Espacos, Olofagos, y Caripicos

Abstract

The article deals with the historical development of Turkish-Spanish language contact in the Mediterranean. Initially, informations about the Ottoman Empire reached Spain mainly via Italian sources. There is, however, also a number of texts written by Spanish merchants, travellers and diplomats that contain important firsthand information. On the basis of these historical sources, a selective documentation of early Ottoman-Turkish loanwords in Spanish is compiled. As a result, it becomes clear that the lexicography of Turkisms in Spanish is far less advanced than in other languages.