Aymaran (also Jaqi or Aru) is one of the two dominant

language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...

in the central

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

alongside Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru and Kawki languages of Peru. Hardman (1978) proposed the name ''Jaqi'' for the family of languages (1978),

Alfredo Torero Alfredo Augusto Torero Fernández de Córdova (September 10, 1930 in Huacho, Lima Region, Peru – June 19, 2004 in Valencia, Spain) was a Peruvian anthropologist and linguistics, linguist. He was a student at the National University of San Ma ...

''Aru'' 'to speak', and

Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino Rodolfo is a given name. Notable people with the name include: * Rodolfo (footballer, born 1989), Rodolfo Xavier Neves, Brazilian striker * Rodolfo (footballer, born 1991), Rodolfo Alves de Melo, Brazilian goalkeeper * Rodolfo (footballer, born 1 ...

''Aymaran'', with two branches, Southern (or Altiplano) Aymaran and Central Aymaran (Jaqaru and Kawki). Other names for the family are Jaqui (also spelled Haki) and Aimara. Quechuan languages, especially those of the south, share a large amount of vocabulary with Aymara, and the languages have often been grouped together as Quechumaran. This proposal is controversial, however; the shared vocabulary may be better explained as intensive borrowing due to long-term contact.

Family division

Aymaran consists of two or three languages: * Aymara. Southern and Central dialects divergent and sometimes considered separate languages. * Jaqaru (Haqearu, Haqaru, Haq'aru, Aru). * Kawki (Cauqui, Cachuy). Aymara has approximately 2.2 million speakers; 1.7 million in

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

, 350,000 in

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

, and the rest in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

and

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. Jaqaru has approximately 725 speakers in central Peru, and Kawki had 9 surviving speakers as of 2005. Kawki is little documented though its relationship with Jaqaru is quite close. Initially, they were considered by Martha Hardman (on very limited data at the time) to be different languages, but all subsequent fieldwork and research has contradicted that and demonstrated that they are mutually intelligible but divergent dialects of a single language.

History

The Aymaran

urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ( , from German 'original' and 'home') of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the reconstructed or historicall ...

may have been the southern Peruvian coast, particularly the area of the

Paracas culture The Paracas culture was an Andean society existing between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and that made significant contributions in the textile arts. It was located in what toda ...

and the later

Nazca culture The Nazca culture (also Nasca) was the archaeological culture that flourished from beside the arid, southern coast of Peru in the river valleys of the Nazca, Rio Grande de Nazca drainage and the Ica Valley.''The Nasca'' by Helaine Silverman an ...

. Aymaran speakers then migrated into the highlands and played a role in the Huari Empire. Sometime between the collapse of the

Tiwanaku Empire The Tiwanaku polity ( or ) was a Pre-Columbian polity in western Bolivia based in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin. Tiwanaku was one of the most significant Andean civilizations. Its influence extended into present-day Peru and Chile and lasted f ...

and the rise of the Inca, some Aymaran speakers invaded the

Altiplano The Altiplano (Spanish language, Spanish for "high plain"), Collao (Quechuan languages, Quechua and Aymara language, Aymara: Qullaw, meaning "place of the Qulla people, Qulla") or Andean Plateau, in west-central South America, is the most extens ...

, while others moved to the northwest, presumably ancestral to the Jaqaru and influencing Quechua I. Aymaran varieties were documented in the southern Peruvian highlands (including Lucanas, Chumbivilcas, and Condesuyos) by the 1586 Relaciones geográficas, and they appear to have persisted up until the 19th century. The eastern and southern Bolivian highlands were still predominantly Aymara-speaking around 1600, but may have adopted Quechua as a result of development of the mining industry.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Kechua, Kunza,

Leko Leko may refer to: * Leko (surname) * Leko languages, a small group of African Savanna languages * Leco language, a moribund isolate language of Bolivia * Lekolite or Leko, a type of stage spotlight * Alexandro da Silva Santos or Leko, Brazilian fo ...

, Uru-Chipaya,

Arawak The Arawak are a group of Indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. The term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to different Indigenous groups, from the Lokono of South America to the Taíno (Island Arawaks), w ...

, and Pukina language families due to contact.

Phonology

Vowels

Aymaran languages have only three

phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

vowels A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

, which in most varieties of Aymara and Jaqaru are distinguished by length. Length is commonly transcribed using diaereses in Aymara and length diacritics in Jaqaru.

Consonants

Though Aymaran languages vary in terms of consonant inventories, they have several features in common. Aymara and Jaqaru both contain phonemic stops at labial, alveolar,

palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sepa ...

, velar and uvular points of articulation. Stops are distinguished by

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

and aspirated features. Both also contain alveolar,

, and velar

fricatives A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

and several central and

lateral Lateral is a geometric term of location which may also refer to: Biology and healthcare * Lateral (anatomy), a term of location meaning "towards the side" * Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle, an intrinsic muscle of the larynx * Lateral release ( ...

approximants.

Morphophonology

Aymaran languages differ from Quechuan languages in that all verbal and nominal roots must end in a vowel, even in loanwords: Spanish ''habas'' ("beans") became Aymara ''hawasa'' and Jaqaru ''háwaša''. This feature is not found in other Andean languages. Like Quechuan languages, Aymaran languages are highly agglutinative. However, they differ in that many agglutinative suffixes trigger vowel suppression in the preceding roots. An example is the loss of final vowel in the word ''apa'' ("to take"), when it becomes ''ap-su'' ("to take out").

Bibliography

* Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). ''The languages of the Andes''. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press. * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), ''Atlas of the world's languages'' (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aymaran Languages Agglutinative languages Language families