Quechua Language Family (Runasimi)
Pasaykamuy! Shamupai! "welcome" (in two varieties)
Pasaykamuy! Shamupai! "welcome" (in two varieties)
Introduction
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Quechua has two main branches:
It is generally thought that Quechua originated on the central coast of Peru around 2,600 BC. The Inca kings of Cuzco made Quechua their official language. With the Inca conquest of Peru in the 14th century, Quechua became Peru's lingua franca. The Incas spread Quechua to areas that today are the countries of Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century AD, Quechua had already spread throughout a large portion of the South American continent. The spread of Quechua did not stop with the Spanish conquest of Peru. It continued to spread into areas that were not part of the Inca empire such as Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina. Today, the best known varieties of Quechua are Cuzco spoken by 1.5 million people, and Ayacucho spoken by 900,000 people in Peru. Aymara has been grouped by some scholars together with Quechua as part of a larger Quechumaran linguistic stock because the two languages share about 30% of their vocabulary. This classification scheme is a matter of dispute because the similarities in vocabulary may be due to borrowing rather than to a common origin. Additionally, the two languages have few similarities in the affixes. |
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Today, Quechua has the status of an official language in Peru and Bolivia, along with Spanish and Aymara. In Peru education is exclusively in Spanish although many primary-school teachers use a combination of Spanish and Quechua with monolingual Quechua children. In Bolivia and Ecuador the status of Quechua has been improving in recent years due to indigenous movement to revitalize the language. The movement has resulted in the introduction of bilingual education programs in both countries. However, efforts to promote bilingual education in Peru have been unsuccessful. Efforts to introduce the teaching of Quechua in schools in all countries are often stymied by lack of written materials in Quechua in general, and teaching materials in particular. In rural areas, Quechua is used for everyday communication in informal contexts. Since most native speakers of Quechua are illiterate in their native language Quechua remains largely an oral language. In formal contexts, such as government, administration, commerce, education, and the media, Spanish is used. The only cultural domain where Quechua is used extensively is traditional Andean music. |
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The Inca Empire The Inca Empire flourished in what is today's Peru from 1438 to 1533 AD. The Incas used both military and peaceful means to incorporate a large portion of western South American continent. Its capital was Cuzco (in Quechua Quzqu "Navel of the World." The lingua franca of the Inca empire was Quechua. The empire lasted only about 100 years. In 1533, Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, was ordered assassinated by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro. His death signaled the end of the Inca empire and the beginning of a ruthless Spanish rule. |
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Andean music
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Trivia Did you also know that the fictional Huttese language spoken in the Star Wars series was based on Quechua? |
Structure
Sound System
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Vowels Consonants
None of the stops or fricatives have voiced counterparts. In fact, there are no voiced-voiceless oppositions in native Quechua words. However, in the Cuzco variety of Quechua, each stop has three forms: simple, glottalized, and aspirated.
Stress  Click here to listen to sound files of Quechua. |
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Quechua is an agglutinating language. Words are built up from a basic root followed by a number of suffixes each of which carries one meaning.
Noun phrase Pronouns Verb phrase
There are two past tenses. One indicates past events that are directly experienced, the other refers to events that were not directly experienced. The two tenses are marked with different suffixes. Object pronouns are incorporated into the verb, e.g., rikuwanki "you see me," where -wa- means "me."' Word order
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Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Cuzco Quechua.
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It is estimated that about one-third of Quechua vocabulary was borrowed
from Spanish. The number of loan-words is so large that Spanish sounds
such as /f/, /b/, /d/, /g/ that were absent in Quechua are now becoming
part of its sound system. Some examples of loanwords: sirbisa from Spanish cerveza 'beer,' chufir from Spanish chofer 'driver.'
Writing |
Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the introduction of the Latin alphabet, Quechua had no written alphabet. Surprisingly, the Inca lacked a written language. The only Incan examples of recorded information are knotted strings known as khipu (or quipu in Spanish orthography). In the view of some scholars, most khipu were arranged as knotted strings hanging from horizontal cords to represent numbers for bookkeeping and census purposes. Quechua has been written using the Roman alphabet since the Spanish conquest of Peru. Quechua first appeared in print in 1560 in a dictionary by Domingo de Santo Tomas and some religious texts. Until the 20th century, Quechua was written with a Spanish-based orthography which is used by Spanish speakers. In 1975, the Peruvian government adopted a new orthography for Quechua which replaced the Spanish-based representations of certain sounds with letters that more accurately reflect theit pronunciation in Quechua. Today, there are proponents and opponents of the two orthographies. Opponents maintain that the new orthography makes Quechua writing harder to learn for people familiar with Spanish. Proponents, on the other hand, suggest that the new system better matches the phonology of Quechua, particularly its three-vowel system. |
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Quechua words in English
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Resources |
Click here to find out where Quechua is taught in the United States. Online Resources for the study of Quechua |
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