Indigenismos americanos en cartas de particulares del siglo XVI

The aim of the article is to study the range of influence of indigenous vocabulary on sixteenth-century Spanish language which had been spoken by Spanish settlers in the New World and transmitted by them to friends and relatives left in homeland. Private letters of immigrants to Spanish Indies serve as a representative source which reflect their linguistic habits. The vast collection of more than 650 letters of immigrants was edited first in 1989 by Enrique Otte, and later in 2009 by Marta Fernández Alcaide in a much more reliable transcription. This second edition is the base of the research presented in the article.