguese language, because whoever ends up adopting many foreign words in their vocabulary runs the serious risk of not being understood, which can make language borrowing a serious impediment to communication efficient.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
