Dominican salami: one of the three hits

Today's Eñe will feature Dominican salami as its star . My intention isn't to whet your appetite, but rather—as you know—to direct your attention to the word.

On September 7, declared National Salami Day in the Dominican Republic, a campaign by the Sosúa company was launched proposing that Dominican salami be recognized as a cultural and gastronomic heritage of humanity by UNESCO .

Let's focus on the word itself. If we look up the definition of salami in the RAE 's Dictionary of the Spanish Language , we notice that it's slightly different from what Dominicans understand by salami : "Sausage made with beef, pork, and fat, chopped and mixed in certain proportions, which, cured and pressed inside a casing or a synthetic tube, is eaten raw."

Just compare the definition of salami offered by the Dominican Spanish Dictionary : "A sausage made with ground meat, fat, and spices, generally consumed sliced ​​or chopped and sautéed or grilled." I imagine there are some different types of salami in the Hispanic world.

Our culinary richness and variety are also reflected in our words, and dictionaries try to capture it.

If we look at its etymology , the word salami comes to Spanish from the Italian salami , plural of salame ; this, in turn, comes from the medieval Latin salamen , which meant "condiment" or "sauce." The origin of this salamen undoubtedly lies in the Latin word sal .

Beyond learning a little more about the term salami , which never hurts to know our words well , I can't help but refer to the slogan with which the curious advertising initiative is promoted.

I am far from Dominican lands for a few days, my dear Alejandro Castelli sends me the headline, with his spelling eye trained by his status as a proofreader .

And I read there in bold letters : " Dominican salami deserves to be recognized as it should be." And, again, in the request to UNESCO: " Dominican salami must be recognized as it should be."

There are very few things in the language that exist without a reason for being. When using the verb "deber" as an auxiliary, we must always keep in mind that we can achieve two different meanings depending on whether we construct it with or without the preposition " de ."

If our intention is to denote obligation , commitment , responsibility, the correct construction is duty + infinitive: Las normas ortográficos debe cumplirse ; on the other hand, if our desire is to denote probability or supposition, the correct construction is duty de + infinitive: Debe de estar congresita, porque no responde las llamadas .

Now review the campaign slogan and ask yourself whether we are proposing a commitment , an obligation ("recognized as it should be"), or a probability or assumption ("as it should be"). The error could have been avoided with a simple consultation of the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts , which is freely available online.

I leave the business proposal for your consideration; for my part, regarding the gastronomy , I'd just point out that without the salami , the three hits would be reduced to two, and the cart would no longer have wheels.

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