42: On discovering Cusco Quechua (not about cognates/etymology)
Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on the 1st of September 2024. This article contains the following sections: Introduction; My own experience of learning Quechua (does not include much discussion on how it relates to my cognate work); On the basics of Quechua; End notes (for now). This article was published in the UK on www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk and contains 2035 words. Nothing in this article has been published before, as is the case for most of my articles, despite the fact I have and will continue to publish about different things relating to Quechua, in different publications and places.
Introduction
(note that even though some of the things in this article relate to my own personal experience of learning Quechua, I feel this is relevant in a larger sense because it is part of unravelling and discussing this subject of how Quechua might be linked to other languages and spirituality, and anything to do with spirituality I always write to share with a wider audience, with the hope that it may help us all understand it more)
Since the beginning of 2023 I felt a strong instinct to look in more detail at the connections that might exist between Quechua and other language families, especially the Uralic language family, which made perfect sense as I was studying Finnish at the time. I had already written about cognates between Andean and other, unrelated languages, but in 2023 and 2024 this has become a primary part of my research, and I have published several books about these subjects. The most recent thing in which I mentioned cognates (albeit not related to Quechua) but to Finnish and other Indigenous American languages, was this article, published a few days ago:
In the next week or so, perhaps even tomorrow, an article I wrote will be published in Silly Linguistics, titled: An ancient temple, languages in the Bock sa-ga, and some similarities between Finnish and Quechua (with temple photo): part one of: “The mystical nature of Finnish & of language in Finland”. The aforementioned article for Silly Linguistics and the following two in the series, are a continuation of this research, but these three articles for Silly Linguistics do not contain any material I have published in books (including ebooks of course). Part one of the article series for Silly Linguistics, the title of which is: An ancient temple, languages in the Bock sa-ga, and some similarities between Finnish and Quechua (with temple photo): part one of: “The mystical nature of Finnish & of language in Finland” contains a few Quechua-Finnish similarities I have already published about (nevertheless they are presented in a different way with different information), and some completely new ones, and lots of previously unpublished information. My publications about these topics are ongoing, and different things I have found and researched have been published in different publications, and will continue to be. The aforementioned Silly Linguistics article and parts two and three following it, will not be published in any books (including ebooks) however, at least not for at least a year after their publication in Silly Linguistics.
In this article (the one currently in front of you) I want to talk not about cognates with Quechua and other languages, but rather about my own experience of learning Quechua.
My own experience of learning Quechua (does not include much discussion on how it relates to my cognate work)
I probably learned about Quechua when I was around 16, and in a bookshop in Kent, where I came across a Quechua-English phrasebook. When I was 17 I bought a book on the Quechua language, and found it a fun and interesting language to learn, challenging to me, but at the same time, I felt I got my head around certain things rather quickly. When I was 18, in the year 2011, I remember listening to this song on YouTube titled Chirapaq by Alborada. This song, the Quechua language, the instrumental parts of the song, I found beautifully enchanting and emotional. Something felt distantly homely about the Andes, and strangely, even though the Quechua language is an Indigenous American language, and a part of that world; listening to Quechua music even back then, reminded me a little of Asia too, even of the Steppes of parts of Eurasia (which I have never been to, but I was learning about languages in that area, at that time).
I do not speak any language from Asia, and my knowledge of Turkic languages is not great. I do not know to what extent Quechua might share special connections with languages of the steppes, for I have primarily concentrated on its connections between Afro-Asiatic, IE, Uralic and others to some degree, including some languages spoken in Asia such as Tibetan, but only here and there. I do not speak any language from Asia to any extent where I could accurately identify many common words.
A curious thing I would like to mention here though is the Incan and pre-Incan farming methods, which show clear similarities to those of the Canary Islands, parts of China, other parts of Asia. These links have become a primary topic of my work, but, as I mentioned, my ability to speak any Asian language is too minimal for me to develop substantial ideas about Quechua’s relationship to languages in Asia.
It is important for me again to emphasize that I do not believe in the Bering Strait hypothesis, nor that Quechua in any sense came from Asia. I believe rather that Quechua has always, since its origins, been a language that connected to outside of the Americas through ancient, sacred layers of vocabulary and meaning that were inherited by many cultures in different ways. I do not believe in the idea that Quechua came from Asia and that this interpretation is often placed on Indigenous American languages makes me sad, because from what I understand of their story, they have always been there in the Americas, even though mainstream anthropology and linguistics still tries to insist that they came from somewhere else.
But anyhow, in 2011, when I heard the song Chirapaq by Alborada, I felt the connection between the Andes, and Asia, and perhaps even Finland, even though I did not consciously identify or understand that this could be real at the time, I felt it there, somewhere.
In 2016 and 2017 I began to research cognates and ancient connections with Andean languages, and found some surprising things, and published them. I did a little more, but as I said, it was at the beginning of 2023 when I suddenly felt a need to reconnect with this. And I did, and wrote several books about it over the next year. I also went to Tenerife in 2023, and, this actually came to intimately be linked in with these studies related to Quechua as well, as you will see in my books. I also listened to a lot more Alborada songs at the time, and other songs by different Quechua speaking bands.
In autumn of 2023 I decided to properly study Quechua with a teacher online. So I had a good few months of taking lessons in Finnish and Quechua on the same week. However, something broke my heart, and I wasn’t really capable of taking in Quechua at that time, and at that time, my Finnish went downhill too. Since then thankfully my Finnish has improved a lot, I think, but I haven’t studied Quechua more since. I want too though, and am glad I gained a certificate from the Quechua course.
On the basics of Quechua
Firstly, Quechua is several distinct languages, some of which are more closely related than others, some of which are more standardised than others. Perú has a large number of varieties, whilst to the south, the languages arguably cover wider areas, for example, South Bolivian Quechua is also spoken in Chile.
In the north of the Quechuan world, there are the Kichwa languages, which are distinctly different in some senses. They have for example the sound “f” and the “ll” can sound like the “s” in “leasure”.
In my publications concerning Quechua I have talked about a mixture of Quechuan languages, sometimes just using the noun “Quechua”, particularly when talking about the Quechuan languages in terms of them as a whole.
The Quechuan language I studied on my course was that of Cusco. Some of the Quechuan languages in Perú, including Cusco Quechua, have the special aspect of certain consonants having both voiceless, aspirated and ejective forms. This can be seen in the Cusco Quechua alphabet, given as follows:
a, ch, chh, ch’, e, h, i, k, kh, k’, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, p’, r, s, (sh), t, th, t’, u, w, y
For example, the ch in the word challwa – “fish”, is close enough to the “ch” in English “cheese”. But the chh in chhalla – “straw” or “light weight” is like a “ch” with a slight puff of air behind it. The ch’ in the word ch’aska – “stars”, however, is an ejective sound. The distinction of the primary [t͡ʃ] sound into three distinctive forms, is likely something in part connected to the Aymara language in the Cusco region. Aymaran and Quechuan languages are not related in the sense of them being in the same language family, but both language groups have shared and interacted with the same areas over what is probably a vast amount of time. The precise way in which they have interacted is not fully understood, but in the case of these ejective consonants in Cusco Quechua, the fact that there are elements of an Aymaran language in the same landscape is likely indicative in part as to why.
Another feature that is not general in Quechuan languages but which is arguably found in Cosco Quechua is a five-vowel system rather than a three-vowel system. Generally speaking Quechuan languages contain only three primary vowels, a, i and u. Cusco Quechua on the other hand, contains five vowels: a, e, i, o, u.
For example in Cusco Quechua the form soqta is found for “six”, instead of suqta. The form orqo is found for “mountain” instead of urqu, and similarly the form sonqo is found for “heart” instead of sunqu.
Note that I have put sh in brackets because this sound does not seem to exist as a constant lexified phoneme in Cusco Quechua but rather occurs as an allophone of s under certain circumstances where the thing in question is emphasised. The sound sh is also inserted to imply a more temporary action or process, for example kashani is a more temporary form of kani – I am, e.g. wasiypi kashani – I am in my house,wasi – “house”, wasiy – “my house”, wasiypi – “in my house”, kashani – I am. Or for example kuna p’unchay orqokunapi rupha kashan – “on the mountains it is warm today”, kunan p’unchay – today, p’unchay – day, orqo – mountain, orqokuna – mountains, orqokunapi – on the mountains, rupha – hot, warm, kashan – is (temporarily).
Below are two other examples of Quechua sentences I wrote.
1). noqa runasimita rimani – I speak Quechua
noqa – I, runasimita – Quechua language, accusative of runasimi, from runa – person, simi – tongue, language, word, rimani – I speak, from rimay – to speak.
2). noqa kay llaqtata munani – I love this town
noqa – I, kay – this, llaqta – accusative of llaqta, munani – I love, from munay – to love. (note that the q in llaqta is pronounced [x] and not [q] as it is in initial positions).
(Note that in other articles previously I have also introduced aspects of Quechuan languages but they are not the same as this article currently in front of you).
End notes (for now)
I hope this article was interesting, and I will likely publish more on Quechua in the near future. And look out for my article in Silly Linguistics (completely separate to the article in front of you), which may be published within the next few days in the Silly Linguistics magazine, titled: An ancient temple, languages in the Bock sa-ga, and some similarities between Finnish and Quechua (with temple photo): part one of: “The mystical nature of Finnish & of language in Finland”.