Quechuan languages
| Quechua (Runa Simi) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina |
| Region: | Andes |
| Total speakers: | 9,600,000 |
| Ranking: | Not ranked |
| Genetic classification: |
Quechuan |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Peru, Bolivia |
| Regulated by: | Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | qu |
| ISO 639-2 | que |
| SIL | Varies, dialects are considered separate languages by SIL |
Quechua (Quechua, Runa Simi; runa = 'humankind', simi = 'language') is an Native American language native to South America. It was the official language of the Tahuantinsuyu (Inca empire), and today is spoken in various dialects by some 9.6 million people throughout South America. Some have proposed Quechua to be related to Aymará as members of a larger Quechumaran linguistic stock. This proposal is controversial, however.
The language's dominion spans the entire South American continent starting as far north as southern Colombia and Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and northwestern Argentina and northern Chile. The dialect as it is spoken in Colombia and Ecuador is known as Quichua (Quichua, Runa Shimi), and because of the unintelligibility of its speakers with other of the main branch of the language, it borders on being classed as a separate language. Despite this, all dialects are nonetheless considered a single tongue, consequently making it the most widely spoken of all American Indian languages in the Americas.
The language was extended beyond the limits of the empire by the Catholic Church, which chose it to preach to Indians in the Andes area. It has, along with Spanish and Aymará, the status of an official language in both Peru and Bolivia. Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the introduction of the Latin alphabet, Quechua had no written alphabet, instead, it had a system of accountance with khipu-strings.
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.
Quechua loanwords
A number of Quechua loanwords have entered English via Spanish, including coca, condor, guano, gaucho, jerky, inca, llama, pampa, potato (from papa via patata), puma, quinoa, and vicuña . The word lagniappe comes from the Quechua word nyap ("something extra") with the article la in front of it, la ñapa, in Spanish.
Quechua spelling and pronunciation
Vowels
Quechua uses only three vowels: /i/, /a/, and /u/, similar to Classical Arabic. These are usually pronounced roughly as in Spanish, however, when the closed vowels /i/ and /u/ appear adjacent to the uvular consonants /q/, /q'/, and /qh/, they are rendered more like [e] and [o] respectively.
Consonants
| labial | alveolar | palatal | velar | uvular | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | p | t | ch | k | q | |
| fricative | s | x* | h | |||
| nasal | m | n | ñ | |||
| lateral | l | ll | ||||
| trill | r | |||||
| semivowel | w | y |
* Sometimes spelled j instead of x, but note that the Spanish j and the Quechuan x are pronounced differently.
The consonant inventory seems a bit strange to Indo-European speakers. None of the plosives or fricatives are voiced; voicing is not phonemic in Quechua. However, in many dialects, each plosive has three forms: simple, with glottal stop, and with aspiration. For example:
simple ejective aspirated p p' ph t t' th ch ch' chh k k' kh q q' qh
Quechua morphology
| Number | |||
| Singular | Plural | ||
| Person | First | Nuqa | Nuqanchis (inclusive)
Nuqayku (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 listener is excluded. ("we without you"). Quechua also adds the suffix -kuna to the second and third person singular pronouns "qan" and "pan" to create the plural forms "qankuna" and "pankuna."
Adjectives are placed before nouns. Unlike Romance languages, Quechuan adjectives lack gender and number, but they are declined (as in German, Russian or Latin) into the many cases the language uses.
- Numbers.
- Cardinal numbers. illaq (0), huk (1), iskay (2), kinsa (3), tawa (4), pisqa (5), suqta (6), qanchis (7), pusaq (8), isqun (9), chunka (10), chunka huk niyuq (11), chunka iskay niyuq, iskay chunka (20), pachak (100), waranqa (100.000), hunu (1.000.000), lluna (1.000.000.000.000).
- Ordinal numbers. To form ordinal numbers, the word ñiqi (también ñiqin) is put after the appropriate cardinal number (e.g., iskay ñiqin=segundo). The only exception is that, in addition to huk ñiqin (first), the phrase Ñawpaq ñiqin 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; muchay=to kiss). The endings for the indicative voice are:
| Present | Past | Future | Pluperfect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nuqa | -ni | -rqa-ni | -saq | -sqa-ni |
| Qan | -nki | -rqa-nki | -iki | -sqa-nki |
| Pay | -n | -rqa-n | -nqa | -sqa |
| Nuqanchis | -nchis | -rqa-nchis | -sunchis | -sqa-nchis |
| Nuqayku | -yku | -rqa-yku | -saqku | -sqa-ku |
| Qankuna | -nkichis | -rqa-nkichis | -nkichis | -sqa-nkichis |
| Paykuna | -nku | -rqa-nku | -nqaku | -sqa-nku |
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., (kay=to be; kachkay=to continue to be).
These are indeclinable words, i.e., they do not accept suffixes. They are relatively rare. The most common are ari ('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")).
External Links
- Quechua Network's Dictionary a very good one.
- Quechua lessons in Spanish and English
- Quechua - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
- Ecuadorian Quechua - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
Note: You can also help Wikipedia by translating the Spanish language article Needs further rewriting, but I translated most of the Spanish language article