Quechua language
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Quechua (Runasimi in Quechua; Runa, "People" + Simi, "speech", literally "mouth") 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 9.6 million people throughout South America, including modern southern Colombia and Ecuador, all of Peru and Bolivia, north-western Argentina and northern Chile. It is the most widely spoken of all American Indian languages.
Quechua is a very regular language, but a large number of infixes and suffixes change both the overall significance of words and their subtle shades of meaning, allowing great expressiveness. It includes grammatical features such as bipersonal conjugation and conjugation dependent on mental state and veracity of knowledge, spatial and temporal relationships, and many cultural factors.
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History
Today's theories about Quechua's origin put its initial territorial domain in modern Peru's Central Coast, possibly in the ancient city of Caral, around 2600 BC. Inca kings of Cuzco made Quechua their official language and, with Inca conquest in the 14th century, the Empire's language became Ancient Peru's lingua franca. By the time of the Spanish conquest, in the 16th century, the language had already spread throughout the South American continent.
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: 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 time contact rather than from common origins.
The language was further extended beyond the limits of the Inca empire by the Catholic Church, which chose it to preach to Indians in the Andes area. 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. Numerical data was kept track of by the Incas through a system of khipu-strings.
Geographic distribution
There are two main dialect groups.
Quechua I or Waywash is spoken in Peru's central highlands. It is the most archaic and diverse branch of Quechua, such that its dialects have been often considered a different tongue.
Quechua II or Wanp'una (Traveler) is divided into three branches: Yunkay Quechua is spoken sporadicaly in Peru's occidental highlands; Northern Quechua (also known as Quichua or Runashimi) is mainly spoken in Colombia and Ecuador; 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.
Vocabulary
A number of Quechua loanwords have entered English via Spanish, including coca, condor, 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 article la in front of it, la yapa, in Spanish.
Sounds
Vowels
Quechua uses only three vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/, similar to Classical Arabic. Monolingual speakers pronounce these as æ ɩ ʋ respectively, though the Spanish vowels may also be used. When the vowels appear adjacent to the uvular consonants /q/, /q'/, and /qh/, they are rendered more like [ɑ] , [e] and [o] respectively.
Consonants
| labial | alveolar | palatal | velar | uvular | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | p | t | ch | k | q | |
| fricative | s | h | ||||
| nasal | m | n | ñ | |||
| lateral | l | ll | ||||
| trill | r | |||||
| semivowel | w | y |
The consonant inventory can be quite different from the Indo-European languages. None of the plosives or fricatives are voiced; voicing is not phonemic in the Quechua native vocabulary. However, in the Cusco dialect, each plosive has three forms: simple, ejective, and aspirated (a feature that is considered to be of Aymara origin). For example:
simple ejective aspirated p p' ph t t' th ch ch' chh k k' kh q q' qh
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 for nearly 500 years, with a good deal of variation. Until the 20th century, it 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 adopted an orthography for Quechua. This is the writing system preferred by the 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 Cusco) 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.
Writers differ in the treatment of Spanish loanwords. Sometimes these are adapted to the modern orthography, 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, accepted by many institutions in Peru, has been made by combining conservative features of two most common dialects: Ayacucho Quechua and Cusco Quechua (which is also used in Bolivia and Argentina). For instance:
| Ayacucho | Cusco | Southern Quechua | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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" |
Grammar
| Number | |||
| Singular | Plural | ||
| Person | First | Ñuqa | Ñuqanchik (inclusive)
Ñuqayku (exclusive) |
| Second | Qan | Qankuna | |
| 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 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".
The infinitive forms (unconjugated) have the suffix -y (much'a= "kiss"; much'a-y = "to kiss"). The endings for the indicative voice 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 | -sun | -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 interfixes and 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").
These 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").
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.
See also
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 0292746636
External links
- Quechua Network's Dictionary a very good one.
- Quechua lessons in Spanish and English
- Quechua course in Spanish from the Red Cientifica Peruana
- Quechua - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
- Ecuadorian Quechua - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.bg:Кечуа
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