Aymara
Aymar aru
Spoken in	Bolivia, Peru and Chile.
Ethnicity	Aymara people
Native speakers	1.8 million in Bolivia  (1987) 660,000 in Peru (2000–2006)
Language family	Aymaran Aymara
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ay
ISO 639-2	aym
ISO 639-3	aym – inclusive code Individual codes: ayr – Central Aymara ayc – Southern Aymara
Geographic Distribution of the Aymara language
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Aymara (Aymar aru) is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers.^[1][2] Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Bolivia. It is also spoken to a much lesser extent in Chile and in Northwest Argentina.

Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely-spoken neighbour, Quechua. This claim, however, is disputed — although there are indeed similarities such as the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that these similarities are better explained as areal features resulting from prolonged interaction between the two languages, and that they are not demonstrably related.

The Aymara language is an agglutinating and to a certain extent polysynthetic language, and has a subject–object–verb word order.

Etymology[link]

The old suggestion that the word "Aymara" comes from the Aymara words "jaya" (ancient) and "mara" (year, time) is almost certainly a quite mistaken folk etymology. Many linguists now favor the theory that the term came from an ethnic group from the Apurimac region known as the Aymaraes, but the etymology remains unclear. A full discussion of the possible origins of the word can be found in the book Lingüística Aimara by the respected Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino.^[3]

Orthography[link]

Beginning with Spanish missionary efforts, there have been many attempts to create a writing system for Aymara. The colonial sources employed a variety of Hispanized writing systems, the most widespread being that of Bertonio. Many of the early grammars employed unique alphabets as well, e.g. that of Middendorf’s Aymara-Sprache (1891).

The first official alphabet to be adopted for Aymara was the scientific alphabet. This system was approved by the III Congreso Indigenista Interamericano de la Paz in 1954, though its origins can be traced as far back as 1931. Rs. No 1593 (Deza Galindo 1989, 17). This is not to say that this was the first effort at a general alphabet, only that it was the first official record of such. In 1914 Sisko Chukiwanka Ayulo and Julián Palacios Ríos recorded what may be the first of many attempts to have one alphabet for both Quechua and Aymara. Theirs was called Syentifiko Qheshwa-Aymara Alfabeto and was composed of 37 graphemes. Several other attempts followed at various degrees of success to do the same. Some orthographic attempts even expand further: the Alfabeto Funcional Trilingüe, made up of 40 letters (including the voiced stops necessary for Spanish), and created by the Academia de las Lenguas Aymara y Quechua in Puno in 1944 is the one used by the lexicographer Juan Francisco Deza Galindo in his Diccionario Aymara – Castellano / Castellano – Aymara. This alphabet has five vowels {a, e, i, o, u}, aspiration is conveyed with an {h} next to the consonant and ejectives with {’}. The most unique characteristic is the expression of the uvular /x/ with {jh}. The other uvular segment, the /q/ is expressed by {q} but transcription rules mandate that the following vowel must be {a, e, o} (not {i, u}) presumably to account for uvular lowering and with the intent to facilitate multilingual orthography.

The alphabet created by the Comisión de Alfabetización y Literatura Aymara (CALA) which was officially recognized in Bolivia in 1968 (coexisting with the 1954 Scientific Alphabet) and aside from being the alphabet employed by Protestant missionaries, it is also the one used for the translation of the Book of Mormon. It was also in 1968 that de Dios Yapita created his take on the Aymara alphabet at the Instituto de Lenga y Cultura Aymara (ILCA).

Nearly fifteen years later the Servicio Nacional de Alfabetización y Educación Popular (SENALEP) attempted to consolidate these alphabets to create a system which could be used to write both Aymara and Quechua, creating what was known as the Alfabeto Unificado. This alphabet, later sanctioned in Bolivia by Decree 20227 on 9 May 1984 and in Peru as la Resolución Ministeral Peruana 1218ED on 18 November 1985 consists of 3 vowels and 26 consonants and an umlaut to mark vowel length.

Phonology[link]

Vowels[link]

Aymara has three phoneme vowels /a i u/, which distinguish two degrees of length. Long vowels are indicated with a trema in writing: ä ï ü. The high vowels are lowered to mid height when near uvular consonants (/i/ → [e], /u/ → [o]).

Consonants[link]

As for the consonants, Aymara has phonemic stops at the labial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular points of articulation. Stops show no distinction of voice (e.g. there is no phonemic contrast between [p] and [b]), but each stop has three forms: plain (unaspirated), glottalized, and aspirated. Aymara also has a trilled /r/, and an alveolar/palatal contrast for nasals and laterals, as well as two semivowels (/w/ and /j/).

Stress[link]

Stress is usually on the penult (the syllable before the last one), but long vowels may shift it. Also, the final vowel of words is elided except at the end of a phrase, but the stress remains on its original syllable.

Syllable structure[link]

The vast majority of roots are bisyllabic and, with few exceptions, suffixes are monosyllabic. Roots conform to one of two templates: CV(C)CV or V(C)CV. The former is the most common, with CVCV being predominant. As for the suffixes, the majority are CV, though there are some exceptions: CVCV, CCV, CCVCV and even VCV are possible but rare. The agglutinative nature of this suffixal language, coupled with morphophonological alternations caused by vowel deletion and phonologically-conditioned constraints give rise to interesting surface structures that operate in the domain of the morpheme, syllable, and phonological word/phrase. The phonological/morphophonological processes observed include syllabic reduction, epenthesis, deletion, and reduplication.^[4]

Morphology[link]

Aymara morphemes can be divided into the following categories:

• Inflectional
• Derivational
• Transpositional
• Independent
• Sentence suffixes

Inflectional and derivational morphemes can be subdivided into nominal and verbal categories. So for example, the inflectional sub-categories are as follows:

Verbal inflection

• Tense (aorist, future, proximal past, distal past)
• Aspect (completive, progressive, sustainer, etc.)
• Mood / Modality
• Person (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Number (plural)

Nominal inflection

• Number (plural)
• Possession
• Location
• Case (nominal, accusative, commitative, allative, etc.)

The same division can be done for the derivational morphemes. Verbal derivation is characterized by a range of morphemes which indicate spatial direction and direction of motion.

Derivational morphemes: Direction of motion

• upward -ta, -ja
• downward -qa
• outward -su
• inward -nta

Note that the downward morpheme -qa also expresses the act of division or splitting.

Geographical distribution[link]

Aymara language domain as of 1984

There are roughly two million Bolivian speakers, half a million Peruvian speakers, and perhaps a few thousand speakers in Chile and Argentina.^[5] At the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, Aymara was the dominant language over a much larger area than today, including most of highland Peru south of Cuzco. Over the centuries Aymara has gradually lost speakers both to Spanish and to Quechua; many Peruvian and Bolivian communities which were once Aymara-speaking now speak Quechua.^[6]

Dialects[link]

There is some degree of regional variation within the Aymara language, although all the dialects are mutually intelligible.^[7] Most study of the language has focused on either the Aymara spoken on the southern Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca or the Aymara spoken around La Paz. Lucy Therina Briggs classifies both of these regions as being part of the Northern Aymara dialect, which encompasses the department of La Paz in Bolivia and the department of Puno in Peru. The Southern Aymara dialect is spoken in the eastern half of the Iquique province in northern Chile and in most of the Bolivian department of Oruro. It is also found in northern Potosí and southwest Cochabamba, but it is slowly being replaced by Quechua in those regions. Intermediate Aymara shares dialectical features with both Northern and Southern Aymara and is found in the eastern half of the Tacna and Moquegua departments in southern Peru and in the northeastern tip of Chile.^[8] .

Wider language family[link]

It is often assumed that the Aymara language descends from the language spoken in Tiwanaku, on the grounds that it is the native language of that area today. This is very far from certain, however, and most specialists now incline to the idea that Aymara only expanded into the Tiwanaku area rather late, as it spread southwards from an original homeland more likely to have been in Central Peru. Aymara placenames are found all the way north into central Peru, and indeed (Altiplano) Aymara is actually but one of the two extant languages of a wider language family, the other surviving representative being Jaqaru/Kawki.

This family was established by the research of Martha James Hardman de Bautista of the Program in Linguistics at the University of Florida. Jaqaru [jaqi aru = human language] and Kawki communities are in the district of Tupe, Yauyos Valley, in the Dept. of Lima, in central Peru. Jaqaru has approximately 2,000 native speakers, nearly all Spanish bilinguals. Kawki is spoken in a neighboring community by a very small number of mostly elderly individuals and is a dying language. It was originally proposed by Dr Hardman that Jaqaru and Kawki should be classified as languages quite distinct from each other, but other more recent research classifies them as two very closely related varieties of the same mutually intelligible language.

Terminology for this wider language family is not yet well established. Dr Hardman has proposed the name 'Jaqi' ('human'), while other widely respected Peruvian linguists have proposed alternative names for the same language family. Alfredo Torero uses the term 'Aru' ('speech'); Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, meanwhile, has proposed that the term 'Aymara' should be used for the whole family, distinguished into two branches, Southern (or Altiplano) Aymara and Central Aymara (i.e. Jaqaru and Kawki). Each of these three proposals has its followers in Andean linguistics. In English usage, some linguists use the term Aymaran for the family, reserving 'Aymara' for the Altiplano branch.

Unique features[link]

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Linguistic and gestural analysis by Núñez and Sweetser also asserts that the Aymara have an apparently unique, or at least very rare, understanding of time, and Aymara is, with Quechua, one of very few^{[citation needed]} languages where speakers seem to represent the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. Their argument is situated mainly within the framework of conceptual metaphor, which recognizes in general two subtypes of the metaphor "the passage of time is motion": one is "time passing is motion over a landscape" (or "moving-ego"), and the other is "time passing is a moving object" ("moving-events"). The latter metaphor does not explicitly involve the individual/speaker; events are in a queue, with prior events towards the front of the line. The individual may be facing the queue, or it may be moving from left to right in front of him/her.

The claims regarding Aymara involve the moving-ego metaphor. Most languages conceptualize the ego as moving forward into the future, with ego's back to the past. The English sentences prepare for what lies before us and we are facing a prosperous future exemplify this metaphor. In contrast, Aymara seems to encode the past as in front of individuals, and the future in back; this is typologically a rare phenomenon.^{[citation needed]}

The fact that English has words like before and after that are (currently or archaically) polysemous between 'front/earlier' or 'back/later' may seem to refute the claims regarding Aymara uniqueness. However, these words relate events to other events, i.e., are part of the moving-events metaphor. In fact, when before means in front of ego, it can only mean future. For instance, our future is laid out before us while our past is behind us. Parallel Aymara examples describe future days as qhipa uru, literally 'back days', and these are sometimes accompanied by gestures to behind the speaker. The same applies to Quechua speakers, whose expression qhipa p'unchaw corresponds directly to Aymara qhipa uru. Possibly, the metaphor is that the past is visible to us (in front of our eyes), while the future is not.

Pedagogy[link]

There is increasing use of Aymara locally and there are increased numbers learning the language, both Bolivian and abroad. In Bolivia and Peru, intercultural bilingual education programs with Aymara and Spanish have been introduced in the last two decades. There are even projects to offer Aymara through the internet, such as by ILCA.^[9]

Declension[link]

As Aymara is an inflected language, its nouns must be declined for any utterance in this language to be considered grammatical.

Syntactic relations in Aymara are generally case-marked, with the exception of the unmarked subject. Case is affixed to the last element of a noun phrase, usually corresponding to the head. Aymara has 14 cases.

• ablative -ta
• accusative (indicated by vowel suppression)
• allative -ru
• benefactive -taki
• comparative -jama
• genitive -na
• instrumental/comitative -mpi
• interactive -pura
• locative -na
• limitative -kama
• nominative (zero)
• perlative -kata
• purposive -layku

Allative[link]

The allative -ru denotes direction towards a certain goal:

¿Mukiwarut sarajatast?

{Mukiwa-ru-t(i) sara-jata-st(i)}

Moquegua-ALL-NEG go-2FUT-IR

‘Is it to Moquegua that you’ll go?’

¿Mukiwarut sarajatast Sankristarucha?

{Mukiwa-ru-t(i) sara-jata-st(i) Sankrista-ru-cha}

Moquegua-ALL-NEG go-2FUT-IR San.Cristobál-AlL-BC

‘Will you go to Moquegua or San Cristóbal?’

Instrumental / comitative[link]

This declension is marked with the –mpi suffix which functions as the conjoiner and as a marker of the instrumental case.

When functioning as a conjoiner, it may be affixed to one or both of the declined words. In the first, it is affixed only to the word tutu 'toasted corn:

Tutump lich jucht’asim.

{tutu-mp(i)-cØ lich(i)-cØ juch(a)-t’a-si-m(a)}

toasted.corn-COM-ACC milk-ACC drink-M-REFL-2IMP

‘Drink your milk with toasted corn.’

Next, it is attached to both juma 'you' and na 'I':

¡Jumamp nampix nuwasiskapunitanw!

{juma-mp(i) na-mpi-x(a) nuwa-si-s.ka-puni-tan(a)-w(a)}

you-COM I-COM-TOP fight-REFL-PROG-EM-4AOR-AFF

‘You and I really must fight!’

Purposive[link]

The –layku morpheme expresses ‘for the purpose of’:

Jumalaykuw kutiniskix.

{juma-layku-w(a) kuti-ni-s.k(a)-i-x(a)}

you-purpose-AFF return-H-PROG-3AOR-TOP

‘She is returning for you.’

See also[link]

• Indigenous languages of the Americas
• Classification schemes for indigenous languages of the Americas
• Mesoamerican languages
• Language families and languages
• Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
• Category:Indigenous languages of the Americas (division into geocultural areas)
• Languages of Peru
• List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Núñez, R., & Sweetser, E. With the Future Behind Them : Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time. Cognitive Science, 30(3), 1-49.

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Aymara language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Aymara Swadesh vocabulary lists (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• http://clas.uchicago.edu/language_teaching/aymara.shtml
• www.aymara.org An extensive website about the language in English, Spanish and Aymara.
• The Sounds of the Andean Languages listen online to pronunciations of Aymara words, see photos of speakers and their home regions, learn about the origins and varieties of Aymara.
• Ethnologue reports for Aymara
• Encyclopedy in Aymara
• Aymara - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - The Rosetta Edition.
• Andean language looks back to the future - article on Aymara's reversed concept of time, with the past ahead and the future behind
• JACH'AK'ACHI. Patpatankiri markana kont’awipa An aymara page dedicated to this city in aymara language.
• Beginning Aymara - a course book in pdf form

Spanish[link]

• Aymara - Compendio de Estrutura Fonológica y Gramatical, 20 downloadable PDF files

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

Aymara

Total population
~2 million
Regions with significant populations
Bolivia 1,462,286 [1]  Peru 440,380 [2]  Chile 48,501 [3]
Languages
Aymara, Andean Spanish
Religion
Roman Catholicism, traditional Andean religion
Related ethnic groups
Quechuas

The Aymara or Aimara (Aymara: aymara  listen (help·info)) are an indigenous ethnic group in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America; about 2 million live in Bolivia, Peru and Chile. They lived in the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca, and later of the Spanish in the 16th century. With the Spanish American Wars of Independence (1810-1825) Aymaras became subjects of Bolivia and Peru and after the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) Chile acquired an Aymaran population.

History[link]

The Aymara have existed in the Andes in what is now Western Bolivia, Southern Peru and Northern Chile for over 2,000 years, according to some estimates.^{[citation needed]} The region where Tiwanaku and the modern Aymara are located, the Altiplano, was conquered by the Incas under Huayna Capac (reign 1483–1523), although the exact date of this takeover is unknown. It is most likely that the Inca had a strong influence over the Aymara region for some time. The architecture for which the Inca are now known is clearly modeled after the Tiwanaku style.^{[citation needed]} Though conquered by the Inca, the Aymara retained some degree of autonomy under the empire. There were a number of ethnic groups which were later to be called Aymara by the Spanish. These were divided upon different chieftainties. These included the Charqa, Qharaqhara, Quillaca, Asanaqui, Carangas, SivTaroyos, Haracapi, Pacajes, Lupacas, Soras, among others. Upon arrival of the Spanish, all these groups were spread in what today is Bolivia. Looking at the history of the languages, however, rather than their current distribution, it is clear that Aymara was once spoken much further north, at least as far north as central Peru, where most Andean linguists feel it is most likely that Aymara originated (see 'Geography' below). In fact, the Inca nobility may themselves originally have been Aymara-speakers, who switched to Quechua only shortly before the Inca expansion. For example, the Cuzco area has many Aymara placenames, and the so-called 'secret language of the Incas' actually appears to be a form of Aymaran.

The Aymara, in their turn, overran and displaced Uru an older population from the Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopó regions, even as recently as the 1930s.^[4]

Geography[link]

Most present day Aymara-speakers live in the Lake Titicaca basin beginning in Lake Titicaca through Desaguadero River and into Lake Poopo (Oruro, Bolivia) also known as the Altiplano, and are concentrated south of the lake. The capital of the ancient Aymara civilization is unknown, as there were at least seven different kingdoms (according to research by Cornell University Anthropologist John Murra). The capital of the largely populated Lupaqa Kingdom was the city of Chucuito (See also John Murra study of this Aymara Kingdom), located on the shore of Lake Titicaca. The present urban center of the Aymara region is El Alto, a 750,000-person city near the Bolivian capital La Paz. For most of the 20th century the center of Cosmopolitan Aymara Culture has been Chuquiago Marka (La Paz). During the government of General Pando (died in 1917) and during the Bolivian Civil War, Bolivia's capital was moved from Sucre to La Paz.

Culture[link]

The Wiphala, flag of the Aymara

The native language of the Aymara is Aymara; additionally, many Aymara also speak Spanish as a second language, whereas it is the predominant language in the countries in which they live. The Aymara flag is known as the Wiphala; it consists of seven colors quilted together with diagonal stripes. Aymara have grown and chewed coca plants for centuries, using its leaves in traditional medicine as well as in ritual offerings to the sun god Inti and the earth goddess Pachamama. During the last century, coca has brought them into conflict with state authorities who have carried out coca eradication in order to prevent the extraction and isolation of the drug cocaine. Coca also plays a central role in the indigenous religions of both the Aymara and the Quechua. Coca is used in the ritual curing ceremonies of the yatiri, and, in more recent times, has become a symbol of cultural identity.

Most of contemporary Aymaran Urban culture was developed in the working-class Aymara neighborhoods of La Paz, such as Chijini and others. Bowler hats have been worn by Quechua and Aymara women in Peru and Bolivia since the 1920s when a shipment of bowler hats was reportedly sent from Europe to Bolivia via Peru for use by Europeans working on the construction of the railroads. The hats were found to be too small and were distributed to locals. The luxurious, elegant and cosmopolitan Aymara Chola dress which is an icon to Bolivia (bowler hat, aguayo, heavy pollera, skirts, boots, jewelry, etc.) began and evolved in La Paz. It is, accordingly, an urban and not a rural tradition. The dress has become an ethnic symbol for Aymara women. Also, many Aymara live and work as campesinos in the surrounding Altiplano.

The Aymara language does have one surviving relative, spoken by a small, isolated group of about a thousand people far to the north in the mountains inland from Lima in Central Peru (in and around the village of Tupe, Yauyos province, Lima department). This language, whose two dialects are known as Jaqaru and Kawki,^[5] is of the same family as Aymara. In fact, some linguists refer to it as 'Central Aymara', as opposed to the 'Southern Aymara', which is the predominant part of the family spoken in the Titicaca region.

Politics[link]

Literacy class in El Alto

There are numerous movements for greater independence or political power for the Aymara and other indigenous groups. These include the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army, led by Felipe Quispe, and the Movement Towards Socialism, a political party organized by the Cocalero Movement and Evo Morales. These and many other Aymara organizations have been involved in activism in Bolivia, including the 2003 Bolivian Gas War and the 2005 Bolivia protests. One of the goals of the movement, as put forth by Quispe, is the establishment of an independent indigenous state, Qullasuyu, named for the eastern (and largely Aymara) region of the Inca empire which covered the southeastern corner of Peru and much of what is today Bolivia. Evo Morales is an Aymara coca grower from the Chaparé region whose Movement Toward Socialism party has forged alliances with both rural indigenous groups and urban working classes to form a broad leftist coalition in Bolivia. Morales has run for president in several recent elections with several close calls, and in 2005 he finally won a surprise victory, winning the largest majority vote since Bolivia returned to democracy and declaring himself to be the first indigenous president of Bolivia. He is also credited with the ousting of Bolivia's previous two presidents.

See also[link]

• Bartolina Sisa
• Gregoria Apaza
• Roberto Mamani Mamani, contemporary Aymara artist
• Socialist Aymara Group
• Wiphala

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aymara

• Aymara site in English
• Society: an essay
• Aymara worldview reflected in concept of time
• NGO Chakana
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aymara". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.