Diccionario de guatemaltequismos, by Sergio Morales Pellecer (1st edition, 2001; 2nd edition 2002; edition consulted, 4th, 2004).

Laura Martin, Ph.D.
Last revised May 2006

I. Background and author

Sergio Morales Pellecer holds a Licenciatura in Letters from the Guatemalan national university of San Carlos , and has taught at that institution and the Universidad Rafael Landívar. He is also an essayist, literary critic, and poet. In other words, he is the only compiler of a Guatemalan Spanish dictionary to be specifically trained in language-related areas.

The dictionary is his best-known and most-cited work. Its first edition appeared in 2001, and the lack of easily-available competing dictionaries made it a quick seller. The second edition in 2002 was slightly revised. Although the 2004 version is called the fourth edition, in fact, as is routinely the case in Guatemala , the “edition” is really a reprint, done without revision. The dictionary is easily available at bookstores in Guatemala , and on-line in the United States, (e.g., from http://www.fygeditores.com/bole41.htm , last access April 2006).

The slim paper-bound volume is attractive, readable, and printed on good quality paper. It is widely cited in “According to the dictionary, the meaning is …” sorts of contexts, for example, in newspaper articles. It seems to be on its way to becoming the standard dictionary of local Guatemalan Spanish. Unfortunately, the Morales Pellecer dictionary is the smallest and weakest of all those considered here. The compiler's principal goal was conciseness, and he has achieved it by including fewer words, briefer definitions, and restricted examples.

II. Introductory material

The prefatory material is limited and rather different from that found in the other dictionaries under consideration. There is a Table of Contents, although the material identified is the sections of the preliminary material, and not, for example, the starting pages of the various letters in the word list. There is a brief Preámbulo (pp. vii-viii ) that outlines the author's scope, goals, intended audience, and criteria of inclusion.

The principal goal of the collection is conciseness, and the inventory is about 4000 words and expressions. The emphasis is on common and frequent usage, and on Guatemala-specific meanings. Examples are used only where absolutely necessary for context of meaning. Beyond various dictionary sources, Morales Pellecer also used classic and contemporary writers as resources for collecting items and defining meaning. A 2002 note explains that errors were corrected and that some 40 additional meanings and several new words were incorporated into the second edition. The author makes a point of mentioning that the word list includes words related to the history, geography, traditions, and culture of Guatemala , and not simply words used by Guatemalans. There seems to be some emphasis on the citation of vulgar terms and usage in the Morales Pellecer dictionary. All previous dictionaries have included vulgar slang, often with disclaimers about doing so. In the Morales Pellecer case, it is not clear whether such inclusion may actually be an effort to correct, or simply to document, what the author identifies as a Guatemalan tendency toward “strong words.”

A 17-item bibliography of works consulted (pp. ix-x) includes the 21st Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (DRAE) of 1992 and other well-known dictionaries of general Spanish, two theses, and several literary works. Morales Pellecer cites the Armas dictionary, as well as Arriola for geographic terms. He apparently did not consult any of the other Guatemalan dictionaries: the works of Batres Jáuregui, Sandoval, or Rubio. This omission may reflect the unfortunate difficulty in Guatemala of acquiring these books. In any case, it certainly speaks to the limits on scholarly work in Guatemalan Spanish linguistics inside the country.

Morales Pellecer includes a brief, though very interesting, list of some peculiarities of Guatemalan Spanish (pp. xi-xii). He mentions such commonly cited features as the high frequency of diminutives and the shortening of toponyms; the combination of indefinite article with possessive marker and the use of possessives with kin terms; and, of course, the use of the voseo , along with the occasional combination of tú and vos with the same person. He also sees a concomitant reduction in the use of usted in Guatemalan Spanish. An urgent research topic is, in fact, the documentation of Guatemalan address form usage. It has clearly shifted significantly over the past 30 years or so, with vos becoming more common in women's and intergender speech and tú becoming stigmatized in young men's speech. Nevertheless, in my experience usted is still in strong use, even between married partners where it signals respect along with affection.

Morales Pellecer does record a tendency toward strong language by both sexes and comments on the Guatemalan custom of joking and parody, not just in comic situations but in tragic ones as well. Such joking under the stress of catastrophe is not confined to Guatemala , of course, and is probably universal. Still, there is a wide-spread belief in Guatemala that the use of humor, sarcasm, parody – especially in forms that are only understood by in-group members – is a peculiarly Guatemalan skill.

The list of characteristics of Guatemalan Spanish closes with some examples of pronunciation variation between the eastern and western regions of the country, attributing the pronunciation of rr as sh – and some unspecified intonational practices – to indigenous influence. The documentation of this sort of variation across the five identified regions of Guatemala is the topic of the national branch of the on-going, multinational Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y América (PRESEEA) based at the Spanish Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (see http://www.linguas.net/preseea/contenido/home.asp , last access May 2006 ). However, even PREESEA focuses almost exclusively on urban varieties. Morales Pellecer's own turn away from the inclusion of more rural locutions – such a strong element in the work of both Sandoval and Rubio – underscores the likelihood that the rich internal dialect variation in Guatemala will be diminished or lost before it can be properly inventoried and studied.

The list of Guatemalan Spanish characteristics is followed by a set of four explanatory notes for users (p. xiii) that align the dictionary with the DRAE. The author indicates, for example, that the abbreviations he uses are the same as those in the DRAE. Therefore, the list of abbreviations on p. xv includes much more grammatical precision than found in previous dictionaries. The author clarifies the fact that he has not included standard DRAE meanings in the entries; only the special Guatemalan senses are included. Furthermore, since phrases can be understood as “locutions,” in the sense used in the DRAE, idioms and sayings can justifiably be included. He also points out that the dictionary includes indigenous language and group names both in their traditional Spanish spellings and in the official orthography adopted for them in 1987.

Following an epigram, we move directly into the dictionary proper.

III. Dictionary

The alphabetic word list occupies 124 pages and is presented in double columns. Entries are in bold. Phrasal expressions and common sayings are given within the entry for a key word and are also in bold and separated from other expressions and meanings by semicolons. In many cases, this practice seems arbitrary, as it does in other dictionaries. For example, the very common Guatemalan expression A la ley de Cristo, cada quien con su pisto (meaning that each person pays his or her own expenses) is listed under the entry for the preposition a, and not, for example, under ley or Cristo . The entry for the verb ser – an element in a great many common expressions and sayings – takes over five columns.

Morales Pellecer spells items containing the alveopalatal fricative [x] with sh . He marks vulgar items with the DRAE abbreviation vulg. He does not include scientific names. He includes many entries for gentilicios , terms based on place names and used to say where a person or object is from. It is not clear what criteria are used for inclusion for such terms. For example, he includes as separate entries sanmarquense (someone from San Marcos , one of the Departments in Guatemala ), santacruzano (someone from Santa Cruz ), santarroseño (a person from Santa Rosa ), antigüeño (person from Antigua Guatemala ), todosantero (someone from Todos Santos Cuchumatán, and jalapaneco (someone from Jalapa ). He does not include similar, and equally unpredictable, forms such as sanpedrano (someone from San Pedro la Laguna), solomero (someone from San Pedro Soloma), sumpanguero (a person from Sumpango), or tecpaneco (a person from Tecpán Guatemala ).

Overall, the definitions in Diccionario de guatemaltequismos are quite crisp and less idiosyncratic or discursive than in earlier dictionaries.

It is clear that Morales Pellecer has relied heavily on Armas for many definitions. A brief comparison is illustrative in clarifying the differences between the two works. Consider the letter G. Armas includes 123 entries for items beginning with G, and Morales Pellecer has 115. Because of the smaller type, tighter formatting, and fewer examples, Morales Pellecer's G entries occupy about four-and-a-half pages, while the Armas entries occupy eight full pages. About one-third of the entries in each dictionary are unique to it. Both the unique and shared meanings raise interesting problems.

Of the entries that are shared, some are given with completely different meanings. For example, for Garnacha , Armas lists two meanings: (1) Fuerza; violencia. (2) Valor, decisión. Morales Pellecer lists one: tortilla gruesa con repollo, chile y otros ingredientes. Since Rubio lists both the food meaning, and a metaphorical one given as “A la brava,” it appears that the food meaning may have been primary, with the secondary extension as a kind of slang. Perhaps the omission of the second meaning by Morales Pellecer means that the informal meaning has been lost, but in that case the omission of the food meaning by Armas is inexplicable.

In other shared entries the definitions are very nearly or completely identical. This commonality is found especially in two principal cases. First, for certain kinds of vocabulary referring to somewhat technical or old-fashioned objects or practices, Morales Pellecer simply borrows the Armas meaning wholesale. Compare, for example, the entries for Gamarra , a Basque-derived word referring to a strap used to control horses. Armas writes Cabezal de pita puesto a los caballos, al que se amarra el cabestro o cordel con que se sujetan. Morales Pellecer writes Cabezal de pita puesto a los caballos, al que se amarra el cabestro o cordel con que se sujetan. 

As a matter of interest, it is worth noting that Rubio includes only the augmentative form of this word – gamarrón – which he defines simply as “gamarra,” suggesting that the base meaning is the same as that of the DRAE ( http://buscon.rae.es/diccionario/drae.htm , last access May 2006) :

Correa de poco más de un metro de longitud que, partiendo de la cincha, pasa por entre los brazos del caballo, se asegura en el pretal de la silla y llega a la muserola, donde se afianza. Se ha usado para afirmar la cabeza del caballo e impedir que este despape o picotee.

It is therefore not clear why any of the dictionaries include gamarra or its derivatives, since they all claim to be recording only strictly Guatemalan usages.

Another interesting comparative example is the entry for Gato . In Armas, the word is given with three meanings: (1) Engaño en el juego de naipes. (2) Nombre dado al biceps. (3) Fraude, en general. The first is related to one of the meanings he provides for the verb Gatear : En el juego de naipes, hacer creer a los contrincantes que se tiene un buen juego, sin tenerlo. The other meaning Armas gives for gatear refers to the action of getting up in the dark and crawling into a woman's bed, with or without her consent. Morales Pellecer gives Gato only with the meanings (1) Sirviente and (2) Nombre dado al biceps. For Gatear , he has Andar a gatas as the first entry and the “getting surreptitiously into someone's bed at night” meaning (now very modern in its lack of gender specificity!). It is possible that the card-playing associations are all but gone today, which could account for their absence in the Morales Pellecer list. However, examples like this one suggest that it would be valuable to conduct a serious linguistic survey of the real viability and usage patterns associated with these somewhat specialized terms.

The other case where definitions are strikingly similar occurs with floral and faunal terms. Armas relies on Rubio for much of his scientific terminology, and Morales Pellecer simply dispenses with scientific names altogether. Otherwise, however, Morales Pellecer seems to rely completely on Armas for definitions. For such items as Granadilla , for example, a kind of fruit plant, the definitions are nearly identical. Morales Pellecer omits the scientific name – Passiflora edulis – incorporating part of it into the definition by replacing Armas' “planta trepadora” with “planta pasiflorácea.” In the case of Guague , a kind of chile, neither compiler has a scientific name, but the entries are identical except that Armas includes ají – the preferred standard term – in parenthesis after chile in the definition and Moralles Pellecer omits it. In some cases, as with Güisquil , a commonly used vine vegetable, not only the scientific name is lost, but also some of the information that Armas includes is omitted from an otherwise identical entry. In this case, an entire sentence describing the texture of the vegetable and its seed is eliminated.

In general, the definitions of foodstuffs and the like in Morales Pellecer are less colloquial and contain less information than those of Armas. In cases where Armas does not include a term, however, the Morales Pellecer entry tends to be much longer than usual. Guayacán , a large tree with wood useful for everything from ships to household objects, for instance, is not found in Armas, though it is included by Rubio. From Morales Pellecer we learn about its size, shape, and color, what type of bark, leaves, and flowers it has, and the medicinal and industrial uses of its wood and resin. These entries are useful, because they fill in gaps in Armas. Rubio, of course, offers by far the most complete inventory for these semantic domains, but it is clear that much of this specialized vocabulary may be on the wane with increasing urbanization.

Morales Pellecer's strengths are in the inclusion of two other types of information. First, he includes many more words related to Guatemala and Guatemalan social groups than Armas. For example, he includes garífuna, the non-Mayan linguistic and cultural group located along the Atlantic coast of Guatemala and Belize . He also includes entries for Guatemala (the country), Guatemala de la Asunción (the capital city), guatemalense, guatemalidad, guatemalteco, guatemaltequidad, guatemaltequismo, and guate, the nickname through apocope for the country or capital or person. Armas only includes guate and guatemalidad. Interestingly, the definitions of this latter are slightly different in suggestive ways. For Armas, guatemalidad is the Concepto de la ciudadanía guatemalteca, en sus atributos. For Morales Pellecer, it is either the Cualidad de guatemalteco or a Carácter genuinamente guatemalteco.

Morales Pellecer also includes more slang and vulgar language. For Guaca , both compilers note that it is the common shortened form of guacamaya , a large colorful bird. Only Morales P. includes the slang meaning ‘vomit.' For Guaje , Armas lists (1) Cosa de poco valor and (2) Pertinencias , while Morales Pellecer offers (1) Cosa de poco valor and (2) Prostituta . For Grifo , Armas has the slang meaning “hairy, hirsute,” but Morales Pellecer adds “drug addict.” Note that Rubio has both meanings, so the slang meaning is not a recent coinage.

Morales Pellecer is also more attuned to Anglicisms. He mentions the etymologies of guachimán (< Eng. watchman, which Armas also cites), guaipe (< Eng. ‘wipe', which Armas includes but does not identify as an anglicism), and güacho/a (< Eng. ‘watch,' which Armas does not include, but Rubio does).

Of special interest is the omission by Morales Pellecer of the commonplace usage of grande to refer, as Armas says, to las personas grandes, o de edad muy avanzada. Grande is the most usual way in Guatemala to say “old” about a person – viejo being vaguely insulting. Perhaps Morales Pellecer omitted it because that meaning is recorded in the current DRAE. However, in that case, why include completely predictable derivations such as guacalada ‘el contenido de un guacal' (also recorded by Armas and the DRAE)? Obviously, the criteria for inclusion are not applied any more consistently by Morales Pellecer than they are by earlier dictionary compilers.

This cursory summary of entries for a single letter should give a flavor for the distinctions of the Morales Pellecer dictionary and for how it compares to its more recent (and available) competitors. In spite of its easy portability, clear type, attractive cover, and even its more contemporary coverage, the Morales Pellecer dictionary cannot be recommended as a sole source for those interested in the scholarly study of the variety of Spanish spoken today in Guatemala . It is uneven in adherence to its own conventions, considerably less complete in certain semantic domains, and is of problematic reliability with regard to regional variations.

In many ways, it is no less artisanal than the dictionaries compiled by amateur lexicographers of Guatemalan Spanish, trained in wildly non-linguistic fields. It does update older entries and includes some new terms. Used in conjunction with Armas and Rubio, Morales Pellecer's dictionary would offer important data for interesting work on language change. This fact may be especially true for slang and informal usage, although the slang dictionary, ¿Qué onda, vos?, competes well in that domain. Nevertheless, its strengths make it essential for any dialect survey work or comparative done on the language.

It is a pity that Guatemalan Spanish still awaits a thorough, linguistically sound, fully comprehensive regional dictionary.