Runasimimanta: An abridged history of Quechua
Public opinion often mistakenly conceives of all Indigenous languages as small or obscure, spoken only in isolated areas by a small number of speakers. For Quechua, as with many languages, this is far from the truth. With somewhere between 8 and 10 million speakers, Quechua, known to its speakers as Runasimi or “people’s language”, is the language of the former Inca Empire and the principal Indigenous language of the central Andes today. Quechua is diverse and widespread, with a long history of contact with other languages and profound impact on Andean culture. Despite ongoing legal struggles and discrimination, Quechua communities are amassing an increased presence in education, media, and pop culture.
What is Quechua?
More accurately, Quechua is a language family, derived from a common ancestral language originating in the southern highlands of Peru. Once spoken in a smaller area, Quechua began to spread rapidly throughout the Andes after about 1450, alongside extensive Inca conquest. By 1532, Quechuan languages were being spoken from what is today southern Colombia down to central Chile, stretching from the Pacific coast to the edge of the Amazon basin. Today, Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas.
Linguists generally define two main branches of Quechua. First, there is Quechua I, also known as Central Quechua or Waywash, which is spoken in the central highlands and the coast of Peru. Then, there is Quechua II, also known as Peripheral Quechua or Wanp’una. Quechua II has three further distinctions: Yungay Quechua (Quechua II A), spoken in northern Peru around Cajamarca; Northern Quechua (Quechua II B), spoken in northern Peru, in Ecuador as Kichwa, and in Colombia as Inga Kichwa; and Southern Quechua (Quechua II C), spoken in Bolivia, southern Peru, Chile, and Argentina.
The different varieties of Quechua have been diverging for at least 1200 years, meaning more divergent forms are now mutually unintelligible, while speakers of more intermediate forms can more or less understand everyone else. Linguists call this a dialect continuum, where language varieties A and B may be mutually intelligible, as well as varieties B and C, and C and D — but speakers of language varieties A and D may not be able to understand one another at all, despite being classified as the same language or language family.
Language contact
Throughout its history, Quechua has come into prolonged contact with a host of other languages, most prominently Spanish and Aymara. Quechua and Aymara share so many similarities in vocabulary and structure that the two have sometimes been grouped together as the “Quechumaran family”, although that hypothesis is generally rejected.
Since colonial times, Spanish and Quechua have been in extensive contact. Today, there are many Quechua borrowings into Andean Spanish and vice versa. A prime example of Quechua’s influence on Latin American Spanish is the word papa for “potato”, but it’s far from the only one. In Bolivia in particular, Spanish speakers sometimes use Quechua borrowings such as wawa (“baby”), misi (“cat”), and jaku (“let’s go”). There is also the suffix -ri, which in Quechua is used to signify affection and roughly translates to “please” when used in the imperative. In Bolivian Spanish, this suffix is sometimes used to soften commands, such that pásame (“give me”) becomes pásarime. Quechua has borrowed many Spanish words, such as waka (from vaca, “cow”) or bwenu (from bueno, “good”). Many Quechua words have also been borrowed into English via contact with Spanish, like condor, jerky, llama, and poncho.
Quechua writing, education, and community issues
Early Andean societies did not use writing; the Inca kept records through other means, such as the khipu, an accounting apparatus made of knotted textile cords. Thus, Quechua was not written down prior to the arrival of the Spanish, and has no standard orthography. As a result, the topic of Quechua orthography is a controversial one.
Up until the 20th century, Quechua was typically written using Spanish orthography. This was useful for Spanish speakers who wanted to read Quechua, but Spanish orthography could not accurately capture the nuances of Quechua phonology. In 1975, this changed when the Peruvian government of Juan Velasco Alvarado adopted a new orthography that more closely reflected spoken Quechua: Huayna Cápac became Wayna Qhapaq, and condor became kuntur. This became the system preferred by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua. A new Peruvian three-vowel system was introduced in 1985.
These systems are still highly controversial, and Quechua remains a primarily spoken language, with limited written texts. There is a shortage of written educational materials in Quechua, and it is not uncommon to find multiple spellings of the same word across different sources, especially considering the wealth of different varieties of Quechua that exist across South America.
Nevertheless, advances have been made in recent years in intercultural bilingual education, a model utilized throughout Latin America to create space for Indigenous languages and cultures in public education. In Peru, IBE has resulted in increased state funding and institutional support. Entrepreneurial initiatives, like the creation of Microsoft Word and Google in Quechua, seek to provide better access to educational tools in Quechua. However, bilingual education has been hotly debated between local NGOs and Indigenous leaders, as many Quechua people see a better education in Spanish, rather than their mother language, as the key to success in mainstream Peruvian society. This is an ongoing battle in many language communities, an attempt to strike the elusive balance between honoring one’s mother language and finding a stronger foothold needed to spark change in mainstream society.
This need for a voice in society is as important as ever, as the environmental consequences of the oil industry have landed the Quechua people and other Indigenous communities in a bitter battle for land rights. According to a 2016 paper produced by Oxfam, the government of Peru has been allowing multinational oil companies to exploit the ancestral territories of Indigenous populations since the early 1970s. For 40 years, rivers were contaminated by waste water and crude oil, leading to serious health problems and significant losses in fishing, hunting, and cultivation. Although more recent reforms have helped to regulate these practices, the damage has already been done.
Despite being recognized and protected under multiple national and international laws and conventions dating back as far as 1920, the Quechua communities in these oil regions have been unable to gain collective title to their ancestral lands. While there have been important victories in recent years, the regional government continues to exclude areas of ‘free easements’ from community titles — despite these concessions to oil companies having been made in a contract agreement that expired in 2015. The fight for land rights is still ongoing, an experience shared by many Indigenous communities in the Americas and around the globe.
Quechua in pop culture
Today, there have been numerous dramas and plays written in Quechua, as well as prose, more recently. The majority of 20th century Quechua literature consists of oral short stories and traditional folktales. Other works have also been translated into Quechua, including Don Quixote, written by Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui under the title Yachay sapa wiraqucha dun Qvixote Manchamantan.
Quechua has also been making waves in the broadcast industry. 2016 saw the introduction of a daily Quechua news program called Ñuqanchik (“all of us”), which airs on national Peruvian television as well as over public radio via the Radio Nacional de Perú. There are also many local radio shows in Quechua and in Aymara, such as a radio soap opera that seeks to educate listeners on the dangers of human trafficking in ways that make sense in their own language. There are a wealth of Quechua blogs online, as well as many musicians who write and sing in Quechua and Aymara, such as Los Kjarkas, Savia Andina, and Uchpa.
It is true that Quechua communities face obstacles. The prolonged effects of colonialism do not disappear overnight, and Quechua people, like many Indigenous communities, are tasked with an ongoing fight for recognition, dignity, and land rights. Despite these challenges, however, Quechua is on the rise in education, media, and popular culture. There are questions as to what the future of Quechua will look like, but there is a level of certainty in that sea of potential realities: by all accounts, Quechua will still be here.
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