This guide is an attempt to systematize our knowledge of the early changes in Quechua lexicon that were brought about by contact with Spanish language and culture. The language contact phenomena described here embrace the period from the beginning of sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, a time when Quechua was still dominant in Peru, in terms of numbers of speakers, and enjoyed a relatively high social status. We hope that our work will be useful, as much for those scholars who specialize in the study of language contact, as for anthropologists and ethnohistorians who are particularly interested in Andean studies and the history of indigenous Latin America.
