Quechuan languages

Quechua (; Spanish: [ˈketʃwa]), also called Runa simi in Southern Quechua (pronounced [ˈɾʊna ˈsɪmɪ], 'people's language'), is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral "Proto-Quechua" language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers in 2004, and just under 7 million from the most recent census data available up to 2011. Approximately 13.9% (3.7 million) of Peruvians speak a Quechua language.

Although Quechua began expanding many centuries before the Incas, that previous expansion also meant that it was the primary language family within the Inca Empire. The Spanish tolerated its use until the Peruvian struggle for independence in the 1780s. As a result, various Quechua languages are still widely spoken, being the majority language in a number of regions of Peru, the most-spoken or co-official language in many others, and, as the Kichwa language, the second most-spoken language of Ecuador, after Spanish.

History

The Quechua linguistic homeland may have been Central Peru. It has been speculated that it may have been used in the Chavín and Wari civilizations.

Quechua had already expanded across wide ranges of the central Andes long before the expansion of the Inca Empire. The Inca were one among many peoples in present-day Peru who already spoke a form of Quechua, which in the Cuzco region particularly has been heavily influenced by Aymara, hence some of the characteristics that still distinguish the Cuzco form of Quechua today.