Talk:Quechuan languages/Archive 1

Jumper

I only have one source, unfortunately not handy at the moment, for the assertion that the Quechua (and Spanish) word chompa came first and the English jumper came second. Most English dictionaries say it went in the other direction, but the word apparently is truly a Quechua word, and the English dictionaries do not provide a convincing etymology for jumper. My source says Spanish sailors got it from Quechua and English sailors got it from Spanish sailors. Ortolan88

I'm doubtful. The OED and AHD both think "jumper" comes from earlier "jump" meaning a short coat or bodice, earliest cite 1654. Chompa is a Quechua word, but it's not in the Real Academia's dictionary, which suggests it's a loanword. Zompist

I have no idea about Quechua but this change: - (cur) (last) . . 22:48, 28 Jun 2003 . . 4.72.9.5

seems to be an mistake. The british word 'jumper' might be a loanword, from the Quetchua word 'chompa'. But i can't believe that 'sweater' is a loanword. Probably someone wanted to get rid of british english at the wrong place.

I commented this out pending further confirmation. -- Viajero 12:00, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Regularity

Can someone back "perfectly regular"? My intro linguistics instructor (20 years ago, and this was a side note to something else) said that this applied to only one dialect of Quechua, and when a student called out "spoken on the north side of the river" the professor said "yes, actually." Vicki Rosenzweig

This was changed to "very regular" some time ago, and that's appropriate. Quechua is agglutinative, meaning that affixes are largely independent from one another; such languages can be highly regular, unlike the fusional (a.k.a. inflecting) languages most English speakers are used to, like the Indo-European languages. There are no irregular verbs in Quechua. However, almost all languages have some morphological quirks and are not pure examples of their type. Some affixes do fuse in Quechua (that is, you add affixes A + B together and you don't get AB but some special form), and the future morphology also shows some fusion.Zompist 19:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Name change

Someone wants to move this page to Quechua but hasn't started a discussion of the question, so I'm starting it. I vote:

• Oppose. It's standard practice at Wikipedia to use the word "language" in an article on a language, even if the name is unambiguously a language. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 07:43, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. The name is frequently used for an ethnic group. See, e.g., Bolivia. DanKeshet 17:53, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Agree. I pst request. Ther's no "Quechua" people, those porcents talks about its language, off course, but in South America half of natives don't speak its proper language. --Huhsunqu 21:29, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • So, I'm not disagreeing about whether there's a "Quechua" people, but I want to understand what you think is meant when Bolivia says that 33% of the Bolivian population is Quechua. Does that mean they speak Quechua? What "peoples" speak Quechua? DanKeshet 23:35, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • [[Bolivia article needs an urgent revision. For example it says that it's motto is Firme y Feliz por la union while its really motto is Morir antes que esclavos vivir. About what peoples speak Quechua, if you're reffering about which etnic groups, you most remember that in South America there's a great mixing of cultures, so there aren't any ethnic Quechua. --Huhsunqu 04:59, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Angr's objection is completly invalid; there is no standard practice of using the article name XXX language unless there is an actual need for disambiguation. See Esperanto and Hindi for perfectly good examples of this. If there is a people called Quechua, why is there no article on them? Who are the Quechuans? Do they have anything in common other than the language? And, most importantly, why are we using a disambiguated form of the langauge if Quechua doesn't even lead to a disambiguation page? /Peter ^Isotalo July 2, 2005 11:22 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. violet/riga (t) 18:03, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

---

So, I guess Quechua has a system involving Evidentiality. It would be nice if this article could include it-- as yet, I don't know much to provide anything on this, but I thought I might say something incase anyone knows much about evidentiality in Quechua? --Alcarilinque 29 June 2005 21:37 (UTC)

I added an explanation. Zompist

Number of speakers

Who can tell me the best estimate of total speakers? Here it says 9.6 million, but at qu:Wikipidiya:Ayuda_en_Castellano, it says 14 million. So what is it? --ROY YOЯ 1 July 2005 20:49 (UTC)

It's hard to tell, but all estimates should be sourced. I changed it to 10 million, which rounds up estimates from the Ethnologue: Peru 3.5 to 4.4 million; Ecuador 1.4 million; Argentina .9 million; Bolivia 2.9 million. 14 million sounds way too high, and shouldn't stand without a reputable source. Zompist 19:16, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Writing system

I think the recent changes by Tito4000 on the writing system are rather POV, and much too political and speculative for an encyclopedia. It's true that Quechua literacy is low, but the statements on why that might be so are speculative (or at best unsupported). Why is it important that the 1975 spelling system was adopted under a dictatorship? (Almost all Latin American countries were dictatorships in that year.) Why the scare quotes around "adopted" mentioning the 1985 reform?

Who are the "some" who believe that the changes-- actually adopted to create a better phonemic representation and to improve Quechua education-- were made to make the words "funny-looking"? Who are "some analysts" who think the orthography hinders education, and on what basis?

As a counter-example, linguist Bruce Mannheim reports (in the book already cited in the references) that "it has been found that introducing a five-vowel Quechua orthography in primary education may be the source of later reading problems in Spanish." He gives several citations of primary material for this, which I can copy out if anyone wants to look them up. It's an old debate in Peru.

There is already an article, Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift, on the orthographic change; this might be a better place to mention such controversies, which probably aren't that appropriate in a general article on Quechua anyway. Zompist 02:02, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Zompist. Thank you for your constructive criticism. I'm open to alternative wording that may eliminate the purported POVs. However, I believe my assertions are founded on my understanding that they are current common knowledge in Peru, and thus I believe that they mostly don't represent a POV but rather a popular extended belief.

I grant you that unfortunately some references to illiteracy might look derogatory or racist (which is definitely NOT my intention) but they are a fact supported by statistics on the very portal of the Peruvian government www.peru.gob.pe . The reference to the writing system having been imposed by a ruling dictatorship is to reflect the historic fact that it did not stem from common or centuries-old popular usage, but rather from the political lobbying from a few linguists addicted to the left leanings of the government of the time

Without any public or even academic debate whatsoever a major writing system was suddenly changed by decree under a hidden political agenda to make modern Quechua appear to be a language of its own that was alien to the influence of the Spanish language and Western culture.

My proposition regarding the new writing system being "funny-looking" is simply the reflection of what is commonly referred to regarding the Quechua writing system by almost all people I know in Peru. --Tito4000 16:16, 20 November 2005 (UTC)