Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present

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in language theory, the tendency to modify words is relative to the speaker’s familiarity
with the terms. The writer of this secondary source could have easily done what the
primary source did with respect to this event and transliterate the word without
alteration. Yet, the writer elected to incorporate the term, adding gender, nominal
syntagma, grammatical category, which seem to hint at a stereotype or to the familiarity
of the writer with an already established perception about the term as far back as 1511.
Lastly, this word can also be found in one of the first Italian descriptions of the
continent subsequent to Amerigo Vespucci’s accounts in his 1505 Mundus Novus. In
this 1565 publication of Girolamo Benzoni’s La historia del mondo nuouo, we are
presented with a publication rich in images, descriptions and details about Taino life,
culture and social structure. The cacique is no exception.
Pic.24 - Images of original 1565 book by Girolamo Benzoni 121
The English translation of the original Italian text reads as follows:
Columbus, seeing so many Indians in the caravels that they could hardly hold them,
landed, accompanied by many great Spaniards, and was benignantly received by the
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(Benzoni, 1519-1572)