Parsimony and Poverty: Linguistic Reflections. A Spanish – Romanian Comparative View

Abstract

Metaphors, as well as sayings and idioms which add colour to language, have been the favourite means of expression to illustrate the speaker’s opinions, attitudes and, above all, their preoccupations. The modern human life revolves around his economic means so much so that, since the invention of money as a means of trade, which came to substitute the barter, it has become something of great interest to individuals. Money and everything associated with the material side of the human existence have not been left aside, but added to the great repertoire of idiomatic expressions in the field of languages, with these familiar formulas being adapted to the reality of each epoch as an approachable and expressive way of telling general truths. Set phrases, such as idioms, convey true history lessons as they preserve images of other bygone times, revealing different influences. Thus, a comparative study between the two related languages (Romanian and Spanish) becomes interesting, as it reveals common mindsets as well as different ways of perceiving the extra-linguistic reality. Our paper aims at presenting and explaining, in a contrastive-comparative approach, a corpus of lexemes and idioms excerpted from the two languages, circumscribed to the lexical field of money; the selection of the corpus was based on the moral/ethical value of its elements.