The Americanization of Spanish and Indigenous Vocabulary in the Seventeenth Century: A Case Study of the Historia del Huérfano (1621)

Abstract

The Americanization of Spanish vocabulary and the incorporation of Indigenous American terms in Spanish texts follows a process that began in the sixteenth century and continued into the following century. Criollo society showed lexical preferences as well as other processes that went on to shape Latin American Spanish. The aim of this study is to present textual evidence through a case study of the literary and historiographical work Historia del Huérfano (1621) written by a Spanish clergyman who was involved in Lima society at the time when he was writing. The text does not evince an author who was interested in the Indigenous peoples and their culture. The use of a comparative methodology with texts from different repositories has allowed us to find evidence of a vocabulary that can be defined as American due to the extent to which it is spread among different authors.