Quechua today

How a language is lost in three generations

1. los abuelos lo hablan The grandparents speak it At home, every day.
2. los padres lo entienden The parents understand it For decades children were punished for speaking it at school, and many parents decided not to teach it, to protect their children.
3. los hijos no lo usan The children do not use it Migration to the cities accelerates the process: hundreds of thousands of Quechua speakers live in Lima and hardly use it outside the home.
4. el prestigio What reverses it Prestige, not grammar: a language survives if it is useful for getting something today.

• The loss follows a familiar chain: grandparents speak it, parents understand it, children do not use it. The same three-generation pattern appears in minority languages everywhere.
• What breaks transmission is usually shame rather than law: for decades children were punished for speaking Quechua at school, and many parents chose not to pass it on.
• Lima is, by numbers, one of the largest Quechua-speaking cities in existence.

La pérdida sigue una cadena conocida: los abuelos lo hablan, los padres lo entienden, los hijos no lo usan.

The loss follows a familiar chain: the grandparents speak it, the parents understand it, the children do not use it.

Lo que rompe la transmisión no suele ser una ley, sino la vergüenza.

What breaks transmission is usually not a law, but shame.

Que una lengua sobreviva no depende de que sea antigua ni de que sea hermosa, sino de que sirva para conseguir algo hoy.

Whether a language survives depends not on its being ancient or beautiful, but on its being useful for getting something today.

The law and the practice

• Peru's 1993 Constitution declares Quechua official, with Aymara, in the areas where it predominates; in practice a Quechua speaker can rarely carry out official business in it.
• Since 2016 there have been daily news programmes in Quechua on Peruvian public television, and since 2022 the language is in machine translators.
• In 2021 a prime minister addressed Congress in Quechua and was asked to translate; the episode annoyed some and moved others.
• Quechua is not one language but a family of some eight million speakers, with varieties that are not always mutually intelligible; it was spreading before the Incas, who used it as an administrative language.

El quechua no es una lengua muerta ni una sola lengua: es una familia con unos ocho millones de hablantes.

Quechua is neither a dead language nor a single language: it is a family with some eight million speakers.

En 2021, un primer ministro se dirigió al Congreso en quechua, y se le pidió que tradujera.

In 2021, a prime minister addressed Congress in Quechua, and he was asked to translate.

Cantantes jóvenes graban en quechua rock y trap, y sus vídeos los ven millones de personas que no lo hablan.

Young singers record rock and trap in Quechua, and their videos are watched by millions who do not speak it.

Quechua words you already use

• Papa, puma and cóndor are Quechua words in Spanish; choclo and cancha too; Machu Picchu means "old mountain".
• A licensed Cusco guide, asked if he is an Inca, answers that his grandmother speaks Quechua and so does he, and is annoyed when people speak of the Incas as if they had disappeared.

la papa

the potato

el puma

the puma

el cóndor

the condor

el choclo

corn on the cob

la cancha

toasted corn; also a sports pitch

el soroche

altitude sickness

el quechuahablante

a Quechua speaker

Machu Picchu

"old mountain"

Muchas palabras del español vienen del quechua: papa, puma, cóndor.

Many Spanish words come from Quechua: papa, puma, condor.

Cuando alguien le pregunta si es inca, él contesta que su abuela habla quechua y él también.

When someone asks him if he is an Inca, he answers that his grandmother speaks Quechua and so does he.

Le molesta que hablen de los incas como si hubieran desaparecido.

It annoys him that people talk about the Incas as if they had disappeared.