The controversial dating of Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino. On the term "canoa"

Abstract

Nebrija wrote two dictionaries: one Latin-Spanish and another one Spanish-Latin. For the first one, the date of 1492 is commonly accepted, but for the second one there has been an intense and long discussion, because some authors take its publication to 1494 or 1495 with the argument that the word "canoa" is therein cited, and this word only could have entered Spanish language after the return of Columbus in 1493. That is the opinion defended by Pidal, Manuel Alvar and other authors. Nevertheless, other linguists consider that "canoa" should not be taken as the most important term for the datation. In this work, we offer some dates, obtained from Nebrija’s text, that offer new perspectives. These texts are the second edition of the Introductiones, dedicated to Zúñiga, a poem of the own Nebrija, that appears at the beginning of the edition of 1503, and the prologue letter of the 1513 Dictionary edition.