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Language Lineage

Central Quechua

Torero's Quechua I, the most diverse part of the family. These varieties mark the first person with a long vowel, not the suffix *-y* of Quechua II.

c. 1st millennium CE – presentThe central highlands of Peru: Ancash, Huánuco, Pasco, Junín and the highlands of Lima
On this page
  1. The Heartland
  2. Many Languages in Small Valleys
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

The Heartland

Central Quechua, or Quechua I in Torero's terms, is spoken by perhaps a million people in the valleys of central Peru. It never became a colonial 'general language', so it stayed split into many local varieties that can differ sharply from valley to valley and from the Quechua of Cusco. A characteristic feature is the lengthening of a vowel to mark the first person, where Quechua II uses -y: Ancash wasii 'my house' against Cusco wasiy. In Huanca, the variety of the Mantaro valley, the old uvular stop *q has become a glottal stop.

Throughout the 20th century many speakers shifted to Spanish, and several varieties now have few young speakers.

02

Many Languages in Small Valleys

Because Central Quechua was never standardised, each valley kept its own form, and the differences are often as large as those between separate Romance languages. Speakers of Ancash-Huailas and of Huanca in the Mantaro valley can have real difficulty understanding each other, and both find the Quechua of Cusco hard going. Catalogues such as Ethnologue therefore list Central Quechua not as one language but as more than a dozen.

One recurring feature is contrastive vowel length, which Southern Quechua lacks. Long vowels arise both from the first-person marker described above and from older sequences that collapsed, so that length alone can distinguish words. Many Central varieties also keep a retroflex affricate, a ch made with the tongue curled back, which Southern Quechua has merged with ordinary ch.

In 1975, when Peru made Quechua an official language, the government commissioned grammars and dictionaries of six regional varieties, published in 1976 with the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Three of them described Central or neighbouring northern varieties: Ancash-Huailas, Junín-Huanca and Cajamarca-Cañaris. These remain standard references, and they gave the central varieties a written form independent of Cusco for the first time. Bilingual schooling has since used them, although materials are scarce and the pressure towards Spanish in the towns remains strong.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Peruc. 750,000–1 million

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Split1963 – 1964

    Quechua I recognised

    Gary Parker and Alfredo Torero, working independently, show that the central Peruvian varieties form a distinct primary branch, which Parker calls Quechua B and Torero Quechua I. The finding reverses the idea that Cusco was the centre of the family.

    Figures · Alfredo Torero (1930–2004)

    Sources (2)
    • Torero, Alfredo. 1964. Los dialectos quechuas. Anales Científicos de la Universidad Agraria 2: 446–478.
    • Parker, Gary J. 1963. La clasificación genética de los dialectos quechuas. Revista del Museo Nacional 32: 241–252.
  2. Sound lawColonial period or earlierContested

    Huanca *q becomes a glottal stop

    *q → ʔ (*qam → ʔam 'you')

    In Huanca Quechua of the Mantaro valley the uvular stop *q is lost as a full consonant and becomes a glottal stop: *qam 'you' > ʔam. When the change happened is not known.

    Compare with other weakening and voicing across families →

    Sources (1)
    • Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo. 1987. Lingüística quechua. Cusco: Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas.
  3. Extinction20th century

    Shift to Spanish

    Migration to Lima, schooling in Spanish and the stigma attached to Quechua lead many Central Quechua communities to stop passing the language on. Some local varieties are now spoken only by older people.

    Sources (1)
    • Adelaar, Willem F. H. with Pieter C. Muysken. 2004. The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.