South Bolivian Quechua

South Bolivian Quechua
Uralan Buliwya runasimi
Native to	Bolivia; a few in Argentina, Chile
Ethnicity	Quechuas, Kolla
Native speakers	(2.8 million cited 1987)
Language family	Quechuan Quechua II Southern Quechua South Bolivian Quechua
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	sout2991
The four branches of Quechua. South Bolivian Quechua is a dialect of Southern Quechua (II-C).

South Bolivian Quechua, also known as Central Bolivian Quechua, is a dialect of Southern Quechua spoken in Bolivia and adjacent areas of Argentina, where it is also known as Colla. It is not to be confused with North Bolivian Quechua, which is spoken on the northern Andean slopes of Bolivia and is phonologically distinct from the South Bolivian variety. Estimates of the number of speakers of South Bolivian Quechua range from 2.3 to 2.8 million, making it the most spoken indigenous language in Bolivia, just slightly greater than Aymara, with roughly 2 million speakers in Bolivia. In comparison, the North Bolivian dialect has roughly 116,000 speakers.

South Bolivian Quechua is a member of the Southern branch of the Quechua language family, making it closely related to other Southern Quechua dialects including Ayacucho and particularly Cuzco Quechua, varieties which are both spoken in Peru.

The Quechua language family spans an extremely diverse set of languages, many of which are mutually unintelligible, which is why linguists have classified Quechua as a language family as opposed to one language with many dialects. Though it is believed that all Quechuan languages descended from a single ancestor, Proto-Quechua, there is still debate on how the modern Quechuan languages evolved into their current states, and what this timeline would look like. As a result of this, there have been numerous suggested classifications and theories of the relatedness of specific languages and dialects of Quechua. However, the current broad division of Quechua into four main branches is generally accepted.

Joseph Greenberg, in his highly contested theory of the Amerind superfamily, places the Quechua language family in the Andean branch of Amerind, which is part of the larger Southern Amerind branch that encompasses all indigenous South American languages. Much of Greenberg's proposal has been disproved, and his claims regarding Quechua are equally suspect. Even at one of his lower subgroupings, the Andean language family, the idea that Andean languages such as Quechua and Aymara are related is still debated, and the common consensus is that similarities between Quechua and Aymara arose from language contact as opposed to a genetic relationship.