The corpus CONVERSACIONES EN LORETO is an effort to document a representative sample of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS) as spoken in Loreto, Peru. The Spanish spoken in this region displays unique features that set it apart from other varieties of Spanish. These patterns are often associated with the extremely complex substrate of the area. PAS coexists with dozens of indigenous languages, Kukama-Kukamiria (Tupian), Secoya (Tukano), and Kichwa (Quechuan) being three of them. The Spanish spoken in Loreto is then an excellent case scenario to test theoretical ideas about contact linguistics.
At present, CONVERSACIONES EN LORETO consists of about 40 hours of unscripted interviews collected from fifty-two speakers. The speakers are original from several communities, including: Kukama villages (Marañón, Huallaga, and Samiria Rivers), Secoya villages (Putumayo River), Kichwa (Napo River), and Iquitos (Amazon River). The approximate location of these communities are indicated in the map. The interviews were conducted between 2010 and 2017, and their duration ranges from 30 to 60 minutes. They are being gradually transcribed in intonation units using the Transcriber software, and morphologically and prosodically coded for examination in several studies.
