Quechua language

“ Quichua is a noble language, with a most extensive vocabulary, rich in forms of the plural number, which argue a very clear conception of the idea of plurality; rich in verbal conjugations; rich in the power of forming compound nouns; rich in varied expression to denote abstract ideas; rich in words for relationships which are wanting in the Old World idioms; and rich, above all, in synonyms: so that it was an efficient vehicle wherewith to clothe the thoughts and ideas of a people advanced in civilization. ”

“ The first work upon the Quichua language, of which I find mention, is a grammar of the Peruvian Indians (Gramatica ó arte general de la lengua de los Indios del Perù) , by the brother Domingo de San Thomas, published in Valladolid in 1560, and republished in the same year with an appendix, being a Vocabulary of the Quichua. The demand for the first edition appears to have been considerable ”

“ BALTHASAR'S bit of blackmail turned out, on the whole, rather a stroke of luck for the expedition. The Colombian was very useful in translating the Quichua dialect of the Indians. When the mules and their Bible packs were in the mountains, Lassiter found his Castilian of little service. Not only did the Indians not understand pure Spanish, they distrusted every one who spoke the language. Four centuries of slavery, peonage and inquisition have crushed out of the Indian the last shred of faith in the Spaniard.
Undoubtedly the Quichuas are the most wretched human beings on the globe. ”

“ Many other important advances in the literacy of indigenous languages took place during the second half of the twentieth century, particularly among the Kichwa-speaking communities. A model of literacy development was designed and self-managed by speech communities. In the early 1940s Dolores Cacuango, a female Kichwa activist, created a network of schools with the support of several urban women and local indigenous leaders; the schools were run by indigenous teachers who used the native language and promoted the indigenous culture and the defense of the ethnic territory. ”

“ Von Tschudi published a Quichua grammar and dictionary, with the text of the Inca drama of Ollantay, and other specimens of the language. [1324] The present writer’s contributions towards a grammar and dictionary of Quichua were published by Trübner in 1864, and a few years previously a more complete and elaborate work had seen the light at Sucre, the capital of Bolivia. This was the grammar and dictionary by Father Honorio Mossi, of Potosi, a large volume containing thorough and excellent work. [1325] Lastly a Quichua grammar by José Dionisio Anchorena was published at Lima in 1874. ”

“ Of course, all these texts were mainly intended for Spanish-speaking students of the language and not for the formal learning of grammar by Kichwa native speakers. These native speakers learnt to read and write in their language only in the last decades of the twentieth century through bilingual education programmes. As for the other indigenous languages, their use in written form is even more recent. ”

“ Their art relics abound in obscene devices and the portraiture of unnatural passions. We can scarcely err in seeing in them a nation which had been deteriorated by a long indulgence in debasing tastes.
The Kechua language is one of harsh phonetics, especially in the southern dialects, but of considerable linguistic development. The modifications of the theme are by means of suffixes, which are so numerous as to give it a flexibility and power of conveying slight shades of meaning rare in American [215] tongues, and which Friedrich Müller compares to that of the Osmanli Turks. ”

“ It is always the Indian that prevails, and the Latin democracies are mestizo or indigenous. The ruling class has adopted the costume, the usages, and the laws of Europe, but the population which forms the national mass is Quechua, Aymara, or Aztec. In Peru, in Bolivia, and in Ecuador the Indian of pure race, not having as yet mingled his blood with that of the Spanish conquerors, constitutes the ethnic base. In the Sierra the people speak Quechua and Aymara; there also the vanquished races preserve their traditional communism. ”

“ The Aymara language and people excite the imagination to a belief that their history is of an anterior date to that of the Quechuas, and more interesting to those who seek, in the depths of time long passed, for a knowledge of the origin of the aboriginal races of men on this part of the earth. ”

“ The Quiché traditions are vague and without chronologic order, much less definite than those relating to the mythical Aztec wanderings. The sum and substance of the Quiché and Toltec identity is the traditional statement that the former people entered Guatemala at an unknown period in the past, while the latter left Anáhuac in the eleventh century. That the Toltecs should have migrated en masse southward, taken possession of Guatemala, established a mighty empire, and yet have abandoned their language for dialects of the original Maya tongue, is in the highest degree improbable. ”

“ Hence the language of Spanish-America is much richer than our own in terms from the aboriginal tongue. The ignorant Spanish Conquistadores, as devoid of “language sense” as the most uncouth American “drummer,” gave many of the native words queer twists; to their untrained ears Anti sounded like Andes, tampu like tambo, pampa like bamba, and Biru like Peru. Yet Quichua has enriched even the languages of the world at large with many words, such as llama, pampa, condor, and alpaca. ”

“ Tradition, language and architectural remains furnish us the data by which to trace the migrations of peoples. In addition to the testimony of tradition, the languages of the Mayas and Quichés present affinities to the west European and African languages; also to the languages of the West Indies and the Antilles. Whether the Quiché traditions concerning their ancient home have reference to the Atlantic coast of the United States is uncertain, though Señor Orozco y Berra believes their ancestors to have migrated from Florida to Cuba and thence to Yucatan. ”

“ The Cakchiquels occupied most of the soil of Guatemala at the period of the Conquest, and their tongue was that chosen to be the “Metropolitan” language of the diocess. In (53) I gave a translation of an unpublished grammar of it, the MS. being one in the archives of the American Philosophical Society. In some respects it is superior to the grammar of Flores.
The higher culture of the tribes of Central America and Mexico gives a special interest to the study of their languages, oral [16] and written; for with some of them we find moderately well-developed methods of recording ideas. ”

“ Following this precedent I have ventured to search for further resemblances between Nahuatl and Quechua words, and one of the remarkable results I obtained was the discovery that the well-known Quechua name for colonists=Mitimaes, the meaning of which, in Quechua, is not forthcoming, seems to be connected in sound and meaning with the Nahuatl Ce-mitime=sons of one mother (Molina's dictionary) . It is superfluous to point out how appropriate this designation would have been for the colonists who invariably founded fresh centres of civilization on the plan of the central metropolis. ”

“ The recollections of these events assumed different forms in the traditions of different tribes until each nation claimed, or were deemed by the Spaniards to claim, a distinct migration from its former home. [39]
After the creation of the first men Balam-Quitze, Balam-Agab, Machucutah and Iqui-Balam, wives were given to them, and these were the parents of the Quiche nation. * * * * All seem to have spoken one language and to have lived in great peace, black men and white men together. Here they awaited the rising of the sun and prayed to the Heart of Heaven. ”

“ The language in which the “Popol Vuh” was written, was, as has been said, the Kiché, a dialect of the great Maya-Kiché tongue spoken at the time of the Conquest from the borders of Mexico on the north to those of the present State of Nicaragua on the south; but whereas the Mayan was spoken in Yucatan proper, and the State of Chiapas, the Kiché was the tongue of the peoples of that part of Central America now occupied by the States of Guatemala, Honduras and San [8] Salvador, where it is still used by the natives. ”

“ There are, of course, a good many of a mixed race, and on the coast there are not a few of the sons and daughters of unhappy Africa, and their descendants. The Peruvians who live in the towns on the coast, all speak the Spanish language, and know nothing of the ancient language of Peru, called the Quichua. Between the coast and the ridge [96] of the Andes, called the Cordillera, there are many towns, the inhabitants of which generally speak the Quichua and the Spanish, with, however, a predilection for their own native tongue. ”

“ It is admired by the Italians, Germans, French, and English residents of the city, and however much we respect the Quechua tribe, we must give the Aymaras the preference in this mechanical art, They are more musical, and seem to possess a more independent character than the Quechuas; yet they cannot compare with the North American negro slaves in health, strength, happiness, comforts of life, or liberty. ”

“ The two (allied) languages which most especially belong to it are the Quichua and Aymara. Notices of ruder tribes within the same area we have many, but with few and exceptional vocabularies. Juracares, Mayoruna, and Calchaqui, Atacama, Changos. Lopez: “Les races Aryenne de Peru,” 1872. R. G. L.
Pescherai.
American: language of Terra del Fuego, belonging to the Pygmean or Mincopie of Tickell. H. C. See Yakanaku.
Peshito.
Semitic: “faithful or exact”; used of a so-called literal version of the scriptures in Syriac.
Pessa.
African: dialect of the Mana class. ”

“ In Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, March, 1891.
The Popol Vuh, or “sacred book” of the Quiches of Guatemala was published by the Abbé Brasseur in 1861. The study (51) is an effort to analyze the names of the gods which it contains and to extract their symbolic significance.
The Chane-abal dialect of Chiapas (52) is a mixed jargon, the component elements of which I have endeavored to set forth from MS. material collected by Dr. Berendt.
Another language of Chiapas is the “Chapanecan.” ”

“ The Indians and gente del pueblo of Cajamarca have nearly as much color of dress as those of Quito, and are even more ragged and abjectly poverty-ridden. Filthy, maimed beggars adorn the façades of churches, and the aboriginals speak a mushy, mouthful, dialect of Quichua, though all know Spanish. None of the Chinese residents have families ”

“ Solidly built, the Quechua looks a powerful and muscular man; but as from childhood both sexes are used to carrying extremely heavy burdens on the back they are not really very strong in the limbs, although the shoulders are very powerful. ”

“ The people and their civilization vanished and were forgotten. The language, wholly different from the Quichua, gives no hint as to the origin of the people. Neither does tradition lighten the mystery, nor their art, which relates wholly to their environment, though betraying some similarity to Mayo works. An exhaustive study of the language and of the archæological remains is required to reconstruct the history of this remarkable people whose ancestors are believed to have dwelt here long before the Christian Era. ”

“ Kumeyaay tribes on the US side of the border are often hesitant to share language materials, even with each other, let alone academics or non-Kumeyaay people. In contrast, on the Mexican side of the border, community language ideologies are typically more variationist (Kroskrity 2002; Kroskrity and Field 2009) , such that everyone acknowledges dialect variation, yet insists that all dialects are mutually intelligible and therefore one language, shared by all. ”

“ The woman wears a small woollen vest, cut low on the bosom; the skirt is the same as that worn by the Aymara women; and on a feast-day the Quechua woman wears all the petticoats she possesses, one over another. As they are all of equal length, each shows the edge of that below it, whence a gamut of various colours. The Quechua women are distinguished from the Aymaras chiefly by their hats, which are flatter.
"The Quechua idiom is extremely rich and has been studied grammatically.
"The Indian race has never been assimilated; as it was at the moment of conquest, so it is now ”

“ At the moment Kichwa language laboratories have been implemented in all millennium schools located in Kichwa-speaking areas and also in a few Spanish-speaking schools, as Kichwa is a language of intercultural communication and all Ecuadorian citizens ought to know it at least rudimentarily. While several problems have arisen in the experimental stage, which have to do with the insufficient training of teachers in the proper use of high-tech equipment and software, the project is still underway and is expected to extend to other indigenous languages. ”

“ With past experiences with their fellow countrymen these Indians have learned to regard all strangers with apprehension. On several occasions we had ample opportunity to observe how the average paisano treats the Quechua. Should night overtake him on the trail, he stops at the nearest hut and demands food for himself and his horses. In the event that the owner has nothing to offer, he draws revolver or rifle and shoots any fowls that may be running about or, lacking these, a sheep or goat, and seizes whatever else he can find. Should he see an attractive blanket, it also is taken. ”