Apapachar comes from náhuatl “apapachoa”. Náhuatl is a language also known as Aztec. It is still spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom live in central Mexico. The process of hispanization of the word transformed the original náhuatl papachoa o papatzoa, a verb used to mean kneading, or massaging lovingly, into what some say is one of the most beautiful words that exist. Perhaps this is the case because today’s meaning is “to caress with the soul”.
Words like apapachar were not born in mainland Spain, which also means that they do not come from Latin, as most of the Spanish language does. However, it is also down to hispanized American indigenous words that Spanish is indeed such a rich and varied language.
Among the many other contributing languages into present-day Spanish, there are a myriad of languages such as the náhuatl. These languages are co-official along with Spanish in the countries where they are still spoken. The same way that in Spain there are another three official languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician, in countries such as Bolivia, Quechua, Aymara, and Tupi Guarani are co-official alongside Spanish. Colombia is a striking example of this, with an astonishing more than 60 indigenous, co-official languages!!
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