Southern Quechua

Southern Quechua (Spanish: quechua sureño), or simply Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 6.9 million speakers. It is also the most widely spoken indigenous language in the entire New World. The term Southern Quechua refers to the forms of Quechua spoken in regions of the Andes south of a line roughly east-west between the cities of Huancayo and Huancavelica in central Peru. It includes the Quechua varieties spoken in the regions of Ayacucho, Cuzco and Puno in Peru, in much of Bolivia and parts of north-west Argentina. The most widely spoken varieties are South Bolivian, Cuzco, Ayacucho, and Puno (Collao).

In the traditional classification of the Quechua language family by Alfredo Torero, Southern Quechua is equivalent to Torero's 'Quechua IIc' (or just 'QIIc'). It thus stands in contrast to its many sister varieties within the wider Quechua family that are spoken in areas north of the Huancayo-Huancavelica line: Central Quechua (Torero's QI) spoken from Huancayo northwards to Ancash; North Peruvian Quechua around Cajamarca and Incahuasi (Torero's IIa); and Ecuador Quechua (locally known as 'Quichua', part of Torero's Quechua IIb).

Dialects

Dialects are Ayacucho Quechua, Cuzco Quechua, Puno Quechua (Callao Quechua), North Bolivian Quechua (Apolo Quechua), and South Bolivian Quechua. Santiagueño Quechua in Argentina is divergent, and appears to derive from a mix of dialects, including South Bolivian.^[3]

The most salient distinction between Ayacucho Quechua and the others is that it lacks the aspirated (tʃʰ, pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, qʰ) and ejective (tʃʼ, pʼ, tʼ, kʼ, qʼ) series of plosives. The other varieties of Bolivia and Southern Peru taken together have been called Cusco–Collao (Qusqu–Qullaw); however, they are not monolithic. For instance, Bolivian Quechua is morphologically distinct from Cuzco and Ayacucho Quechua, while North Bolivian is phonologically quite conservative compared to both South Bolivian and Cuzco, so that there is no bifurcation between Ayacucho and Cusco–Collao.

Santiagueño also lacks the aspirated and ejective series, but that was a distinct development in Argentina. It also maintains remnants of the Quechua s–š distinction, which has otherwise been lost from Southern Quechua, suggesting that there are elements of other varieties of Quechua in its background.

Standard Quechua

The Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has devised a standard orthography intended to be viable for all the different regional forms of Quechua that fall under the umbrella term Southern Quechua. This orthography is a compromise of conservative features in the pronunciations of the various regions that speak forms of Southern Quechua. It has been accepted by many institutions in Peru and Bolivia, and is also used on Wikipedia Quechua pages, and by Microsoft in its translations of software into Quechua.

Some examples of regional spellings versus the standard orthography:

In Bolivia, the same standard is used, except for "j", which is used instead of "h" for the sound [h] (like in Spanish).

Sound examples for words pata, phata p'ata.

The following letters are used for the inherited Quechua vocabulary and for loanwords from Aymara:
a, ch, chh, ch', h, i, k, kh, k', l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, ph, p', q, qh, q', r, s, t, th, t', u, w, y.

Instead of "sh" (appearing in the northern and central Quechua varieties), "s" is used.
Instead of "ĉ" (appearing in the Quechua varieties of Junín, Cajamarca, and Lambayeque), "ch" is used.

The following letters are used in loanwords from Spanish and other languages (not from Aymara):
b, d, e, f, g, o.

The letters e and o are not used for native Quechua words, because the corresponding sounds are simply allophones of i and u that appear predictably next to q, qh, and q'. This rule applies to the official Quechua orthography for all varieties in general. Thus the spellings ⟨qu⟩ and ⟨qi⟩ are pronounced [qo] and [qe].

These letters appear only in proper names or words adopted directly from Spanish:
c, v, x, z; j (in Peru; in Bolivia, it is used instead of h).

Bibliography

• Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo (1994): Quechua sureño, diccionario unificado quechua–castellano, castellano–quechua [Southern Quechua, Quechua–Spanish, Spanish–Quechua Unified Dictionary]. Lima, Biblioteca Nacional del Perú.
• Antonio Cusihuamán (1976): Diccionario Quechua Cuzco-Collao [- Castellano y vice versa]. Ministerio de educación del Perú

References

External links

Quechua edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Qayna Kunan Paqarin: Una introducción al quechua chanca. 2011 (Archive) Electronic book of the complete course of the grammar of quechua, R. Zariquiey, G. Córdova. (Spanish)
• Vocabulario de la lengva general de todo el Perv llamada lengva Qquichua o del Inca (Spanish) The Quechua language spoken by the Inca nobility in Cusco, 1608 Diego González Holguín
• Iskay Simipi yuyayk'ancha (Spanish) Standarized Southern Quechua of Bolivia, 2007. The only difference in orthography is that Bolivians use a J instead of a H.
• Official Quechua Alphabet for Cusco
• Quechua Orthography
• Quechua Spelling and Pronunciation Explanation of some of the key issues in unified Southern Quechua spelling

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