Response to the comment "Neither chikungunya nor chikunguña: chicunguña"

Abstract

We thank Fernando A. Navarro for the letter1 in which he comments on our piece "Why chikunguña and not chikungunya?". Mr. Navarro is an expert translator and author of fundamental works in the writing and translation of medical texts. It is a real distinction that he chooses to take this on, and his reviews are very valuable. We explain why we decided to use chikunguña: k is a letter of the alphabet in Spanish retaining the original sound of the native language, while Navarro shows several examples of how different words are changed from the original language, with k, to be written with c, perhaps it would have been fine if experts had used kakatua or kakatúa and not cacatúa, and had retained some aspects of the original language; nothing can be done, the cacatúas (cockatoos) stayed like that. But k is preserved in many commonly used Spanish words, perhaps more, it is enough to mention kilómetro, kilogramo or kilopondio.