The contributions of Antonio Viada (1902) to the strategy of adapting English sports terms to the Spanish language. Apropos the <em>Historical Dictionary of Football Terms</em>

Abstract

Concerns about the kind of sports terms employed in the Spanish press in the last decade of the nineteenth century gave rise to controversies in 1902, a key year in the creation of a sports lexicon in the Spanish language. The aim of this study is to analyse the nine articles that Antonio Viada published in the journal Los Deportes between February and December 1902, which contain fundamental contri- butions to history of Spanish language. He proposed 215 translations for 181 foreign sports terms adopting a linguistic strategy clearly motivated by an ideology of Spanish regenerationism. We owe Viada some notable creations such as fútbol, basquedbol [sic], boxeo, remo, tenis o vela, all of which are essential to our understanding of the evolution of the Spanish language and to the Historical Dictionary of Football Terms (DHTF) which we are preparing.