Southern Quechua

Infobox Language
name = Southern Quechua
nativename = Qhichwa
states = Peru, Bolivia
region = Andes
speakers = 5 million
script = Latin alphabet
familycolor = American
family = Quechuan
nation = none
agency = none
iso1 = qu
iso2 = que
iso3 =

Southern Quechua (Spanish: "Quechua sureño"; Southern Quechua: "Qhichwa" or "Runa Simi") is an idealized indigenous literary language and literary norm of the Quechua language for its southern varieties, respectively, in Peru and Bolivia. It was developed by combining conservative features of the two most common Quechua varieties, Ayacucho Quechua and Qusqu-Qullaw Quechua (spoken in Cusco, Puno, Bolivia, and Argentina), which comprise the language branch of Quechua II c (according to Alfredo Torero). The number of speakers of this branch, who would be likely to learn this orthography fairly easily, is about 5 million.

This norm has been proposed by the Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino. It has been accepted by many institutions in Peru and is also used by Microsoft in its translations of software into Quechua.

Some examples:

In Bolivia, the same standard is used, except for "j", which is used instead of "h" for the sound [h] (like in Spanish).

The following letters are used for the inherited Quechua vocabulary and for loanwords from Aymara:
a, ch, chh, ch', h, i, k, kh, k', l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, ph, p', q, qh, q', r, s, t, th, t', u, w, y.

Instead of "sh" (appearing in the northern and central Quechua variaties), "s" ist used.
Instead of "ĉ" (appearing in the Quechua varieties of Junín, Cajamarca, and Lambayeque), "ch" is used.

The following letters are used in loanwords from Spanish and other languages (not from Aymara):
b, d, e, f, g, o.

The letters e and o are not used for proper Quechua words, because the corresponding sounds are allophones of i and u appearing next to q, qh, and q'. This rule applies to the official Quechua orthography for all varieties in general.

These letters appear only in proper names or words adopted directly from Spanish:
c, v, x, z;j (in Peru; in Bolivia, it is used instead of h).

See also

*Quechua
*Quechuan languages

Bibliography

* Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo (1994): Quechua sureño, diccionario unificado quechua-castellano, castellano-quechua [Southern Quechua, Unified Dictionary Quechua-Spanish, Spanish-Quechua] . Lima, Biblioteca Nacional del Perú.

External links

* [http://www.runasimi.de/siqillum.htm Official Quechua Alphabet for Cusco]
* [http://www.runasimi.de/qillqana.htm Quechua Orthography]
* [http://www.quechua.org.uk/Eng/Sounds/Home/HomeSpelling.htm Quechua Spelling and Pronunciation] Explanation of some of the key issues in unified Southern Quechua spelling