'Quechua' ('Runa Simi'; ''
Kichwa'' in Ecuador) is a
Native American language of
South America. It was the language of the
Inca Empire, and is today spoken in various dialects by some 10 million people (
Quechuas) throughout South America, including
Peru, South-western
Bolivia, southern
Colombia and
Ecuador, north-western
Argentina and northern
Chile. It is the most widely spoken of all the languages of the
indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Quechua is a very regular
agglutinative language, as opposed to a synthetic one. Its normal sentence order is SOV (subject-object-verb). Its large number of suffixes changes both the overall significance of words and their subtle shades of meaning. Notable grammatical features include bipersonal conjugation (verbs agree with both subject and object),
evidentiality (indication of the source and veracity of knowledge), a
topic particle, and suffixes indicating who benefits from an action and the speaker's attitude toward it.'
'
History
Inca kings of
Cusco made Quechua their official language and, with Inca conquest in the
15th century, the Empire's language became pre-Columbian Peru's ''lingua franca''. By the time of the
Spanish conquest, in the
16th century, the language had already spread throughout the Andean region.
The oldest records of the language are those of
Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás, who arrived in Peru in 1538 and learned the language from 1540, publishing his ''Gramática o Arte de la Lengua General de los Incas o los Reyes del Perú'' in 1560.
Quechua has often been grouped with
Aymara as a larger Quechumaran linguistic stock, largely because about a third of its vocabulary is shared with Aymara. This proposal is controversial, however, as the cognates are close, often closer than intra-Quechua cognates, and there is little relationship in the affixal system. The similarities may be due to long-term contact rather than from common origin. The language was further extended beyond the limits of the Inca empire by the
Roman Catholic Church, which chose it to preach to natives in the
Andes. Where the two languages intermix, Quechua phrases and words are commonly used by Spanish speakers and visa-versa. In southern rural Bolivia, for instance, many Quechua words such as ''wawa'' (infant), michi (cat), wasca (strap, or thrashing) are as commonly used as their Spanish counterparts, even in entirely Spanish-speaking areas.
Today, it has the status of an official language in both Peru and Bolivia, along with
Spanish and Aymara. Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the introduction of the
Latin alphabet, Quechua had no written alphabet. The Incas kept track of numerical data through a system of
quipu-strings.
Currently, the major obstacle to the diffusion of the usage and teaching of Quechua is the lack of written material in the Quechua language, namely books, newspapers, software, magazines, etc. Thus, Quechua, along with Aymara and the minor indigenous languages, remains essentially an oral language.
Geographic distribution
There are four main dialect groups.
Quechua I or ''Waywash'' is spoken in Peru's central highlands. It is the most diverse branch of Quechua
[1], such that its dialects have often been considered different languages.
Quechua II or ''Wanp'una (Traveler)'' is divided into three branches:
★ II-A:
Yunkay Quechua is spoken sporadically in Peru's occidental highlands;
★ II-B:
Northern Quechua (also known as ''Runashimi'' or, especially in Ecuador, ''
Kichwa'') is mainly spoken in Colombia and Ecuador. It is also spoken in the Amazonian lowlands in Ecuador and Peru;
★ II-C:
Southern Quechua, spoken in Peru's southern highlands, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, is today's most important branch because it has the largest number of speakers and because of its cultural and literary legacy.
This is, at least, the traditional classification, and is still a helpful guide, though it has come to be increasingly challenged in recent years, since a number of regional varieties of Quechua seem to be intermediate between the two branches.
Number of speakers
The number of speakers given varies widely according to the sources.
The most reliable figures are to be found in the census results of Peru (1993) and Bolivia (2001), though they are probably altogether too low due to underreporting. The 2001 Ecuador census seems to be a prominent example of underreporting, as it comes up with only 499,292 speakers of the two varieties Quichua and Kichwa combined, where other sources estimate between 1.5 and 2.2 million speakers.
★ Argentina: 100,000
★ Bolivia: 2,100,000 (2001 census)
★ Brazil: unknown
★ Chile: very few, spoken in pockets in the Chilean Altiplano (Ethnologue)
★ Colombia: 9,000 (Ethnologue)
★ Ecuador: 500,000 to 2,200,000
★ Peru: 3,200,000 (1993 census)
Additionally, there may be hundreds of thousands of speakers outside the traditionally Quechua speaking territories.
Vocabulary
A number of Quechua
loanwords have entered
English via
Spanish, including ''
coca'', ''
cóndor'', ''
guano'', ''
jerky'', ''
llama'', ''
pampa'', ''
puma'', ''
quinine'', ''
quinoa'', ''
vicuña'' and possibly ''
gaucho''. The word ''
lagniappe'' comes from the Quechua word ''yapay'' ("to increase; to add") with the
Spanish article ''la'' in front of it, ''la yapa'' or ''la ñapa'', in Spanish.
The influence on Latin American Spanish includes such borrowings as ''chuchaqui'' for "hangover" in
Ecuador, and diverse borrowings for "
altitude sickness", in
Bolivia from Quechua ''suruqch'i'' to Bolivian ''sorojchi'', in
Colombia,
Ecuador, and
Peru ''soroche''.
Quechua has borrowed a large number of
Spanish words, such as ''pero'' (from ''pero'', but), ''bwenu'' (from ''bueno'', good), and ''burru'' (from ''burro'', donkey).
Phonology
The description below applies to
Cusco dialect; there are significant differences in other varieties of Quechua.
Vowels
Quechua uses only three vowels: and , just as in
Classical Arabic and Aymara (including Jaqaru). Monolingual speakers pronounce these as and respectively, though the
Spanish vowels and may also be used. When the vowels appear adjacent to the uvular consonants , , and , they are rendered more like , and respectively.
Consonants
None of the plosives or fricatives is voiced; voicing is not
phonemic in the Quechua native vocabulary of the modern Cusco variety.
About 30% of the modern Quechua vocabulary is borrowed from Spanish, and some Spanish sounds (e.g. f, b, d, g) may have become phonemic, even among monolingual Quechua speakers.
Writing system
Quechua has been written using the Roman alphabet since the
Spanish conquest of Peru. However, written Quechua is not utilized by the Quechua-speaking people at large due to the lack of printed referential material in Quechua.
Until the 20th century, Quechua was written with a Spanish-based
orthography. Examples: ''Inca, Huayna Cápac, Collasuyo, Mama Ocllo, Viracocha, quipu, tambo, condor''. This orthography is the most familiar to Spanish speakers, and as a corollary, has been used for most borrowings into English.
In 1975, the Peruvian government of
Juan Velasco adopted a new orthography for Quechua. This is the writing system preferred by the controversial ''
Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua''. Examples: ''Inka, Wayna Qapaq, Qollasuyu, Mama Oqllo, Wiraqocha, khipu, tampu, kuntur''. This orthography:
★ uses 'w' instead of ''hu'' for the /w/ sound.
★ distinguishes velar ''k'' from uvular ''q'', where both were spelled ''c'' or ''qu'' in the traditional system.
★ distinguishes simple, ejective, and aspirated stops in dialects (such as that of
Cuzco) which have them — thus ''khipu'' above.
★ continues to use the Spanish five-vowel system.
In 1985, a variation of this system was adopted by the Peruvian government; it uses the Quechua three-vowel system. Examples: ''Inka, Wayna Qapaq, Qullasuyu, Mama Uqllu, Wiraqucha, khipu, tampu, kuntur''.
The different orthographies are still highly controversial in Peru. Advocates of the traditional system believe that the new orthographies look too foreign, and suggest that it makes Quechua harder to learn for people who have first been exposed to written Spanish. Those who prefer the new system maintain that it better matches the phonology of Quechua, and point to studies showing that teaching the five-vowel system to children causes reading difficulties in Spanish later on.
For more on this, see
Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift.
Writers differ in the treatment of Spanish loanwords. Sometimes these are adapted to the modern orthography, and sometimes they are left in Spanish. For instance, "I am Robert" could be written ''Robertom kani'' or ''Ruwirtum kani''. (The ''-m'' is not part of the name; it is an evidential suffix.)
Peruvian linguist
Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has proposed an orthographic norm for all Quechua, called
Southern Quechua. This norm, el Quechua estándar or ''Hanan Runasimi'', which is accepted by many institutions in Peru, has been made by combining conservative features of two most common dialects:
Ayacucho Quechua and
Qusqu-Qullaw Quechua (spoken in Cusco, Puno, Bolivia, and Argentina). For instance:
| Ayacucho | Cusco | Southern Quechua | Translation |
|---|
| upyay | uhyay | upyay | "to drink" |
| utqa | usqha | utqha | "fast" |
| llamkay | llank'ay | llamk'ay | "to work" |
| ñuqanchik | nuqanchis | ñuqanchik | "we (inclusive)" |
| -chka- | -sha- | -chka- | (progressive suffix) |
| punchaw | p'unchay | p'unchaw | "day" |
To listen to recordings of these and many other words as pronounced in many different Quechua-speaking regions, see the external website
The Sounds of the Andean Languages. There is also a full section on the new
Quechua and Aymara Spelling.
Grammar
Pronouns
| 'Number' |
| '''Singular''' | '''Plural''' |
| 'Person' | '''First''' | Ñuqa | Ñuqanchik ''(inclusive)''Ñuqayku ''(exclusive)'' |
| '''Second''' | Qam | Qamkuna |
| '''Third''' | Pay | Paykuna |
In Quechua, there are seven
pronouns. Quechua also has two first person plural pronouns ("we", in English). One is called the
inclusive, which is used when the speaker wishes to include in "we" the person to whom he or she is speaking ("we and you"). The other form is called the
exclusive, which is used when the
addressee is excluded. ("we without you"). Quechua also adds the suffix ''-kuna'' to the second and third person singular pronouns ''qam'' and ''pay'' to create the plural forms ''qam-kuna'' and ''pay-kuna''.
Adjectives
Adjectives in Quechua are always placed before nouns. They lack gender and number, and are not declined to agree with
substantives.
Numbers
★
Cardinal numbers. ''ch'usaq'' (0), ''huk'' (1), ''iskay'' (2), ''kimsa'' (3), ''tawa'' (4), ''pichqa'' (5), ''suqta'' (6), ''qanchis'' (7), ''pusaq'' (8), ''isqun'' (9), ''chunka'' (10), ''chunka hukniyuq'' (11), ''chunka iskayniyuq'' (12), ''iskay chunka'' (20), ''pachak'' (100), ''waranqa'' (1,000), ''hunu'' (1,000,000), ''lluna'' (1,000,000,000,000).
★ Ordinal numbers. To form ordinal numbers, the word ''ñiqin'' is put after the appropriate cardinal number (e.g., ''iskay ñiqin'' = "second"). The only exception is that, in addition to ''huk ñiqin'' ("first"), the phrase ''ñawpaq'' is also used in the somewhat more restricted sense of "the initial, primordial, the oldest".
Adverbs
Adverbs can be formed by adding ''-ta'' or, in some cases, ''-lla'' to an adjective: ''allin - allinta'' ("good - well"), ''utqay - utqaylla'' ("quick - quickly"). They are also formed by adding suffixes to
demonstratives: ''chay'' ("that") - ''chaypi'' ("there"), ''kay'' ("this") - ''kayman'' ("hither").
There are several original adverbs. For Europeans, it is striking that the adverb ''qhipa'' means both "behind" and "future", whereas ''ñawpa'' means "ahead, in front" and "past". This means that local and temporal concepts of adverbs in Quechua (as well as in
Aymara) are associated to each other reversely compared to European languages. For the speakers of Quechua, we are moving backwards into the future (we cannot see it - ie. it is unknown), facing the past (we can see it - ie. we remember it).
Verbs
The infinitive forms (unconjugated) have the suffix ''-y'' (''much'a''= "kiss"; ''much'a-y'' = "to kiss"). The endings for the indicative are:
| Present | Past | Future | Pluperfect |
|---|
| Ñuqa | -ni | -rqa-ni | -saq | -sqa-ni |
|---|
| Qam | -nki | -rqa-nki | -nki | -sqa-nki |
|---|
| Pay | -n | -rqa-n | -nqa | -sqa |
|---|
| Ñuqanchik | -nchik | -rqa-nchik | -su-nchik | -sqa-nchik |
|---|
| Ñuqayku | -yku | -rqa-yku | -saq-ku | -sqa-yku |
|---|
| Qamkuna | -nki-chik | -rqa-nki-chik | -nki-chik | -sqa-nki-chik |
|---|
| Paykuna | -n-ku | -rqa-nku | -nqa-ku | -sqa-ku |
|---|
To these are added various suffixes to change the meaning. For example, ''-ku'', is added to make the actor the recipient of the action (example: ''wañuy'' = "to die"; ''wañukuy'' = "to commit suicide"); ''-naku'', when the action is mutual (example: ''marq'ay''= "to hug"; ''marq'anakuy''= "to hug each other"), and ''-chka'', when the condition is continuing (e.g., ''mikhuy'' = "to eat"; ''mikhuchkay'' = "to be eating").
Grammatical particles
Particles are indeclinable words, that is, they do not accept suffixes. They are relatively rare. The most common are ''arí'' ("yes") and ''mana'' ("no"), although ''mana'' can take the suffix ''-n'' (''manan'') to intensify the meaning. Also used are ''yaw'' ("hey", "hi"), and certain loan words from Spanish, such as ''piru'' (from Spanish ''pero'' "but") and ''sinuqa'' (from ''sino'' "rather").
Evidentiality
Nearly every Quechua sentence is marked by an evidential suffix, indicating how certain the speaker is about a statement. ''-mi'' expresses personal knowledge (''Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi'', "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver-- I know it for a fact"); ''-si'' expresses hearsay knowledge (''Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi'', "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard"); ''-cha'' expresses probability (''Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufircha'', "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). These become ''-m, -s, -ch'' after a vowel.
Trivia
★ The fictional
Huttese language in the
''Star Wars'' movies is largely based upon Quechua. According to Jim Wilce, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at
Northern Arizona University,
George Lucas contacted a colleague of his, Allen Sonafrank, to record the dialogue. Wilce and Sonafrank discussed the matter, and felt it might be demeaning to have an alien represent Quechuans, especially in light of
Erich von Daniken's popular but implicitly racist publications that claimed Inca monuments were created by aliens because "primitives" like the Incas could never have produced them. Sonafrank declined, but a grad student, who could pronounce but did not speak Quechua, recorded
Greedo's dialogue. There are reports that the dialogue was played backwards or remixed, possibly to avoid offending Quechuans.
★ The president of
Ecuador,
Rafael Correa speaks fluent Quechua.
★ The sport retailer
Decathlon Group brands their mountain equipment range as Quechua.
See also
★
Aymara language
★
Andes
★
List of English words of Quechuan origin
★
South Bolivian Quechua language
References
★ Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, ''Lingüística Quechua'', Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos 'Bartolomé de las Casas', 2nd ed.
2003
★ Mannheim, Bruce, ''The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion'', University of Texas Press,
1991, ISBN 0-292-74663-6
★ Cusihuamán, Antonio, ''Diccionario Quechua Cuzco-Collao'', Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de Las Casas", 2001, ISBN 9972-691-36-5
★ Cusihuamán, Antonio, ''Gramática Quechua Cuzco-Collao'', Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de Las Casas", 2001, ISBN 9972-691-37-3
★ Rodríguez Champi, Albino. (2006). Quechua de Cusco. ''Ilustraciones fonéticas de lenguas amerindias'', ed. Stephen A. Marlett. Lima: SIL International y Universidad Ricardo Palma.
[1]
1. Lyle Campbell, American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 189
External links
★
El Quechua de Santiago del Estero, extensive site covering the grammar of Argentinian Quechua (in Spanish)
★
runasimi.de Multilingual Quechua website with online dictionary (xls) Quechua - German - English - Spanish.
★
Quechua Language and Linguistics an extensive site.
★
★
The Sounds of the Andean Languages listen online to pronunciations of Quechua words, see photos of speakers and their home regions, learn about the origins and varieties of Quechua.
★
CyberQuechua, by the Quechua-speaking linguist Serafín Coronel Molina.
★
Multilingual Dictionary: Spanish - Quechua (Cusco, Ayacucho, Junín, Ancash) - Aymara
★
Toponimos del Quechua de Yungay, Peru
★
Quechua Network's Dictionary a very good one.
★
Quechua lessons (www.andes.org) in Spanish and English
★
Quechua course in Spanish, by Demetrio Tupah Yupanki (Red Científica Peruana)
★
Detailed map of the varieties of Quechua according to SIL (fedepi.org)
★
Quechua - English Dictionary: from
Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
★
Ecuadorian Quechua - English Dictionary: from
Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
★
Google Quechua
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