Revilla 1

Alfonso Revilla
Professor: Dr. Paul Lux
LING 200
25 November 2014
Quechua vs. Extinction
The Quechua language has a rich history dating back to 15 AD (Jarus). It is characterized
for being the Incas language. Due to its important and remarkable history, it is considered to be
one of the most important languages in South America. Unfortunately due to factors such as
colonization, globalization, social disparity and segregation to name a few, Quechua has fallen
into the Worlds Endangered Language category, putting at risk its survival (Adellar 99-100).
Even though these factors are contributing to its endangerment, many governments are putting in
place laws to protect its survival and to promote its importance (Quechuan Language). Along
with government laws helping to stop further damage, it is important that linguistics scholars
study, record and teach this language . This will not only help its survival, but studying and
registering the Linguistic aspects of it, will help keep records of the language for years to come.

In this paper I will analyze and address three aspects of Quechua language. First, I will
provide background information about the history of Quechua dating back to the Inca Empire,
followed by the Spanish Conquest. Second, I will analyze in detail the Phonology, Morphology
and Syntax for this language. Third, in this paper I will state the actions governments are taking
to avoid losing the Quechua language. In this section I will also point out details about the stance
of Quechua in the 21st Century and the different social views of such. Fourth, I will conclude

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this research paper by summarizing the main points along points of view on why Quechua is a
language that must not die.

Unfortunately the roots of Quechua language are unknown since there are no written
records previous to the Spanish Conquest. But it is known that the Incas official language was
Quechua and it was spoken in what was known in Quechua as the Tawantinsuyu Inca Empire.
The Tawantinsuyu was the biggest, richest and most powerful civilization from Mesoamerica
Stretching 2,500 miles and ruling more than 12 million people (The Inca Empire: Children of
the Sun) . It began in what today is know as Colombia and went down Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,
Chile and ended in Argentina (Crevels 162). Sadly, the Inca Empire had a short life of only
about a hundred years due to the Spanish conquest in 1532 (Quechuan Language). Along with
the bloody conquest of territory, the Spanish language, along with European customs, rapidly
took over of what was once the Tawantinsuyu. As a result of the Spanish conquest, the Spanish
language dominated and dominates all other languages in South America, forcing some to
disappear and putting other languages at risk of disappearing (Adelaar 99-100). Even though the
Spanish language has taken over many languages and dialects, the Spanish government allowed
and encouraged the spread of Quechua allowing it to be taught at the University of Lima in 1551
(Campbell 551).

In order to prevent Quechua language from disappearing, Linguist scholars have studied
and recorded this language, which is a hard task since Quechua was mainly an oral language and
the Incas never developed an alphabet (Thompson). In 1560, Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas
wrote the Grammatica o Arte de la Lengua General de Los Indios de Los Reynos del Peru, this

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was the first work produced on the topic. In 1606, Diego Gonzlez Holgun wrote, the
Gramtica y Arte Nuevo de la Lengua General de Todo el Per LLamada Lengua Quechua o
Lengua del Inca and in 1608, he produced a dictionary, the Vocabulario de la Lengua General
de todo el Per llamada lengua Quechua o del Inca (Yataco) That was the beginning of a long
process of building and setting up an alphabet for Quechua.

In order to understand and analyze Quechua, it is important to take a look at the

Phonological aspect of it. In todays Quechuan phonetic alphabet, there are only three vowels; /a/
/i/ /u/. However, some dialects, including the main dialect from Cuzco, have allophonic lowering
of /i/ and /u/ towards /e/ and /o/, conditioned by the context of /q/, /q/ and /q/(Quechua: Main
Points of Interest For Linguists). The consonants are: /m/ /n/ // /p/ /p/ /t/ /t/ t/ /t/ /k/ /k/ /
q/ /q/ /p/ /t/,/t/ /k/ /q/ /s/ /h/ /j/ /w/ /l/ // // (Quechuan Language). In the English
language the following phonemes do not appear. The phoneme /q/ has no equivalent, the
phoneme // is pronounced as the first /n/ in canyon, the phoneme // also has no equivalent in
English and /j/ is pronounced as the /y/ in yet (Thompson). Also, Cuzcos Quechuan dialect has
two more sets of stops. One is aspirated and the phonemes are /p/ /t/ /k/ /q/ and the other is
glottalized and the phonemes are /p/ /t/ /k/ /q/ (Rosenfelder). The following charts helps us
analyze in more detail the places and manners of articulation.

(Quechuan Language)
(Quechuan Language)

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Another aspect of Phonology is syllable stress. In Quechua, if a syllable is unmarked, the
stress is set at the first to last syllable. An example of marked stress on the last syllable will be
ar yes. But as suffices are added to words, the stressed syllable moves gradually towards the
end of the word. For example, wsi house, wasikna houses, wasikunpaq for the
houses(Campbell 552).

The morphological aspect is very interesting and in order to have an idea on what kind of
language Quechua is, it is important to know that it is considered an agglutinating language. This
means that words are built by a number of suffixes (Campbell 553). Even though Quechua has
no prefixes, it has a very big derivational system and it is all by suffixation. Also, Quechua
typically has long words built up from a basic root, this root is followed by many suffixes. These
longs words are are usually very well defined and show a very high level of low fusion between
them. In the following example we see the word formation process of (NS) on the word wasi-nku (wasi house) and (VS) on qhawa-n-ku (qhawa eat) (Quechua: Main Points of Interest
For Linguists).
a) 3rd person possessive + plural their = -n-ku

their house

wasi-n-ku.

b) 3rd person subject

they eat

qhawa-n-ku

+ plural they = -n-ku

Another important aspect of the morphology of Quechua language is that it has three
types of suffixes: pre-transitional, transitional, and post-transitional. Pre-transitional suffixes
consist of derivational suffixes and they tend to be reflexives and passives. Transitional affixes

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are arguments of the verb, tense, adverbs and subject or object agreement. Post-transitional
affixes consist of occurrence and mood affixes (Niamh 4-5).

performed for someone else's benefit (-pa-)

performed for the actor's own benefit (-ku-)
futile or of little importance (-ri-)
unusual, out of the ordinary (-yku-)
important or urgent (-ru-)
lamentable (-lla-)
not the responsibility of the speaker (-sqa-)

In the Quechua language there are no gender morphemes, compared to Spanish. There
are no articles such as the and a in the English Language. Also, the plural is -kuna and
adjectives come before nouns, for example, hatun-wasi a big house. In the word alqo-wasi
dog house, the noun acts as a modifier. Quechua has no Inflectional affixes indicating
possession,

for

example,

wasiy

my

house,

wasiyki

your

house,

wasin

his

house (Rosenfelder). In a sentence the verbs comes last and are entirely regulareven the verb
kay to be is regular and all verbs are inflected by person. Pronouns are mixed into the verb, for
example, rikuwanki you see me, wa means me (Rosenfelder). The following charts show
examples of verbs and the basic pronouns in Quechua.
Verbs
rimay
rimani
rimanki
riman
rimaniku
rimanchik
rimankichik
rimanku

Basic Pronouns

'speak'
'I speak'
'you (singular) speak'
'he/she speaks'
'we (but not you) speak'
'we (and you) speak'
'y'all speak'
'they speak
(Rosenfelder)

oqa

'I'

qam
pay
oqayku
oqanchik
qamkuna
paykuna

'you (singular)'
'he/she'
'we (excl.)'
'we (incl.)'
'you (plural)'
they'
(Rosenfelder)

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A Syntactic analysis shows that Quechua Language follows a Subject-Objects-Verb
(SOV) word order and, as stated previously in the Morphology section, verbs generally comes
last in a sentence (Campbell 557). However, if objects are clearly marked, word order is fairly
free (Quechuan Language). Modifiers, on the other hand, are necessary and usually they go in
front of the words they modify, similar to the English Language, but the opposite comparing it to
Spanish Language (Yataco). For example, if the sentence The fat dog ate my homework is
translated (word by word) to Spanish, it will have the following sentence structure El gordo
perro comio mi tarea. The correct way to write and say that sentence in Spanish will be El perro
gordo se comio mi tarea. This example illustrates the rule of the modifiers in Quechua being the
same as English.

In todays society Quechua faces many obstacles. As a result, Quechua is now considered
an endangered language. After analyzing the important history and the linguistic aspects of the
Quechua language, it is important to analyze and find out why is Quechua an endangered
language. Also, it is crucial to find out what the Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Bolivian, Colombian,
Chilean and Argentinian Governments and the population are doing to stop and prevent further
damage to the language.

Languages become endangered and most die due to many different reasons. For Quechua,
its endangerment began with the Spanish colonization and the overall domination of the Spanish
language back in 1530s. Today, Quechua is considered an official language in Peru, Ecuador and
Bolivia, along with Spanish. In the past years, these three countries have established Quechua in
the Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) (Quechuan Language.). Unfortunately, this has not

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shown signs of much success due to the lack of interest from a big part of the population,
specially from the big cities. It is believed that there are approximately 13 million speakers,
making it the native language with the most speakers in South America (Kalt 266) .

Even though there are over 13 million Quechua Speakers, culture assimilation keeps
contributing to its endangerment. Culture assimilation refers to, one culture taking over another
due to the advantages this new culture may bring (Crystal 382-383). This is the case when
talking about Quechua and Spanish. It is well known that Spanish language is the dominant
language in South America and due to globalization, some Quechua speakers want to learn
Spanish and others have no other choice than to learn it in order to succeed. This creates a chain
reaction, where the kids of those Quechua speakers, are born in a household where both
languages are used and later, those kids see the unfortunate reality and decide to leave Quechua
aside due to the segregation and negative stereotypes Quechua brings (Adelaar 99). To give an
example of culture assimilation, I will write about a personal life experience.

I have see this chain reaction take place in my house back in Peru. Since I was around 9
until I was 16 years old, we had a maid who is from indigenous descent. My dear Felipa, she
moved to the city by herself, searching for work because her husband hurt his back and was not
able to work any more. When we met her, she could barely speak Spanish, did not have a place
to stay or a job she had just arrived to Arequipa from Puno and did not know anybody. Luckily
for her and for us, my mom found her crying in a street. They spoke and after finding out her
situation, my mom offered her a job at our house. After a couple of years living with us and
having my mom as her Spanish teacher, her Spanish was much better.

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She was always saying how much she missed her family. Back then, we had a lot of
money and were able to help them, so my dad offered her that he would help her bring her family
to Arequipa and they all could live at the guest house until they were able to find a place for her
and her family. Since her husband had a bad back and was not able to do much, my dad offered
him a job as our driver. Cesar was fluent in Spanish due to his work in the agriculture business in
Puno, he was always dealing with Spanish speakers while doing business. Their 6 childrens ages
ranged from 6 years old to 15 years old and all spoke only Quechua. My parents helped them get
enrolled in a public school so they could learn Spanish and get educated. After a few years, some
of them had leaned Spanish very fast and had no to very little accent. A few more years passed
and I remember how as they got older, they were more and more ashamed of speaking Quechua,
therefore, they would only speak Spanish. They will speak in Spanish even when their parents
were having a conversation with them in Quechua. I remember very clearly when I was around
14 or 15, how I never heard Felipas children speak Quechua again.

Today, Felipa and her family live in Lima and they own a successful bakery. Her older
son is a doctor and one of her daughters studied business. Last time I saw them was in 2011 and
Felipas older son, the doctor, is married and has two kids. I asked him if they were going to
teach Quechua to their kids and sadly, his answer was No. He told me how his classmates
bullied him for years because he spoke Quechua, so he does not want their kids going through
what he had to go through. People, like Felipa and her family are just an example of one family
out off millions which have gone through the same or similar experiences, with the same
outcomes due to culture assimilation. Even though culture assimilation may bring success to
people, it kills cultures and in some cases, it kills languages.

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Fortunately, those negative stereotypes are slowly kind of changing for the better in the
last few years, since in Peru and Bolivia the presidents are from indigenous descent. The
Peruvian president Ollanta Humala and the Bolivian president Evo Morales have introduced a
plan of social inclusion, which is giving confidence and pride to the indigenous population.
Today, in the Bolivian public and private schools Aymara is taught by law and now, learning
Aymara is a requirement in order to graduate from High School no matter your economic or
social status. Other factors helping slow down the endangerment of Quechua and promote its
importance and usage are tourism, indigenous pride, education, social inclusion, and an overall
support from the people (Quechuan Language).

Quechua, being the Incas language, forms an enormous part of Peruvian, Ecuadorian,
Bolivian, Chilean and Argentinean culture and if this language dies, a huge chunk of their culture
dies with it. Thanks to the acknowledgement and recognition given to the Quechua language by
the governments and the people, it might have a chance to survive. With the help of linguist
studying, recording, and teaching this language the chances of it survival are even bigger. Me,
being Peruvian, having a grandmother native from Peru and learning so much about Quechua for
the first time fills me with joy that such language exists and is part of my culture. At the same
time, I cant help feeling some sort of guilt and shame due to the fact I never paid attention to it.
Ironically, now I live in the US. and it is here where I learned almost everything I know about
Quechua. It is also here and now, where I wish I would have asked Felipa to teach me Quechua
around 13 years ago. Having said that, I think it will be amazing to be able to be fluent in
Quechua, travel around the Quechuan speaking countries, meet random people in remote areas of

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such countries and be able to communicate with them in Quechua. Thankfully it is never too late
to learn a new language and learning my native language will bring me joy and pride.

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Works Cited

Adelaar, Willen. Latin America. Encyclopedia of the Worlds Endangered Languages. Ed.
Christopher Moseley. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2007. Print. Pg. 97-103.

Campbell, George, and Gareth King. Quechua. The Routledge Concise Compendium of the
Worlds Languages. Ed. 2. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. Print. Pg. 551-557.

Crevels, Mily. South America. Encyclopedia of the Worlds Endangered Languages. Ed.
Christopher Moseley. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2007. Print. Pg. 162-163.

Crystal, David. Endangered Languages. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. 3th ed.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print . Pg. 380-387.

Jarus, Owen. The Incas: History of Andean Empire. LiveScience Contributor. November 19,
2013. Web. 3 Nov. 2014. http://www.livescience.com/41346-the-incas-history-of-andeanempire.html

Kalt, Susan. Spanish as a second language when L1 is Quechua: Endangered languages and the
SLA researcher. Second Language Research. Vol. 28 Issue 2 (2012): pg. 265-279.
Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.

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Niamh, Kelly. Verbal Affix Order in Quechua. Memorias del V Congreso de Idiomas Indgenas
de Latinoamrica. University of Texas at Austin. Austin, T. Oct 2011. Web. Pg 4-5. 2 Dec.
2014. http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/cilla5/Kelly_CILLA_V.pdf

Quechuan Language. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

17 October 2014. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.

Quechua: Main Points of Interest For Linguists. Quechua. 21st March 2006. Web. 3 Nov.
2014. http://www.quechua.org.uk/

Rosenfelder, Mark. Highlights of the grammar. Fun facts to know and tell about Quechua.
Web. 3 Nov. 2014. http://www.zompist.com/quechua.html

Thompson, Irene. Structure. Quechua. Updated May 16, 2013 by Jon Phillips. Web. 3 Nov.
2014. http://aboutworldlanguages.com/quechua.

The Inca Empire: Children of the Sun. Ancient Civilizations Online Textbook. ushistory.org.
Web. 3 Nov. 2014. http://www.ushistory.org/civ/11c.asp

Yataco, Miryam. Facts about the Quechua Language. New York University. Web. 20 Aug.
2014. http://www.ctmd.org/pages/enewsquechua0308.html

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