Ayacucho Quechua | |
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Chanka runasimi | |
Native to | Peru |
Native speakers
|
900,000 (2000) |
Quechuan
|
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | Either: quy – Ayacucho qxu – Arequipa–La Unión |
Glottolog | ayac1238 |
Ayacucho (also called Chanca or Chanka) is a variety of Southern Quechua spoken in the Ayacucho Region, Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is the largest variety of Quechua after Cusco Quechua. The literary standard of Southern Quechua is based on these two closely related Quechua varieties.
Spanish Loanwords
Ayacucho Quechua has three vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/, which are rendered by native speakers as [æ], [ɪ], and [ʊ] respectively. When these vowels appear adjacent to the uvular fricative /χ/, they are lowered (with [æ] instead being produced further back), yielding [ɑ], [ɛ], and [ɔ] respectively. In bilingual speakers, the Spanish realizations [a], [i], and [u] may also be found.
The consonant phonemes of Ayacucho Quechua are outlined below. Orthographic symbols at odds with the IPA are given in angle brackets.
Notable differences from Cusco Quechua:
Ayacucho Quechua has borrowed hundreds of words from Spanish, and some speakers (even monolinguals) approximate the Spanish pronunciation. For such speakers, /f/ /rr/ /b/ /d/ /ɡ/ /e/ /o/ are phonemes in borrowed words like libru (from Spanish libro "book") or serbey (from Spanish servir "to serve")