Hay Festival Querétaro 2023 – Language

Two of the most outstanding of the republic’s academics present the Diccionario de mexicanismos. Propios y compartidos, the result of the most complete investigation ever carried out into the Spanish spoken in Mexico, an initiative organised by the Mexican Academy of the Language. The text reveals the richness of the language used up and down the country, and it covers popular genres, clothing, culture and other matters. It includes terms from native languages such as Maya and Nahuatl as well as foreign languages such as English or French. In total, the dictionary contains: 10,587 lemmas; 431 sublemmas, which are forms of the lemma which create new meanings; 22,333 headwords and, at the end, a list of voices exclusive to Mexico. With Concepción Company, Assistant Director of the Academy. In conversation with Juan Villoro.

In conversation with Yásnaya Elena Aguilar, members of the Maya artistic and writing collective, and a Nahua designer and publisher will talk about art and text production based on the knowledge of the native peoples of Mexico. Javier Silverio Balderas Castillo has been an artist for 48 years at Taller Leñateros, a group which won the 2021 National Arts and Literature Prize. It is a publishing collective that consist of Maya artists from Chiapas. Since 1975 they have been writing, illustrating, printing, binding and publishing books with paper made by themselves. Isela Xospa, from Milpa Alta, is a Graphic Design graduate of UAM Xochimilco. She has undertaken independent publishing and design projects in Mexico and New York. She won the 2021 Antonio García Cubas Award in the Children’s Work category, and was a British Library Chevening Scholar in 2021-2022, with a project about the first printed books in native languages in Latin America.