Kichwa (, , also

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

) is a

Quechuan language Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral " Proto-Quechua" l ...

that includes all Quechua varieties of

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

and

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

(''

Inga ''Inga'' is a genus of small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing treesElkan, Daniel. "Slash-and-burn farming has become a major threat to the world's rainforest" ''The Guardian'' 21 April 2004 and shrubs, subfamily Mimosoideae. ''Inga''s l ...

''), as well as extensions into

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 ...

. It has an estimated half million speakers.

Classification

Kichwa belongs to the

Northern Quechua Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral " Proto-Quechua" l ...

group of

Quechua II Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral " Proto-Quechua" l ...

, according to linguist

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 ...

History

The earliest grammatical description of Kichwa was written in the 17th century by

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

priest Hernando de Alcocer.

First efforts for language standardization and bilingual education

A standardized language, with a unified orthography (, ), has been developed. It is similar to Chimborazo but lacks some of the phonological peculiarities of that dialect. According to linguist Arturo Muyulema, the first steps to teach Kichwa in public schools dates to the 1940s, when Dolores Cacuango founded several indigenous schools in Cayambe. Later, indigenous organizations initiated self-governed schools to provide education in Kichwa in the 1970s and 1980s (Muyulema 2011:234). Muyulema says that the creation of literary works such as ''Caimi Ñucanchic Shimuyu-Panca'', ''Ñucanchic Llactapac Shimi'', ''Ñucanchic Causaimanta Yachaicuna'', and ''Antisuyu-Punasuyu'' provided the catalysts for the standardization of Kichwa. This was initiated by DINEIB (National Board of Intercultural Bilingual Education). Afterward a new alphabet was created by ALKI (Kichwan Language Academy). It comprises 21 characters; including three vowels (a, i, u); two semi-vowels (w, y); and 16 consonants (ch, h, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, r, s, sh, t, ts, z, zh), according to Muyulema's article "Presente y Futuro de la lengua Quichua desde la perspectiva de la experiencia vasca (Kichwa sisariy ñan)" (Muyulema 2011:234). Later, the bigger and much more comprehensive dictionary ''Kichwa Yachakukkunapa Shimiyuk Kamu'' was published in 2009 by the linguist Fabián Potosí, together with other scholars sponsored by the Ministry of Education of Ecuador.

Dialects

The most widely spoken dialects are Chimborazo, Imbabura and Cañar Highland Quechua, with most of the speakers. The missionary organization FEDEPI (2006) lists eight dialects of Quechua in Ecuador, which it illustrates with "The men will come in two days." ''Ethnologue'' 16 (2009) lists nine, distinguishing Cañar from Loja Highland Quechua. Below are the comparisons, along with Standard (Ecuadorian) Kichwa and Standard (Southern) Quechua:

Phonology

Consonants

In contrast to other regional varieties of Quechua, Kichwa does not distinguish between the original (Proto-Quechuan) and , which are both pronounced . and , the

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

s of the vowels and near , do not exist. ''Kiru'' can mean both "tooth" (''kiru'' in

Southern Quechua Southern Quechua (, ), or simply Quechua (Qichwa or Qhichwa), 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. Besides Guaraní it ...

) and "wood" (''qiru'' in Southern Quechua), and ''killa'' can mean both "moon" (''killa'') and "lazy" (''qilla'' ). * only occurs rarely phonemically, and is mostly an allophone of . * Affricate sounds , are often voiced after nasal sounds as . * is often heard as before a front vowel . * Sounds , are heard in free variation as fricatives . A combination can be heard as . * is heard as before a velar consonant. * can be heard as fricatives before a voiceless obstruent, and before a voiced obstruent.

Vowels

* can become lax as in free variation. * In the Chimborazo dialect, is heard as a central , and can also be heard as a back in lax form.

Grammar

Kichwa in both Ecuador and Colombia has lost possessive and bidirectional suffixes (verbal suffixes indicating both subject and object), as well as the distinction between the exclusive and inclusive first person plural: *Instead of ''yayayku / taytayku'' ("Our Father", the Lord's Prayer) Kichwa people say ''ñukanchik yaya / ñukanchik tayta.'' *In Kichwa, you do not say ''suyayki'' ("I wait for you"), but ''kanta shuyani.''

Syntax

Kichwa syntax has undergone some grammatical simplification compared to

, perhaps because of partial creolization with the pre-Inca languages of Ecuador.

Vocabulary

As in all Quechuan languages, the words for 'brother' and 'sister' differ depending on to whom they refer. There are four different words for siblings: ''ñaña'' (sister of a woman), ''turi'' (brother of a woman), ''pani'' (sister of a man), and ''wawki'' (brother of a man). A woman reading "Ñuka wawki Pedromi kan" would read aloud ''Ñuka turi Pedromi kan'' (if she referred to her brother). If Pedro has a brother Manuel and the sisters Sisa and Elena, their mother could refer to Pedro as ''Manuelpak wawki'' or ''Sisapaj turi'', and to Sisa as ''Manuelpak pani'' or as ''Elenapak ñaña''.

Media

Music

A band from Ecuador, "Los Nin", which raps in Kichwa and Spanish, has toured internationally. The band hails from the town of Otavalo, which is known for its traditional music. The Ecuadorian band "Yarina", which sings in Kichwa and Spanish, won Best World Music Recording with their album "Nawi" in the 2005

Native American Music Awards The Native American Music Awards (also known as the NAMAs or "Nammys") are an awards program presented annually by Elbel Productions, Inc., The Native American Music Awards Inc., and The Native American Music Association, a 501(c)(3) non-profi ...

. In the Ecuadorian diaspora, the radio station

Kichwa Hatari Kichwa Hatari is the first Kichwa-language radio station in the United States, broadcasting in a variation of the Quechua language spoken by indigenous Ecuadorean Kichwas. History Kichwa Hatari was founded in 2014 in New York, to broadcast from N ...

works to revive use of the Kichwa language, music, and culture in the United States.

References

Bibliography

* Ciucci, Luca & Pieter C. Muysken 2011. ''Hernando de Alcocer y la Breve declaración del Arte de la lengua del Ynga. El más antiguo manuscrito de quichua de Ecuador.'' Indiana 28: 359–393. * Conejo Muyulema, Arturo. “Presente y futuro de la lengua quichua desde la perspectiva de la experiencia vasca (Kichwa sisariy ñan)” Voces E Imagenes De Las Lenguas En Peligro. Ed. Marleen Haboud and Nicholas Ostler. 1st ed. Abya-Yala, 2014. 234-5.

External links

* https://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/ Quechua Real Words is a video dictionary of Amazonian Kichwa ideophones (performative, imitative utterances) constructed by Professor Janis Nuckolls of BYU.
Imbabura Quechua Vocabulary List
(from the World Loanword Database)
Map of the regional varieties of Kichwa in Ecuador (quichua.net / FEDEPI.org)

Kichwa-English-Spanish Dictionary, 2nd Edition (PDF)

Yachakukkunapa Shimiyuk Kamu, Runa Shimi – Mishu Shimi, Mishu Shimi – Runa Shimi. Kichwa – Spanish, Spanish – Kichwa Dictionary
(Education Ministry of Ecuador) (PDF, 7,4 MB)
Otavalos Online: Basic Kichwa Course for Beginners, in Spanish (PDF)

Kansas University: Quichua Open Educational Resources (by Nina Kinti-Moss)

Pieter Muysken: Semantic transparency in Lowland Ecuadorian Quechua morphosyntax (PDF file)

Openoffice v3.2+ Kichwa Spellchecker

Free Quichua audiocourse in Spanish offered by public radio of Ecuador
(36 of 110 audio lesson files available via website)

''New York Times,'' 16 August 2014 * ELAR archive of ttp://elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0312 Lower Napo Kichwa language documentation materials {{Quechuan languages Indigenous languages of the Andes Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia Languages of Ecuador Languages of Colombia Languages of Peru Quechuan languages