Chileanisms and academic dictionaries. An overview

Abstract

Lexical elements of American dialects, especially those from Rio de la Plata and Andean regions, extend to Chile; some of them become established and acquire this new citizenship. Frequently, this situation is not registered by the RAE Diccionario de la lengua española (DRAE 2001) and, therefore, it does not include the diatopic mark Chile in the relevant entries. This paper analyzes a sample of these voices and expressions (mina, gil, basurear, seguidilla, felpear, trucho, al toque, fanaticada, afinar, copero, fumón), provides documentary evidence of its validity in Chile by means of very recent newspaper quotations, and follows the treatment given to them by other academic dictionaries: the Diccionario esencial de la lengua española (DELE 2006), the Diccionario de americanismos (DA 2010) and the Diccionario de uso del español de Chile (DUECh 2010). A higher consideration of these voices as new Chileanisms is perceived. The RAE linguistic database (CREA and CORDE) proved not fit for the analysis of the American popular, colloquial and informal lexicon.