Taino, nahua and quechua lexicons in the spanish chronicles (1492-1648): A comparative study of their degree of incorporation

Abstract

The chronicles of the Indies, which were written in Spanish during the XVI and XVII centuries, incorporate a large number of indigenous loan-words. These expressions primarily represent Taino, Nahua and Quechua contributions. Previous studies of non-literary texts have demonstrated the characteristics of these indigenous-language contributions, which we attempt to corroborate or modify with a corpus of 24 chronicles written between 1492 and 1648. By noting the indigenous expressions within these chronicles through a bibliographic search, we reached the following conclusions: Taino terms are present in all of the chronicles, whereas similar percentages of Nahua and Quechua terms are used in the chronicle texts. There are differences between the number of expressions and the chroniclers’ usage of them.