ANGELES CITY, Pampanga – A dictionary on the Kapampangan dialect published in 1702 was unearthed in Valladolid, Spain, the Juan D. Nepomuceno Center for Kapampangan Studies (K-Center) announced Friday.

K-Center said that the 307-yearold dictionary can shed more light on the state of Kapampangan language in the early days of Spanish colonization.

Fray Alvaro de Benavente, an Augustinian missionary whose first assignment in the Philippines was at the parish of Mexico, Pampanga in 1671, wrote the dictionary.

Lord Francis Musni, a historian of the K-Center, said that Benavente's dictionary is now the oldest Kapampangan-Spanish dictionary available.

The dictionary by Benavente antedates an earlier dictionary by Fray Diego de Bergaño published in 1732.

Fr. Policarpo Hernandez, OSA, former head of the Augustinian house in Intramuros, Manila, discovered the centuries-old dictionary. Hernandez transported the document to the K-Center here located at the Holy Angel University.

Musni said that the holy grail of Kapampangan lexicography is Fray Diego Ochoa's Arte and Vocabulario, which were written in 1578, or about seven years after the Spaniards landed in Pampanga.

The oldest translated work on the Kapampangan language by a Spanish missionary is Fray Francisco Coronel's arte (grammar), written in 1617.

It was transcribed and translated by Fr. Edilberto Santos and published by the Center for Kapampangan Studies in 2005. It won the Manila Critics Circle's National Book Award that year.

The K-Center said that the Benavente dictionary would be available for reproduction, transcription, and translation.

Robby Tantingco, director of the Center, said the discovery is significant because "this dictionary reveals an even earlier state of the Kapampangan language, and we will get to see words not contained in Bergaño’s dictionary and therefore new insight into ancient Kapampangan culture and society.”