A lexicographical study of Czech and Spanish phraseology in spontaneous informal language production

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study that aims at identifying the extent to which the most complete Czech and Spanish phraseological dictionaries are helpful for their users regarding the language employed in spontaneous conversations. Since the oral corpora of these two languages are not equally reliable, the source of the phraseological units (PUs) for this research is conversations extracted from the Czech and the Spanish versions of Big Brother. As a result of the research difficulties faced, only verbal idioms (VIs) are considered. In 90 minutes of conversations among the contestants, 29 Spanish and 34 Czech VIs were documented. These VIs were confronted with Slovník české frazeologie a idiomatiky (SČFI) and Diccionario fraseológico documentado del español actual (DFDEA). According to the data obtained, three main conclusions can be drawn: a) a high degree of difficulty when comparing PUs included in Czech and Spanish phraseological dictionaries, b) both works are relatively reliable tools for users interested in the language employed in spontaneous conversations, at least regarding the verbal idioms, c) in Czech, phraseology has a more strongly colloquial nature than in Spanish.

Keywords

• Czech phraseology
• Spanish phraseology
• spontaneous informal language
• lexicography
• Big Brother