Vicios del lenguaje y provincialismos de Guatemala,
by Antonio Batres Jáuregui (1892). 

Laura Martin, Ph.D.
Last revised May 2006

I. Background and author

As its title implies, the purpose of Batres Jáuregui's work is primarily one of prescription and correction. Thus, this work is not a complete dictionary, either of Spanish or of Guatemalan Spanish. Instead, it focuses on those elements of Guatemalan Spanish at the end of the 19th century that struck the author as peculiar to the region or as deviant from proper Spanish. In many cases, of course, these categories overlap.

Antonio Batres Jáuregui (1847-1929) was one of Guatemala 's most famous learned men. Trained in law, and writing as a historian, he was a significant figure in the debates about national identity that characterized the period after Guatemalan independence in 1821. A recent Guatemalan publication discusses his role as a member of the late 19 th -century emerging intellectual class: Las redes intelectuales centroamericanas: un siglo de imaginarios nacionales (1820-1920), by Marta Elena Casaús Arzú and Teresa García Giradles. ( Guatemala : F&G Editores, 2005; for details, see http://www.fygeditores.com/fgredes.htm , last access April 2006).

Batres Jáuregui was particularly interested in the place of indigenous populations, primarily Mayas, within the Guatemalan nation. His paternalistic and largely negative views of what he considered an “uncivilized” people are evident in his dictionary. These ideas, especially as reflected in his 1894 work, Los Indios, su historia y su civilización , are discussed on-line in an article by David Carey ( http://www.iacd.oas.org/RIB%202%2098/carey298.htm , last access April 2006.)

Besides his dictionary, Batres Jáuregui also wrote El castellano en América, published in 1904. This work is an extended and more wide-ranging account of the differences – mostly errors and vulgarismos , according to the author – between Spanish in the Americas and the purer version spoken on the Peninsula . Names, pronunciation errors, grammatical infelicities, etc. all come under scrutiny. There are chapters on proper use of articles, prepositions, orthographic conventions, and, of course, incorrect verb forms, mostly the voseo . The author also strongly defends the inclusion of certifiable Americanisms in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (DRAE) and provides many interesting examples. However, his dictionary of usage and lexicon in Guatemalan Spanish is the more useful work.

Vicios del languaje y los provincialismos de Guatemala is by no means a complete account of 19 th century Guatemalan Spanish. It is discursive, selective, personal, and idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, it is a most useful resource since it is the oldest document of its type. And although Batres fulminates against such forms as desilusionar – “Deben, pues, desengañarse los que usan tal verbo, de que aunque figure en algún léxico neológico, que registra flautar, oracionar, no tiene autoridad alguna,” – demasiado as an augmentative, and dilatar as an intransitive (to take only a few examples), over one hundred years later, they are all alive and well in contemporary Guatemalan Spanish .

II. Introductory material

The Batres dictionary is divided into several sections. Part I (pp. 3-59) begins with an Author's Prologue (pp.3-23). This essay is an entertaining paean to the glories of the conquerors and first arrivals to the newly discovered territory, mixed with a discussion of the many neologisms that the new flora and fauna of the region produced. The discussion includes many examples of indigenous words brought into Spanish to name the new objects. Batres presents lists of examples from such indigenous groups as Mexican (43 examples), Andean quichua (12), and “quiche/kackchiquel,” (now spelled K'iche' and Kaqchikel) Mayan languages of Guatemala (13 examples plus toponyms). Together with indigenous sources, Batres also mentions several other etymological sources for Spanish lexicon, including mariners' nautical vocabulary (26 examples), Arabic, and borrowings from other European languages.

Although he usually dislikes neologisms, he approves of the indigenous ones because they leave a trace of the ancient cultures he imagines will soon be discarded as the native people of Guatemala are “civilized.” “… [P]orque cuando dos civilizaciones chocan, prevalece la que más fuerza moral encierra, bien que algo queda del amalgama y compensación…” (p. 30).

The Prologue also clarifies the author's intent in producing the dictionary: To improve the purity and correctness of the language. He compares Guatemala (unfavorably) to countries in South America where more efforts had been made to codify, correct, and purify American Spanish. Andrés Bello, the Venezuelan-born diplomat, poet, and scholar who published the first grammar of American Spanish – Gramática de la lengua castellana – in 1847, is a particular hero and often cited throughout Batres Jáuregui's work. Batres expects that his dictionary will be a powerful tool for teachers engaged in the process of “civilizing” indigenous children, that is, in converting them into Spanish speakers. He characterizes the volume as a “lista…de nuestros provincialismos con sus equivalentes castizos, y con ejemplos [de los últimos] de los clásicos españoles.”

Batres' list of Provincialismos is long and includes incorrect nominal gender assignment, letters (i.e., sounds) omitted or added, “terminaciones antojadizas,” neologistic derivations (e.g., formation of verbs from nouns that do not permit it), metathesis of sounds, capricious use of derivational endings (e.g., use of -al on tree names to refer to the tree itself and not just to orchards, as in Standard Spanish, and prepositions that se trastruecan. He especially laments the overall preference for vulgar rather than cultured vocabulary, a sample list of which is presented in the entry for candela (p. 94). On the whole, his view of regional Guatemalan Spanish no doubt reflects a certain insecurity and envy, part of the intellectual baggage of the Guatemalan upper class, or upwardly striving class, in the era of independence and nation-building in a geographically small, demographically fragile, and economically vulnerable country.

It is also in this essay that Batres lists the principal resources he consulted in creating the dictionary. Not a bibliography per se – and additional sources are cited elsewhere throughout the volume – it is instead a series of paragraphs with titles, dates, and authors accompanied by discursive descriptions and evaluations. The cities and countries for which regional sources are cited include Cuba , Bogotá , Chile , Peru , Argentina , Venezuela , and Río de la Plata. In addition, he used several pan-American dictionaries, general studies, grammars, histories, and literary works to authenticate meanings, derive etymologies, establish distribution, define correctness, and provide examples. He especially cites from the work of Guatemalan writer José Milla y Vidaurre (1822-82), who wrote under the anagrammed pseudonym Salomé Jil and is considered the father of the Guatemalan novel and creator of the figure of the Guatemalan Everyman, Juan Chapín. For additional biographic information and samples of Milla's work, see the Guatemalan literature pages at http://www.literaturaguatemalteca.org/milla.htm (last access April 2006) or the Directorio Electrónico de Guatemala at http://www.deguate.com/personajes/article_723.shtml (last access April 2006. )

The Prologue is followed by an essay titled “La lengua castellana en la América Española” (pp. 25-45), in which the author describes in further detail the two phenomena he believes have enriched the Spanish of Guatemala and other countries in the Americas. First, Guatemala conserves many forms now lost on the Peninsula , items he terms archaisms; and, second, it adds “voces autóctonas” for new objects and uses. He laments the little study that such regional language forms have received.

He also advances the geographic and diachronic argument, fifty years before Lincoln Canfield does (1964), to account for why Central American pronunciation is so archaic. According to Batres J., after the mid-17 th century, the distance between Guatemala and the major commercial centers was so great, and the interaction with the Peninsula and other regions was so limited, and the population so illiterate, that “Explícase así…, de que nosotros hablemos después de tres siglos, como hablaron los primeros españoles que aquí vinieron” (p. 36). He offers several examples of pronunciation practices at the time of the Conquest that still appear in Guatemalan Spanish , including collapse of the distinction between z, c, and s , weak ll, dropping of final –d, archaic verb forms such as vide and vido , and corruption of the 2 nd person familiar plural vosotros forms such as -áis and -éis to -as and -és .

In the Prologue, the author also compares examples of specifically regional vocabulary collected from across the Americas . Citing early chroniclers, he also lists the groups of indigenous languages that have contributed to this lexical richness, including a list of the more than twenty indigenous languages he identifies as spoken in the colonial Guatemalan territory. Some of the more unusual of these are vebetlateca, cuahutemalteca (cakchikquel), tlacacesvastleca, hutatleca (quiche), mamcy, and ulba.

He concludes this essay with an argument for why independence from Spain (and even hatred for the colonial yoke) should not result in separation from the mother tongue (and its literature) or in the vulgarization of the national language. He strongly applauds the great efforts of the Real Academia Española (RAE) as an arbiter of correctness and inclusion – in spite of what he considers to be a few mistaken decisions. The 12 th edition of the DRAE is his standard reference work and cited in many entries.

These opposing forces, first, toward national identity and appreciation for the local linguistic variant, and second, the desire for unity across the expanse of the Spanish-speaking world are clearly in conflict throughout the essay, and Batres Jáuregui never really reconciles them. He clearly holds his regional variety in much affection, even while excoriating its large number of incorrect forms. His dilemma is reflected in this delicious single sentence in the entry for apaste (a type of eared pot) where Batres argues for the importance of its formal recognition but also reveals his confidence that the indigenous peoples from whom it comes will soon disappear into the mists of history:

Esta es una de tantas voces indígenas ( apaxtle ) que corren en Centro-América confundidas con las palabras castellanas; y á fe que el apaste , merecía honores lexicográficos, ya que á sus compañeros el comal, el tamal, el coyote, el petate, el chile, el atole y mucho otros vocablos mexicanos, se les ha concedido la entrada en las columnas del Diccionario; porque no han podido los señores académicos de la calle de Valverde dejar de reconocer el hecho de que, desde los primeros días de la conquista, sobre la ancha base del idioma de Castilla, comenzaron a brotar–como silvestres flores que pugnan por echar sus renuevos en la tierra donde antes crecían libres; en su propia tierra, que el jardinero convirtió después en artificial verjel—muchas palabras indianas que sobrevivieron á los reyes de aquella raza desgraciada, y que acaso la verán desaparecer, siguiendo ellas en contubernio deslizándose en el lenguaje, como se deslizan las gotas de un manantial cuando caen en caudaloso río (p. 98).

Finally, the opening section concludes with a 12-page essay on “Transformaciones de la ortografía española” (pp. 47-59). It opens with a delightful comparison of Spanish with other European languages:

Si no tiene la suavidad del italiano, la gentileza del francés, la concisión del ingles y la filosófica profundidad del alemán, ostenta en cambio armónico ritmo y exuberancia de viriles, sonoras dicciones, que harto justifican la preferencia que Carlos V le diera para hablar con los dioses (p. 47).

Hereafter the author presents a chronological survey of orthographic variation in written Spanish, from El Cantar de Mío Cid through the reign of Spain 's great medieval king, Alfonso X, whose 13 th century scholars codified the Castilian variety of Spanish to the time of Carlos V and the colonization of the Americas .

III . Dictionary

The dictionary itself comprises 498 pages with nearly 2000 entries, beginning with uses of the preposition a (p.61), and ending with zutes (p.560), a word of Mayan origin. Each entry word is centered on the page, and text runs from margin to margin. The entries are discursive in the extreme. While corrections of non-standard pronunciation may occupy only a few lines, other entries run to several pages, as is the case with azopilotado , for example, which runs to three pages, and pararse , which takes up four. Entries can be long because they often include a variety of extensive quotes from writers, poets or grammarians, as well as interesting non-linguistic material such as personal anecdotes, recipes for regional dishes, and poems.

In the entries, as in his essays, Batres identifies archaisms (e.g., cobija, fajar, manida, pila, brin, etc.), indigenous loans (e.g., calpul, cacaxte, atol, etc.), and maritime vocabulary (e.g., aguaje, boya, botar, etc.). He criticizes Gallicisms, such as acusar, avalanche, bouquet, landeau, remontar, vaudeville, etiqueta (p.143), and offers Spanish equivalents. In the entries for local flora and fauna, Batres often gives scientific names, especially for birds and trees, although in the Prólogo he disclaims the intention to provide a complete list. It is not clear how many of these assignments are reliable since they are often different in later dictionaries, especially the one by Rubio, who gives great attention to scientific identification.

Like other Guatemalan dictionary writers, Batres Jáuregui suggests or assigns indigenous origins for some items, usually without complete etymologies. He seldom specifies a particular source language, as is the case of chigua which he says “tiene marcado sabor indígena” (p. 76). Some of these etymologies are inaccurate, and he fails to identify others that are now known to be clearly from indigenous sources. The order of alphabetization is not always reliable.

Batres refers frequently to the Diccionario, that is, to the 12 th edition DRAE, published in 1884, which is his final arbiter of correct usage. He generally indicates whether an item appears in the DRAE or whether a meaning is different from the accepted one recorded there. He also depends heavily on the work of the distinguished grammatical scholar Andrés Bello. The matter of correctness looms large in his assessment of the validity of any word. If a different version is registered in the DRAE or by Bello , he always suggests it as an alternative to the local one. He makes some comparisons to other varieties of American Spanish, illuminating some striking differences in meaning and detailing specialized meanings for shared words. Occasionally, he urges inclusion of a regional term in the DRAE.

Given his concern with “provincialismos,” Batres J. is especially good on unconventional usage and regionalisms. His work provides a kind of baseline for the history of certain items of local vocabulary. For example, in his entry for dintel , he states: “Es en buen castellano la parte superior de las puertas y ventamos, que carga sobre las jambas. Es, por lo tanto, disparatado decir que se pisan los dinteles de las puertas. El umbral, que es la parte inferior de las puerta, es lo que se pisa.” What we learn from this entry is that the verb pisar , in standard Spanish “to step on,” had not yet begun the semantic decline that turned it into one of Guatemalan Spanish's most vulgar forms. The verb is recorded in Sandoval's 1941-42 dictionary with the sole meaning Tener coito o acto carnal con una mujer. (The current vitality of this meaning is confirmed in a 2006 column by Mar­ía del Rosario Molina, language columnist for Guatemala 's Prensa Libre newspaper ( http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2006/enero/18/132480.html , last access April 2006).

Batres identifies some regionalisms as merely frequent, saying for example, “se emplea mucho entre nosotros.” In such cases he usually provides several examples, but no corrections. One such example is the use of the word pata ‘hoof; animal foot' to refer to humans. Even today this usage is only listed as “colloquial” in the DRAE and is widely considered in Guatemala to be vulgar, rustic, or exceedingly informal, depending on context. Batres merely notes the meaning parenthetically with the entry for the expression a patadas (p.62). The entry for pata consists entirely of a literary quote where it is used with a human referent. For Batres, this use of pata is apparently merely colloquial, and not a barbarism.

Another example occurs in his treatment of the very Guatemalan phrasal expression a saber, whose meanings he lists as ‘¿quién sabe?, no sé, no se sabe.' Several of the contexts he gives for this expression, such as the one he terms the conditional, appear to be less common today, if they exist at all. For instance, “A saber que venía Lorenzo, no hubiera yo venido” is not intelligible today with a conditional meaning. Nevertheless, the expression a saber in other contexts is fully integrated into Guatemalan Spanish and heard with great frequency. It is obvious, then, that Batres has some affection for many chapinismos (< chapín ‘Guatemalan,' a word Batres does not record).

Other regionalisms, however, are termed “provincialismos,” or, alternatively, “vicio,” “barbarismo,” “vulgarismo,” or “corrupción.” Many of these entries offer corrected or higher prestige forms to be used in their place. Batres' attention to correct usage extends to pronunciation, and his listing offers insight into the common mispronunciations of his day. The patterns of sound shifting that are reflected in such entries as cuete instead of cohete are rich resources for study. Some of the patterns that can be identified by a comparison of his examples include (1) the use of r for l , e.g., almario for armario (p.86); (2) the changes in unstressed vowels, e.g., e > i in rodiar < rodear (p. 498); (3) the maintenance, by analogy, of diphthongs in words such as buenísimo, fuertísimo , and nuevísimo (p. 405); and (4) the maintenance of archaic aspirated j where standard Spanish now has silent orthographic h , as in jurgar for hurgar (p.351) and jiede for hiede (p. 348). As for the use of the alveopalatal fricative, [x], lost from Peninsular Spanish by the mid-16 th century, Batres Jáuregui writes the sound as ch and notes always when it should be pronounced “as in French.”

In considering those grammatical features that are truly characteristic of Guatemalan Spanish , such as the voseo , Batres is often harsh. He introduces the entry for vos as follows: “¡Al fin llegamos al vos, que es como si dijéramos la fuente de nuestra usual jerigonza; de ese modo de hablar tan incorrecto como bajo!” He denounces the usage at every opportunity, but, alas, his criticism seems to have had little effect since the voseo is fully characteristic of Guatemalan Spanish and, in fact, seems to be spreading across social classes and contexts.

He regards the so-called excessive use of diminutives in Guatemalan Spanish somewhat less harshly, although he considers many of them to be excessive and unnecessary: about ahorita ‘right now' (< ahora ‘now') he writes “lo cual sobre ser absurdo es vulgar” (p. 78). He is seemingly less offended by the complementary Guatemalan Spanish “excessive” use of augmentatives, citing barrigón (<barriga ‘belly'), for example, as a necessary distinction for a person with a large belly (p.128).

Batres' greatest interests are in the peculiar expressions of Guatemala , and to the extent that these escape the censure of the DRAE he carefully accounts for their usual contexts and meanings. He includes a large number of phrasal expressions that have proverbial or other specialty meanings, usually listing them with the main verb. For example, under the entry for hacer (pp. 316-319) we find “engañar con apariencias que se hace una cosa” and hacer la vieja also an expression describing the action of only pretending to work.

Because of its non-technical organization and discursive style – dictionary entries read as if the author simply wrote down whatever he thought about any particular word along with any other ideas or connections that occurred to him while he was thinking of it! – it is almost impossible to extract systematic information from it without reading each entry. Individual entries may include long lists of interesting related vocabulary not otherwise cited, such as the list of slang words for drunkenness on p. 136f with the entry for bolo and the list of local vegetables and fruits given on p.116f at the entry for ayote .

The dictionary by Batres Jáuregui is entertaining to read and filled with details that throw into relief the life and mores of late 19th century upper class Guatemalans. Its flowery 19th-century prose style, with its tendency toward extravagant pre-posed adjectives, exploits every chance to elevate the conquerors and early settlers, to underscore the independence of Guatemala 's land and language, and to demonstrate erudition through many references to the glories of Latin and the Classic literature of Spain . In this way, as well, the Batres dictionary reflects an earlier version of the impressive archaism and elegance of contemporary Guatemalan Spanish formal speech.

Vicios del lenguaje is invaluable for the scholar interested in the history of Guatemalan Spanish. It is too little known and too infrequently cited in some recent work. It is hoped that the existence of this website about Guatemalan Spanish will encourage investigators to make the effort to consult the Batres dictionary and incorporate its valuable lexical contents into modern dictionaries and studies.

If you want to see a version of the Batres dictionary, click here.