Why is Quechua being lost?
Through a three-generation chain: grandparents speak it, parents understand it, children do not use it. For decades children were punished for speaking it at school and many parents chose not to pass it on, so shame rather than law broke transmission; migration to Lima speeds it up.
How a language is lost in three generations
- los abuelos lo hablan The grandparents speak it At home, every day.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.