Languages are living creatures. They are not static; they grow, change and adapt to the current times thus adopting new words that express their speakers’ reality and discarding others that are not useful any longer. Over the last years, most of the changes that languages have experienced are influenced or triggered by the massive use of technology, the Internet and social networks and the impact they have on our every day life.
Spanish is not different from any other language and is also in constant change. In fact, two new words have been recently added to it: “wasap” and “wasapear”, the noun that refers to the free message sent via mobile phone from the application WhatsApp and its derived verb to refer to the action of exchanging messages via WhatsApp.
According to Fundéu, it is also correct to write “guasap” and “guasapear” although it is more appropriate to use the “w” versions of the words in order to respect their commercial origin.
Thus, “wasap” and “wasapear” have been added to the Spanish dictionary together with “tuitear”, in reference to the action of sending messages via Twitter and “tuit” to speak about the message sent through Twitter.
