The contribution of the spanish language in Flanders to the lexicon of general spanish at the end of the 16th and during the 17th century

Abstract

The exhaustive analysis of a corpus of manuscripts and books (1,5 million of records) redacted by Spanish members of the politic, military and religious staff being on duty in Flanders (1567-1706) allows us to observe the use of neologisms which were completely unknown in the Spanish language of the Peninsula (for ex. drosarte, liarte, marrazo ‘swamp’) or which will not appear there until half a century later (for ex. Recluta y tren). Nearly all these neologisms were borrowed from the Romanic varieties of Flanders (Picard and Walloon), besides standard French, which was not only the main language of the southern part, but was also used by the higher classes of the northern part of the country, where people spoke Dutch or one of its dialects. The consequence of the use of these (and others) neologisms peculiar to the Spanish language of Flanders is that henceforward the Spanish language of this area merits the treatment, at least from a lexical point of view, as a peculiar variant of the Spanish of the Golden Age.