Links to the Best Quechua and Andean Websites
This is only my personal
selection!
If you have more recommendations please click here to email me
Contents
Top Sites in languages other than English
General Information on Quechua Language
Quechua Language and Dialect Classification
Forthcoming Quechua Events
(conferences,
fiestas, etc.)
this has been expanded and moved to a separate page, click here
lists of
Quechua-related links
Aymara,
Jaqaru, Kawki and Uru-Chipaya
Quechua Cultural Background: History, Art, Fiestas, Beliefs, etc.
Top Sites
• A very full and highly informative Quechua language site by Serafín Coronel-Molina, a Peruvian native Quechua-speaker and linguist, author of the 2nd edition of the Lonely Planet Quechua Phrasebook, and who now teaches Quechua in the USA: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html
• For a good introduction (through the level of linguistics can get quite advanced), try the main entry on Quechua in the open web encyclopaedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua.
• An excellent and very smart multilingual site by Philip Jacobs, with pages not only in English but also in Quechua (bravo!), German, Spanish and French: www.runasimi.de
• In Spanish, on the Quechua of Cochabamba, with some pages in French (the author is French, Jean‑Luc Ancey): http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm.
• For a whole suite of websites on the history and archaeology of all the main indigenous cultures of Peru (not just the Quechua people by any means!), with a wealth of beautifully presented information, link to the homepage of the superb Centro Cultural Perú Virtual website, with its links in the right‑hand column: www.perucultural.org.pe. The same links and a few more are available at: http://revistandina.perucultural.org.pe/enlaces.htm.
• A great website on the other main Andean language family, Aymara, is Aymara Uta website at www.aymara.org. Particularly recommended is the page with an excellent introduction to the Aymara language family.
• The entire text of two major Quechua dictionaries is now available for download free, or online search, at: www.runasimipi.org.
Top Sites in Languages Other Than English
• The full Spanish version of my own Sounds of the Andean Languages website: www.quechua.org.uk/Sounds.
• An excellent and very smart multilingual site by Philip Jacobs, with pages not only in English but also in Quechua (bravo!), German, Spanish and French: www.runasimi.de
• In Spanish, as well as English and with some texts in Quechua, the very full site by the Peruvian Serafín M. Coronel-Molina: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html
• In Spanish, on the Quechua of Cochabamba, with some pages in French (the author is French, Jean‑Luc Ancey): http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm.
• The Spanish version of my own general Quechua website (a smaller selection of pages than in the English version, but also some not on the English site): www.quechua.org.uk/Sp/Main/.
• In Spanish, for background on history and archaeology the superb and huge Centro Cultural Perú Virtual website (see above), with its links in the right‑hand column: www.perucultural.org.pe.
• In Quechua itself, there aren’t many other websites yet, but one is www.quechuanetwork.org, also with English and Spanish pages.
General Information on Quechua Language
• A very full site with resources for learning Quechua, university courses and bibliography, by Serafín M. Coronel-Molina: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html
• http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/quechua.html
• On the Quechua of Cochabamba (Bolivia), by Jean-Luc Ancey, pretty similar to Cuzco Quechua, and with very good details on phonetics and alphabets: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm
• One of the earliest good Quechua sites on the web, by Mark Rosenfelder, with a nice general introduction for non-specialists: www.zompist.com/quechua.html.
• A great site about the famous Huarochirí Quechua manuscript of 1608(?), by Frank Salomon, who co-wrote the book on the manuscript. This website includes excerpts of the text in Quechua with facing Spanish and English translations, a full bibliography relating to manuscript, and some other materials relevant to Quechua.
• A site for a telecommunications programme for Andean communities?! But anyway some good information on Quechua: www.quechuanetwork.org, and they’ll send you regular email newsletters in Quechua.
Quechua Linguistics
Other than my own pages. particularly those on Quechua Linguistics and Hot Issues in Quechua, try:
• A very full and highly informative Quechua language site by Serafín Coronel-Molina, a Peruvian native Quechua-speaker and linguist, author of the 2nd edition of the Lonely Planet Quechua Phrasebook, and who teaches Quechua in the USA: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html
• A site with good details on Quechua phonetics and the competing 3- and 5-vowel alphabets, based on the Quechua of Cochabamba (Bolivia), pretty similar to that of Cuzco: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm
• Besides the nice general introduction for non-specialists at ,: www.zompist.com/quechua.html there are some other pages on this site highly recommended also for linguists, on how to establish whether languages – including Quechua – are or are not related to others. And for a bit of informative fun too, try the linguistics rubric on his main page.
• A pretty cool page on ten weird and wonderful languages, including Quechua
Quechua Language and Dialect Classification
The following sites are mostly on the classification of Quechua as related to other languages (i.e. not much at all!) and of Quechua dialects between each other.
• My page on my current research project, a comparative study of some twenty Quechua and Aymara Varieties with a map of Quechua dialects and the Quechua family tree.
• The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas
• The linguasphere site, where you can download a detailed dialect classification of the various dialects of Quechua.
• www.aymara.org with many serious linguistic articles on the Andean languages downloadable.
• Amerind languages: Dictionaries, Grammars, and other online Resources
• Language and dialect classification for Quechua – the Ethnologue homepage www.sil.org/ethnologue/, including a dialect classification and many dialect maps, may be of great interest to linguists. I should point out, though, that most linguists have very strong and well-founded reservations about the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) / Instituto Lingüístico de Verano (ILV), and indeed like myself will have nothing to do with them, because of their close links to missionary organisations (who largely fund the SIL). Their blinkered priority is bible translations for the so-called ‘unevangelised’ indigenous peoples (a repulsive concept in itself, with all the arrogant baggage that goes with it…), and all other aims lose out to this one. For one tiny example of the very damaging effects of their bible-first approach on work on the Andean languages, see Cerrón-Palomino (1992), particularly endnote 1.
Quechua Practice On-Line: Lessons and Texts
• www.quechuanetwork.org will send you regular email newsletters in Quechua if you sign up.
• Email lists of Quechua speakers (beginners and advanced lists)
• Links to pages with text in Quechua
• A great site about the famous Huarochirí Quechua manuscript of 1608(?), by Frank Solomon, who co-wrote the book on the manuscript. This website includes excerpts of the text in Quechua with facing Spanish and English translations, a full bibliography relating to manuscript, and some other materials relevant to Quechua.
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Quechua
• The homepage of UCHPA – literally Ash(es) – the one group I know of who sing rock music in Quechua, from Ayacucho, Peru: http://www.uchpa.com.
• Page in Quechua and Spanish, with some Quechua literature
• Some more on-line texts are at: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm
• Basic Quechua lessons, in English and Spanish (widest range of reference info, well organised)
• 3 on-line Quechua lessons, in English
• 5 on-line Quechua lessons, in Spanish
• The entire text of two major Quechua dictionaries is now available for download free, or online search, at: www.runasimipi.org.
Quechua by Country/Region
If you’re searching the internet for information on Ecuadoran and Argentinean Quechua, remember that it is generally known in those countries as Quichua instead (i.e. spelt with an i). Even in other regions, many people prefer this spelling.
• Quechua of Cochabamba (Bolivia), pretty similar to that of Cuzco: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm
• Argentine Quechua – pages mostly in Spanish.
• Another Argentine Quechua website.
• The Cuzco Quechua Academy could be very useful if you're in Cuzco, but there are things it's best to know about them first ... see my page on this and get their link
• There is also a Quechua Academy of Cochabamba (Bolivia), I’m not sure whether they have a website, more information on this soon.
Learning Quechua
• My page on learning Quechua, including University courses, and learning it in Cuzco and Bolivia, with some more specific links.
• Detailed info on University courses in Quechua around the world.
• Further page with information on six U.S. Universities with Quechua courses.
Best Links Pages
lists of Quechua-related links
• A huge list of sites to do with Andean cultures (Quechua is under “Andean Languages”)
• A geocities list of Quechua sites
• Another geocities list, of Andean sites
• www.aymara.org has a links page for the other big Andean language family, Aymara.
Other Andean Languages
For a few introductory details on other Andean languages, see the following webpages on my site:
• Basic introduction to other Andean languages beside Quechua.
• My bibliography page for general Andean linguistics, with a note on the different competing spelling systems used for the Aymara languages.
The only major Andean language family still surviving is the one variously known as Jaqi, Aru or Aymara, for which I have a basic bibliography page, and an article (in Spanish) by Dante Oliva León on its two most endangered languages Jaqaru & Kawki, still (just) spoken in the mountains of the Department of Lima, central Peru.
For much more on the Aymara language family your first port of call should be the Aymara Uta website at www.aymara.org. This is a great site covering both the Aymara language ‘proper’ (‘Altiplano’, ‘Collao’ or ‘southern Aymara’) and the other members of the family, Jaqaru and Kawki still spoken (just!) in a few villages in the mountains of central Peru with many serious linguistic articles on the Andean languages downloadable from it. Particularly recommended is the pages with an excellent introduction to the Aymara language family, and there’s also a good bibliography of the Aymara language family.
The first, and for a long time only linguist to have worked intensively on the Jaqaru language is Dr Martha Hardman, at the University of Florida. She is the author of the two core grammars on the language, and of various other works on the Aymara (which she prefers to call Jaqi) language family in general. Her personal webpage and personal publications list are also very useful for this language family.
For the endangered languages of the Uru-Chipaya family spoken in a few villages in the Bolivian Altiplano, see also my basic introduction to other Andean languages. There’s probably very little on the net, but this site by a linguistic research group currently working on them is a good introduction: www.mpi.nl/DOBES/teams/Uru-Chipaya/Uru-Chipaya.html