El léxico de un culto centroamericano en los inicios del siglo XIX: notas sobre la Memoria del estado político y eclesiástico de la Capitanía General de Guatemala (1821), de J. M. Méndez

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the history of Central American Spanish by studying the lexicon included in Memoria del estado politico y eclesiastico de la Capitania General de Guatemala, published by the Salvadorean priest Jose Mariano Mendez in 1821. I will first provide a general overview of the lexicon, highlighting the presence of vocabulary related to administrative issues and the learned discourse of the nineteenth century. Then, I will analyze different words that can be considered Central Americanisms, in order to call attention to the process of dialectalization already taking place at that time.