Southern Quechua

Southern Quechua
Quechua II-C
Qhichwa
Native to	Peru, Bolivia
Region	Andes
Ethnicity	Quechua, Qulla
Native speakers	(6 million cited 1987–2002)[1]
Language family	Quechuan Quechua II Southern Quechua
Dialects	Ayacucho Cusco Puno (Collao) North Bolivian South Bolivian     Santiagueño
Writing system	Latin script
Official status
Regulated by	none (Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: qwc – Classical Quechua quy – Ayacucho Quechua qxu – Arequipa-La Unión Quechua quz – Cusco Quechua qve – Eastern Apurímac Quechua qxp – Puno Quechua (Collao) qul – North Bolivian Quechua (Apolo) quh – South Bolivian Quechua cqu – Chilean Quechua qus – Santiagueño Quechua
Glottolog	quec1389[2]
Distribution of Quechua sub-groups. Southern Quechua is shown in blue.

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 Quechuan varieties 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, Cusco and Puno in Peru, in much of Bolivia and parts of north-west Argentina. The most widely spoken varieties are South Bolivian, Cusco, 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 Quechuan family that are spoken in areas north of the Huancayo-Huancavelica line: Central Quechua (Torero's QI) spoken from Huancayo northwards to the Ancash Region; North Peruvian Quechua around Cajamarca and Incahuasi (Torero's IIa); and Kichwa (part of Torero's Quechua IIb).

Dialects

Dialects are Ayacucho Quechua, Cusco Quechua, Puno Quechua (Collao 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 stop consonants. The other varieties of Bolivia and Southern Peru taken together have been called Cusco–Collao Quechua (or "Qusqu–Qullaw"); however, they are not monolithic. For instance, Bolivian Quechua is morphologically distinct from Cusco and Ayacucho Quechua, while North Bolivian is phonologically quite conservative compared to both South Bolivian and Cusco so there is no bifurcation between Ayacucho and Cusco–Collao.

Santiagueño also lacks the aspirated and ejective series, but it was a distinct development in Argentina. It also maintains remnants of the Quechua s–š distinction, which has otherwise been lost from Southern Quechua, which suggests 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. It 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.

Here are some examples of regional spellings different from the standard orthography:

Ayacucho	Cuzco	Standard	Translation
upyay	uhay	upyay	"to drink"
llamkay	llank'ay	llamk'ay	"to work"
ñuqanchik	nuqanchis	ñuqanchik	"we (inclusive)"
-chka-	-sha-	-chka-	(progressive suffix)
punchaw	p'unchay	p'unchaw	"day"

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. Thus, the spellings ⟨qu⟩ and ⟨qi⟩ are pronounced [qo] and [qe].

The letters appear, however, 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

1. Classical Quechua at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Ayacucho Quechua at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Arequipa-La Unión Quechua at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Cusco Quechua at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Eastern Apurímac Quechua at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Puno Quechua (Collao) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   (Additional references under 'Language codes' in the information box)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Quechua IIC". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. Adelaar (2004)

External links

• 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