Current situation of the Nahuatl substrate in Nicaraguan Spanish

Abstract

In Nicaraguan Spanish, the Nahuatl substratum is presented as the linguistic characteristic, at the lexical level, the most identity. The linguistic inheritance left by the Nahua groups in culture, specifically in gastronomy, in names of plants, animals and place names such as names of rivers, lakes, mountains and the names of cities and towns is a heritage that, today continues in force, but that as time passes it is being absorbed by the dominant variant, that is, standard Spanish. The cultural and technological changes have caused a displacement of the words from or of Nahuatl origin, as well as words such as: chewing gum (chewing gum), chibola (marble), sheet metal (earring), grass (grass), among others, are terms of Commonly used in Nicaraguan Spanish, however, these are increasingly being displaced by equivalents in standard Spanish.

In this presentation, I will present data related to 6 investigations that evaluate the lexical vitality of words from the Nahuatl language against the words of general or standard Spanish in the Nicaraguan variant. The objective of these studies was to identify  the use preference of the linguistic inheritance left by the Nahuas, by means of substrate, compared to terms of general or standard Spanish. Therefore, I will present the considerations or preferences presented by the speakers who participated in the different studies.