Abstract

RUIZ VASQUEZ, Néstor Fabián. Quechua loanwords in the Spanish Spoken in Colombia: Frequency of Use and Diatopic Distribution of the Phenomenon. Forma. func. [online]. 2025, vol.38, n.2, e4773.  Epub June 09, 2025. ISSN 0120-338X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/fyf.v38n2.114773.

This study presents an approach to the diatopic distribution and frequency of usage of Quechua loanwords in Colombian Spanish. The Quechua diasystem has been identified as the primary source of most indigenous lexical items found in the varieties of Spanish spoken in Colombia, also, Quechua-derived terms function as dialectal differentiation markers within the country. Therefore, their study is essential for the description of linguistic variation in Colombian Spanish. This work is part of an ongoing research project based on materials from the Linguistic-Ethnographic Atlas of Colombia (ALEC), which aims to systematize various aspects of the phenomenon. The study supports the identification of a center-periphery structure in the spatial distribution of variants and provides quantitative data to characterize both the density by locality and the frequency of Quechua loanword usage in Colombian Spanish.

Keywords : Colombian Spanish; dialectology; Quechua loanwords; language contact; lexical borrowing.

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