After its presentation at the International Book Fair 2018 (Filey), the Dictionary of Yucatecan Spanish has gone on sale in bookstores in Merida, in an edition of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, updated by the researcher and linguist Miguel Güemez Pineda.Güemez Pineda, professor and academic coordinator of the Social Sciences area of the Dr. Hideyo Noguchi Regional Research Center (CIR), reported that this edition is summarized, is more accessible and is endorsed by the Mexican Academy of Language, (AML).
Published in 2011, the first work had a circulation of 1,400 copies that sold out very fast. Now the CIR reedits this publication, including new phonetic variants, voices and neologisms that are coined in the speech of the peninsular inhabitants.
Güemes Pineda explained that to complete this dictionary he went to very old sources that come from the XVI century, XVII until the XIX century and are complemented with expressions of the different ethnic groups that arrived in the Yucatan peninsula, not only Hispanic and Arab voices, but also African, who mixed with the Maya and formed the speech of the Yucatecans of Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatan.
It is an investigation where they exhibit values and forms that give life to the expressions with which the Yucatecans mold our Spanish. Definitely, it has a strong phonetic presence of the Maya, which makes the difference and establishes a different character from all the expressions of Spanish in the continent.
The research, said the linguist, includes: neologisms, voices and phonemes that have been added in recent times with modernity and new features used by young people in the three states of the peninsula. Although there are variants, since in the border areas of Quintana Roo and Belize there are different, but close, expressive forms.
The Dictionary of Yucatecan Spanish, he said, was updated and synthesized in this work that will have a print run of 600 copies, be more economical and accessible to the population that likes to know the origin of the words that are in our daily expressions, such as: Fó, Shó, Guay. Some Hispanic voices that appear as Mayan, come from expressions of the sixteenth century.
With them others, such as the majors Xic (armpit), Dzonot (cenote), Tuch (navel), but also the words with which we know the birds, plants. Rude expressions and high-sounding words that the Spaniards told the Mayans and that were created in the 19th century, are in this dictionary with the explanation of their origin.
In the same way, contributions from migrant groups that arrived in Yucatan in the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Syrian-Lebanese from which albarrada (stone wall) aljibe (water deposit) and Caribbean Taino voices originate. They also reached the Yucatecans, some coming from the closeness with Cuba, he explained.
In turn, in this work are added words that mark the expressive forms of Yucatecan speech with Mayan-Hispanic as chiva-luna (spot on the skin); choco-lomo (Chocó, hot), loin, dorsal of the beef, food that is served hot and means hot tenderloin; Chai, which led to Chaya, among others.
He said that the forms of Yucatecan speech are nourished by words and phonemes that came from many parts and that due to the isolation of the peninsular area, with respect to other areas of the country, remain.
“To this, the Mayan expressions that have been mixed have been added to have a wide and rich lexicon very different from that of other points in the national geography,” he said.
The researcher pointed out that this work will allow us to know not only the phonetic values of these expressions, but also a series of reports and annotations that the Mexican Academy of Language itself gives to our unique form of expression, which is also important.
The Dictionary of Yucatecan Spanish was synthesized in 400 pages, has an economic cost and is available to teachers, journalists and the general public that likes this type of works that always deserves our attention.
Text: ACOM
Photo: Courtesy
