The first time I heard it, I was bothered by the phrase “tener actitud” (to have attitude) in Argentine Spanish television. Eventually, I understood and, at the same time, agreed. Reading Safire, one recalls that “tener actitud” is one of those elements that have made the rounds. For example: “Las actitudes de un orador. Por supuesto, un exceso conduce a la hostilidad y al mal humor, que ahora se denomina «problema de actitud»” (The attitudes of a speaker. Of course, an excess leads to hostility and bad mood, which is now called an “attitude problem”). The summary in these lines documents once again, and superficially, how an element passes from one language to another, displacing a previous one or settling alongside it. Neither of these two common proposals coincides with the television “tener actitud” or “con actitud”. Among old papers to be filed, I found a note by William Safire, an observer of contemporary American speech and a contributor to The New York Times. This lexicologist was in charge of a section titled “On Language” (About Language). It can also refer to the “disposición de ánimo manifestada de algún modo: actitud benévola, pacífica o amenazadora de una persona, de un partido, de un Gobierno” (a mood manifested in some way: a benevolent, peaceful, or threatening attitude of a person, a party, a government). I do not know if the phrase is used in other Spanish-speaking countries. I knew that “tener actitud” (or “con actitud”) came from contemporary American English, where it has reached a particular, slang use, different from the usual definition of the English language in general (the one from my era, with which I declare my advanced age). Originally, “actitud” referred to the “manera de pensar o de sentirse acerca de algo o alguien” (way of thinking or feeling about something or someone) or, as accepted by the Diccionario de la lengua española, “postura del cuerpo, especialmente cuando expresa su estado de ánimo” (posture of the body, especially when it expresses its emotional state). All this is due to the dynamism of the functioning of language. The author is a foreign language instructor and a literary and linguistic researcher. I translate a relevant section: “For some, ‘actitud’ (without a preceding article) has lost its neutrality and has acquired a new meaning: pugnacity, gruff challenge, self-confidence that borders on arrogance. This attitude presents a hostile modifier incorporated”. An example is “La actitud agresiva del perro” (The aggressive attitude of the dog). This means that they started in Latin or another language, especially a related one, and settled in Spanish. The three columns of the journalist's note, whom I have never been a devotee of despite his astute linguistic observations, opened up a whole panorama for me. They passed through various mechanisms into English and from English they were reinstated in Spanish tinged with English nuances, despite, or alongside, similar pre-existing forms. Safire's note is titled “The Mood of ‘Tude” (something like “The Mood of Attitude”). An example is “barbacoa”, which Spanish adopted from the Taíno, passed into English to return to Spanish in an anglicized form as “barbecue”, displacing the pre-existing form, which is “barbacoa”. In the note in question, the lexicologist makes an etymological journey, attributes the current meaning of the noun “actitud” to a slang form of African American English and concludes his work as follows, which I translate: “The colloquial sense so in vogue today dates back to the original meaning of “aptitude”: what is suitable nowadays, according to those seeking the right attitude, is a mixture of audacity, boldness, arrogance, self-confidence, and rebellion, in terms of posture, of standing erect. Praise be to the Holiest! Unfortunately, I do not retain the date of the work or the page number on which it was reproduced.
