Petaloso, the new word created by a child that comes to the dictionary
Petal is the new word created by an Italian boy of eight who has traveled around the world thanks to social networks. The hashtag #petaloso it has been used more than 50,000 times and even the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has pronounced "petaloso" in public and has congratulated the student, in support of the linguistic creation of this little boy.
And it is the creativity of children has no limits and this has been demonstrated a few weeks ago at Marchesi school in Copparo, a municipality of about 16,000 inhabitants in the province of Ferrara, in northern Italy. That day in the language class of the course equivalent to Third Primary in Spain played a test on adjectives.
Professor Margherita Aurora was intrigued when one of her students, Matteo, used a unknown word in a written work: "petaloso". Matteo applied the adjective petaloso ("full of petals") to a flower, since in Italian fiore It's masculine. The word does not officially exist in the Italian dictionary, but grammatically it makes sense as a combination of "petal" and the suffix "-oso" ("full of").
Petaloso, a beautiful mistake
As the teacher explains, which for more coincidence is called Margherita, "I marked 'petaloso' as a mistake, but I added a red circle to indicate that it was a beautiful mistake, I liked the word, and that's why I thought to ask opinion of the Crusca. " The Accademia della Crusca is the national institute for the safeguarding of Italian, an institution that can be compared to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.
Margherita invited Matteo to write to the Crusca Academy to ask for his opinion. To the surprise of both, both the language teacher and her small student received an encouraging response. "The word you invented is well formed and could be used in the Italian language," wrote Maria Cristina Torchia, linguist counselor at Crusca. "It's beautiful and clear," he added.
The power of social networks
However, in her letter the linguist explained to the teacher and Matteo that for a word to be officially part of the Italian language, a large number of people must use it and understand its meaning. For this reason he wrote, addressing Matteo, that "if you manage to spread your voice among many people so that they begin to say 'What a petal this flower is!', Then it will have become a word in Italian '.
After reading these words, Margherita thought of telling her amazing story on her Facebook account saying among other things that "this is worth more than a thousand Italian classes" and she also shared photos of the letter she received.
And that's how an unprecedented movement of support has been unleashed. Social networks have made #petaloso a word widely known all over the world, making just what Crusca had asked for.
Margherita's original message on Facebook has already been shared more than 100,000 times. The adjective petaloso has quickly become a trend in Italy and the rest of the world as shown by Twitter, where the hashtag #petaloso it has been used more than 50,000 times and many users have used this word in a context, which shows that the meaning of this new adjective has been widely understood and is being used to support the inclusion of this word in the dictionary. This Wednesday was even present in the list of world trends.
To close the circle, note that the Crusca, created in 1583, has also joined the effort of dissemination in social networks and retweeted various messages with the use of the new adjective petaloso. The Zanichelli publishing house, which publishes one of the editions of the Italian dictionary, has already declared that it will include the word in its next edition.
Marisol Nuevo Espín
