Cusco Quechua () is a dialect of Southern Quechua spoken in Cusco and the Department of Cusco of Peru.
It is the Quechua variety used by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua in Cusco, which also prefers the Spanish-based five-vowel alphabet. On the other hand, the official alphabet used by the ministry of education has only three vowels.
Phonology
Vowels Quechua only has three vowel phonemes: and , with no diphthongs. Monolingual speakers pronounce them as respectively, but Spanish realizations may also be found. When the vowels appear adjacent to uvular consonants (, , and ), they are rendered more like [, , ], respectively. There is debate about whether Cusco Quechua has five or three vowel phonemes: .
While historically Proto-Quechua clearly had just three vowel phonemes /*a, *ɪ, *ʊ/, and although some other Quechua varieties have an increased number of vowels as a result of phonological vowel length emergence or of monophthongization, the current debate about the Cusco variety seems to be not phonological in matter but just orthographic.
Phoneme IPA Phonetic realizations3-vowel alphabet5-vowel alphabet aa [æ, a, ɑ] ii [i, ɪ], e [e, ɛ] uu [u, ʊ], o [o, ɔ]
Consonants +Cusco Quechua consonant phonemesBilabialAlveolarPost-alv./PalatalVelarUvularGlottalNasal Stop/AffricateFricativeSemivowelLiquid Gemination of the tap results in a trill .
About 30% of the modern Quechua vocabulary is borrowed from Spanish, and some Spanish sounds (such as , , , ) may have become phonemic even among monolingual Quechua speakers.
Grammar Pronouns Cusco QuechuaNorthern QuechuaAncash QuechuaEnglish1ºI2ºyou3ºhe, she, it4ºwe (inclusive)5ºwe (exclusive)6ºyou (plural)7ºthey
Nouns +Examples using the word 'house'FunctionSuffixExampleTranslationSuffix indicating numberPlural housesPossessive suffix1st person singular my house2nd person singular your house3rd person singular his/her/its house1st person plural (incl.) our house (incl.)1st person plural (excl.) our house (excl.)2nd person plural your (pl.) house3rd person plural their houseSuffixes indicating casenominative–the house (subj.)accusative the house (obj.)instrumental with the house, and the houseabessive without the housedative to the housegenitive of the housecausative because of the housebenefactive for the houselocative at the housedirectional towards the houseinclusive , , including the houseterminative , , up to the housetransitive through the houseablative , , off/from the housecomitative along with the houseimmediate first the houseintrative among the housesexclusive only the housecomparative , , like the house
Adjectives
Verbs
See also Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift
References
External links Simi Taqe Qheswa - Español - Qheswa (Qheswa simi hamut'ana kuraq suntur), Qosqo, Peru, 2006 (pdf 3,8 MB). Dictionary of the AMLQ: Cusco-Quechua - Spanish, Spanish - Cusco-Quechua. Collections in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America