Influences From Native American Languages
In October 1492 Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Americas, and thereafter Spanish settlers began to come into contact with a host of native American languages. Most of these were wiped out or severely reduced in number of speakers and distribution area during the conquest, but Spanish adopted a number of words from some of them. The following list is by no means exhaustive.
- From Nahuatl: tomate "tomato", chocolate "chocolate", ajolote "axolotl", cacao "cocoa", coyote "coyote".
- From Quechua: cóndor "condor" (orig. kuntur), cancha "playing field", alpaca, caucho "rubber", coca, guano, gaucho (orig. wakcha "poor person"), guanaco, llama, puma, pampa "plains, flat terrain".
- From Guaraní: caracú "bone marrow", catinga "body odor", chamamé (a folk music genre), tapera "ruins", jaguar, yaguareté "jaguar", mate (an infusion, orig. mati "pumpkin").
- From Carib: caimán "caiman", huracán "hurricane", caníbal "cannibal", canoa "canoe" (through Arawak).
- From Tupi: capibara (the largest rodent on Earth), jacarandá (a tree).
Those words referring to local features or animals might be limited to regional usage, but many others like cóndor, canoa or chocolate are extended even to other languages.
Read more about this topic: Influences On The Spanish Language
Famous quotes containing the words influences, native, american and/or languages:
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“We work harder than ever, and I cannot see the advantages in cooperative living.”
—Lydia Arnold, U.S. commune supervisor (of the North American Phalanx, Red Bank, New Jersey, 1843- 1855)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)