Bilingual dictionaries between Spanish and native languages of Latin America

Abstract

Presentation of six current bilingual dictionaries of Spanish and languages of the Americas: Nahuatl, K'iche', Quechua, Aymara, Mapudungun, and Guarani. Although the news of these lexicographical works is, due to their circumstances, far from homogeneous, all texts follow the same structure: they provide a general introduction of the bilingual lexicography Spanish-native language and native language-Spanish, a brief mention of its history, and a description of the linguistic distance between both languages based on their typology, which points to the complexity that creating bilingual dictionaries entails. They also mention the social use that these dictionaries represent for the development of both languages, and the welcome they receive from the public. Each section contains social or linguistic predominant interests that answer to policies and to the weight of the governing minorities of each country in the selected dictionaries. They all offer a brief description of the dictionaries (commercially available or not).