The Quechua Language
With 25 million speakers, Quechua language is spoken in ten countries in Latin America (is an official language in three of them), and was once the language of the great Inca Empire. But unfortunately not many people know a lot about it.
Where is Quechua Spoken
Quechua is an Amerind language with about 8 million native speakers who live primarily in the Andes mountains of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Argentina. It was the official language of the Inca Empire, who used a system of knotted strings known as quipu to send messages. The number of knots and the colors of the strings were the key to the contents of the messages. Recent research suggests that the quipu might have also been used to record the language phonetically. Linguists have pointed out that the Quechua language is very complicated, and in some ways more precise than Spanish or English, and a much larger vocabulary.
Native Speakers in U.S.
Unfortunately many English speakers are under the impression that these individuals are native Spanish speakers, or that they are at least fluent in Spanish. This is a common misconception not only among English speakers in the U.S., but even among Spanish speakers in Latin America. What happens when a Quechua native speaker needs to go to the hospital or has to appear in court? When immigrants who are native Quechua speakers must visit the doctor or go to court, they are inevitably assigned a Spanish interpreter. The problem is that often for these individuals, Spanish is as unfamiliar as Chinese. In May of 2014, a Quechua native speaker, who spoke very little if any Spanish, was put on trial for murder at the Worcester Superior Court in the state of Massachusetts. Imagine his distress when he was presented with a Spanish interpreting services provider!
Different from Spanish?
There seems to be a great amount of confusion over bilingualism for speakers of Quechua dialects. Many people are even unaware of the fact that Spanish and Quechua are entirely unrelated. Other than loan words, these two languages have completely separate origins.
Here are just some of their differences:
- Quechua has only three vowels, Spanish has five.
- Unlike Spanish, adjectives in Quechua are always placed before the noun.
- In Quechua more meanings can be added using suffixes, making for long words.
- Standard Quechua, especially that spoken in the Peruvian Highlands, doesn’t have an “L” sound. It uses “R” instead of “L”, but not the rolled “R” used in Spanish.
Below are some every day phrases in Cuzco (Standard) Quechua dialect:
| English Quechua Spanish |
| Welcome Haykuykuy! Bienvenido |
| Hello Rimaykullayki Hola |
| Napaykullayki |
| How are you? |
| Informal ¿Imaynallam kaskanki? ¿Como estas? |
| Formal ¿Imaynallataq kasanki? ¿Como esta? |
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