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Southern Quechua

 

 
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Southern Quechua
 
 
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Southern Quechua is an idealized indigenousIndigenous peoples of the Americas

The term Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the inhabitants of the Americas before the European discovery of the...
 literary languageLiterary language

A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from ...
 and literary norm of the QuechuaQuechua

Quechua is a Native American language of South America....
 language for its southern varieties, respectively, in PeruPeru

Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America, bordering Ecuador and Colombia to the no...
 and BoliviaBolivia Overview

Bolivia, officially the Republic of Bolivia , named after Simon Bolivar, is a landlocked country in central South Amer...
. It was developed by combining conservative features of the two most common Quechua varieties, Ayacucho QuechuaAyacucho Quechua

Ayacucho is one dialect of the Quechua language, spoken in the Ayacucho region of Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacuc...
 and Qusqu-QullawQusqu-Qullaw

Qusqu-Qullaw is a variety of the Quechua language, spoken throughout southern Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina....
 Quechua (spoken in CuscoCusco Region

Cusco is a region in Peru. It is bordered by the Ucayali Region on the north; the Madre de Dios and Puno regions on the east...
, PunoPuno Region

Puno is a region in southeastern Peru....
, Bolivia, and ArgentinaArgentina

Argentina is a country in southern South America....
), which comprise the language branch of Quechua II c (according to Alfredo ToreroAlfredo Torero

Alfredo Augusto Torero Fernández de Córdova was a Peruvian anthropologist and linguist....
). The number of speakers of this branch, who would be likely to learn this orthography fairly easily, is about 5 million.

This norm has been proposed by the Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino. It has been accepted by many institutions in Peru and is also used by Microsoft in its translations of software into Quechua.

Some examples:

AyacuchoCuzcoSouthern QuechuaTranslation
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"


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

Spanish or Castilian is an Iberian Romance language....
).

The following letters are used for the inherited Quechua vocabulary and for loanwordLoanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation....
s from AymaraAymara language Overview

Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara of the Andes....
:

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 variaties), "s" ist used.

Instead of "c" (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 proper Quechua words, because the corresponding sounds are allophoneAllophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme....
s of i and u appearing next to q, qh, and q'. This rule applies to the official Quechua orthography for all varieties in general.

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).

See also

  • QuechuaQuechua

    Quechua is a Native American language of South America....
  • Quechuan languagesQuechuan languages

    The Quechuan languages are a family of related languages in South America....


Bibliography

  • Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo (1994): Quechua sureño, diccionario unificado quechua-castellano, castellano-quechua [Southern Quechua, Unified Dictionary Quechua-Spanish, Spanish-Quechua]. Lima, Biblioteca Nacional del Perú.

External links

  • Explanation of some of the key issues in unified Southern Quechua spelling