Quechua Word
Structure
Analysis of
Three Sample Texts
with
full analysis of the structure of the Quechua words
Text One: Life in
the Peruvian Army
Text Two: The
First Aeroplane Over the Andes
Text Three: Why
Did the Gringos Go to the Moon?
Key to Abbreviations for Suffixes
Introduction
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Three texts are presented here are taken and adapted from a native Quechua-speaking villager’s account of his life:
Valderrama
Fernández, Ricardo & Carmen Escalante Gutiérrez (1982) Gregorio Condori Mamani – Autobiografía
Centro
Bartolomé de las Casas: Cuzco, Peru
The English translations are a mixture of my own, and my adaptations to those by P. Gelles and G. Martínez in the English version, alias:
Valderrama Fernández, Ricardo &
Carmen Escalante Gutiérrez (1996) Andean Lives: Gregorio Condori Mamani & Asunta
Quispe Huamán
University
of Texas Press: Austin
For full details and a review of
these books, click
here.
The spelling of these texts has been amended to follow the official Quechua alphabet for southern Quechua (Ayacucho, Cuzco, Puno, Bolivia). Since the original book was published before the 1985 spelling reform, it was written with five vowels, appropriate for Spanish but not for Quechua! The reforms in the mid-1980s have now rectified this, and the official alphabets in all three main Quechua-speaking Andean countries (Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador) all now use only three vowels <i>, <a> and <u> in the spelling of native Quechua words. The letters <e> and <o> are therefore found in these texts only in Spanish loanwords which have not been fully assimilated to Quechua pronunciation.
In the Quechua texts, words in capitals are borrowings from Spanish. The first passage in particular, where Gregorio relates his time as a press-ganged conscript in the Peruvian Army (where Spanish was the only language it was permitted to speak), has an even greater number of loanwords from Spanish than is usual in Quechua. This is largely due to the context of the Peruvian Army, an institution entirely dominated by Spanish. To give you a bit of a perspective by comparison with English, words in bold in the English translation of the first text have also been put in bold if they are ones that English has borrowed from French.
Note too that the first Quechua passage has a total of just 69 words, while the English translation has 139: a clear indication of Quechua’s agglutinating language structure.
Text One: Life in the Peruvian Army
Valderrama Fernández, Ricardo
& Carmen Escalante Gutiérrez (1982:
43-44)
Khayna-m soldado
vida ka-rqa-n.
Such-dir:foc soldier life
be-past-3
Such was life as a soldier.
Cuartel-pi-qa todo recto-m “patria
serve-y
Barracks-lcv-top all strict-dir:foc fatherland serve-inf
In the barracks everything is strict: “serve fatherland
obedecer todo”,
chay-pi-qa mana-m
ati-ku-n-chu
obey everything that-lcv-top no-dir
can-rfxv-3-neg:foc
obey everything”, you can’t
mana-m ni-ku-y-ta. Si-chus “mana-m” ni-nki
no-dir
say-rfxv-inf-acv
If-dub:foc no-dir:foc
say-2
say no to anything there. If you do say no
u-taq mala voluntad-wan rura-nki,
or-ctv bad
will-itl do-2
or do something without showing
willing,
Si-chus “mana-m” ni-nki u-taq
mala voluntad-wan
rura-nki,
If-dub:foc no-dir:foc
say-2 or-ctv bad
will-itl do-2
If you do say no or do something
without showing willing,
castigo, calabozo
o patadas.
punishment lock-up or
kicking.
then punishment, lock-up or
a kicking.
Si-chus mama-yki
wañu-chi-na-yki-paq kama-chi-su-nki
If-dub:foc mother-2
die-csv-pdg-2-pps do-csv-3-2:oj
If they order you to kill
your mother
chay-ta-pas rura-na-yki; si no, mana
patria obedece-y-chu.
that-acv-adnl do-pdg-2
if not, not
fatherland obey-inf-neg:foc
then you had to do so; if not, that was not obeying the
fatherland.
Cuartel-pi-qa ka-lla-n-taq abecedario
mana lee-y yacha-q-paq
barracks-lcv-top be-ltv-3-ctv alphabet not
read-inf know-ag-dtv
In the barracks there’s also an
alphabet for those who don’t know how to read
letra-kuna alambre-pi
ensarta-sqa a-b-c-d-j-k-p.
letter-pl
wire-lcv
wind-pppl
a-b-c-d-j-k-p
the letters are wound in
wire: a-b-c-d-j-k-p.
Clase-kuna abecedario-ta-qa yacha-chi-q-ku,
NCO-pl
alphabet-acv-top know-csv-ag-vbpl
The non-commissioned officers
teach the alphabet
tuku-pti-yki-taq primer
año-ta qu-su-nki-ku.
finish-pplsb-2-ctv
first year-acv
give-3-oj:2-vbpl
and when you finish, they class
you as first year passed.
Hayku-pti-yki-taq tapu-su-nki-ku: “Yacha-nki-chu lee-y-ta?”
Enter-pplsb-