How many people speak Quechua today, according to the 2017 census?
Quechua today: the language of the Incas in the 2017 census
El quechua hoy
2017. Quechua, the language family the Incas spread along the Andes, is still the most spoken indigenous language of the Americas.
Where: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cusco, Lima
What happened
Quechua, the language family the Incas spread along the Andes, is still the most spoken indigenous language of the Americas. Peru's 2017 census found that 3,805,531 people had learned to speak in Quechua, 13.6% of the population (16% for all native languages, with Aymara at 1.6%), and in Apurímac, Puno, Huancavelica, Ayacucho and Cusco more than half the people over three learned an indigenous language first. Yet the share has fallen steeply: in 1961 it was 32.6%, in 1981 9.3% (an undercount), 13.0% in 2007. Quechua is spoken in seven countries, with large communities in Bolivia and Ecuador, and some 727,000 speakers live in Lima, the result of migration from the highlands.
Say it
En el Perú casi cuatro millones de personas aprendieron a hablar en quechua.
In Peru almost four million people learned to speak in Quechua.
Why it matters
Quechua is why Andean Spanish sounds and works as it does, and the source of everyday words (papa, cancha, carpa); its survival is one of the great language questions of the region.
Read about it
Connected
- Words from the languages of the Americas (1492–)
- Friars write the first grammars of American languages (1555–1571)
- Before: The Venezuelan exodus
- After: Peru's bicentennial
Sources
- Perú: población censada por idioma o lengua materna que aprendió, 1961-2017 (Estadísticas del Bicentenario, p. 23) — INEI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática, Peru)
- Quechuas (Base de Datos de Pueblos Indígenas u Originarios) — Ministerio de Cultura del Perú
- Día de los Pueblos Indígenas: Perú tiene 48 idiomas nativos y 55 comunidades originarias — El Peruano (official gazette of Peru)