The Urgent Spanish Foundation, which works advised by the Royal Spanish Academy and whose main objective is the good use of Spanish in the media, presented the novelty of "nothing", that is, the attitude of ignoring or snubbing someone for paying attention to what is happening on their cell phone screen.
This is a proposal to replace the foreign term phubbing, which refers in English to the fact that a person only pays attention to a mobile device without paying attention to their surroundings.
The term phubbing is a recent creation from phone, which means telephone in English, and snubbing, which is snub, contempt or disregard. Taking the Spanish equivalents it is possible to create the neologism "ningufonear", an acronym of "ningunear" and "telefonear", from which in turn "ningufoneo" can be derived.
From these voices other derivatives can be formed such as "ningunphoneador", for the "person who nothing" and which can work well as a noun or adjective.
The counteroffensive
The beginnings of phubbing could be placed in 2007, when smartphones began to synthesize the power of a computer in a few inches. Today, with the possibility of staying connected to the Internet at any time, this obsessive practice that many perpetuate without even knowing it has become widespread.
Currently, there are many who actively combat this impolite habit. Their arguments are compared to the most basic protocol when sitting at the table, which condemns starting to eat before everyone has been served, and which therefore condemns the act of ignoring whoever is next to us.
The promoters of these anti-phubbing initiatives assure that almost 90% of adolescents prefer contact via text than face to face and that restaurants experience 36 cases of phubbing in each dinner session, and they warn that this phenomenon can end up reducing social relationships.
Updated on: 13/08/2016 00:00:00
