Spanish, Quechua and Aymara

By Ricardo Segreda

In April 2006, two Peruvian congresswomen from Cuzco proclaimed that they would communicate only in Quechua during plenary sessions in congress. Thus another salvo had been fired in Peru's century's old struggle in the use of language to determine national identity and culture. Since 1975, Peru's constitution has recognized Quechua and Aymara along with Spanish as official languages of the Republic. However, since Spain's conquest of South America during the 16th century, Spanish has served as the dominant language of Peru, after the conquistadors excluded all indigenous languages from cultural and political discourse. In Peru as in other Andean nations, the majority of the population speaks Spanish, but significant minorities (estimates range up to ten million) are also very proudly bilingual, speaking one form or another of Quechua or Aymara.

The word "Quechua" is used to denote both a people and a wide variety of spoken dialects that pre-date not only the Spanish empire, but the Incan empire—and by at least a millennium. Peru itself can lay claim to being the birthplace of Quechua, which then became the lingua franca of trade throughout the Andes. But the language of Quechua itself has at least forty separate dialects that have evolved with wide variations according to geography. Indeed, within Peru, northern Quechua and southern Quechua can not use their respective languages to communicate.

A commonly held belief has evolved that the Cuzco Quechua is the most authentic and complete Quechua, but some historians argue that was more due to Cuzco being the seat of the Incan empire which arose in the early 15th century and had mandated it as the official language of the realm, though they tolerated the use of other idioms. Ironically, it was the Spanish who actually spread the use of Cuzco Quechua more so than Incan emperors by utilizing it as a means of broadening their conquest of the New World even while curtailing its ability to serve the needs of its native speakers.

Quechua words that have become incorporated into the English language through Spanish include: coca, condor, gaucho, jerky, llama, potato, puma, and quinoa. The Huttese, language of the Huts in the Star Wars series, is largely taken from Quechua.