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Aymara
Aymar aru
Spoken in:Bolivia, Peru and Chile. The Republic of Bolivia (República de Bolivia) named after Simón Bolívar, is a Landlocked country in central South America. Peru (Perú Piruw Piruw officially the Republic of Peru ( reˈpuβlika del peˈɾu is a country in western South America. Chile, officially the Republic of Chile ( Spanish:) is a country in South America occupying a long and narrow Coastal strip wedged between the
Total speakers:2,227,642 speakers of Aymara.
Language family:Aymaran
 Aymara
Language codes
ISO 639-1:ay
ISO 639-2:aym
ISO 639-3:variously:
aym – Aymara (generic)
ayr – Central Aymara
ayc – Southern Aymara 
Geographic Distribution of the Aymara language.
Geographic Distribution of the Aymara language. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Aymaran (also Jaqi, Aru, Jaqui, Aimara, Haki) is one of the two dominant Language families of the central Andes ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Aymara (Aymar aru) is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. Aymaran (also Jaqi, Aru, Jaqui, Aimara, Haki) is one of the two dominant Language families of the central Andes The Aymara are a native Ethnic group in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America; about 1 The Andes form the world's longest exposed Mountain range. They lie as a continuous chain of highland along the western coast of South America. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over a million speakers. Indigenous languages of the Americas (or Amerindian Languages are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and [1][2] Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia. Quechua ( Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America. Peru (Perú Piruw Piruw officially the Republic of Peru ( reˈpuβlika del peˈɾu is a country in western South America. The Republic of Bolivia (República de Bolivia) named after Simón Bolívar, is a Landlocked country in central South America. It is also spoken to a much lesser extent in Chile and in the Northwest Argentina. Chile, officially the Republic of Chile ( Spanish:) is a country in South America occupying a long and narrow Coastal strip wedged between the For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Argentina topics.

Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely-spoken neighbour, Quechua. Quechua ( Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America. This claim, however, is disputed — although there are indeed similarities, 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. In Linguistics, an areal feature is any typological feature shared by languages within the same geographical area

The Aymara language is an agglutinating and to a certain extent polysynthetic language, and has a subject-object-verb word order. An agglutinative language is a Language that uses Agglutination extensively most Words are formed by joining Morphemes together Polysynthetic languages are highly Synthetic languages ie languages in which words are composed of many Morphemes Definition The degree of In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually

Contents

Etymology

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. Folk etymology is a term used in two distinct ways A commonly held misunderstanding of the origin of a particular word a False 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]

Phonology

Vowels

Aymara has three phoneme vowels (/a i u/, which distinguish two degrees of length. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract The high vowels are lowered to mid height before uvular consonants (/i/ → [e], /u/ → [o]).

Consonants

As for the consonants, Aymara has phonemic stops at the labial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular points of articulation. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants 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. Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the Glottis during the articulation of another sound Aymara also has a trilled /r/, and an alveolar/palatal contrast for nasals and laterals, as well as two semivowels (/w/ and /j/).

 BilabialDental/
Alveolar		Post-
alveolar		PalatalVelarUvular
Plosiveunaspiratedpttʃkq
aspiratedpʰtʰtʃʰkʰqʰ
ejectivepʼtʼtʃʼkʼqʼ
Fricativesxχ
Nasalmnɲ
Flapr
Laterallʎ
Approximantjw

Stress

Stress is usually on the penult (the syllable before the last one), but long vowels may shift it. In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Postalveolar consonants are Consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the Alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed In Phonetics, ejective consonants are Voiceless Consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the Glottis. Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the In Phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of Consonantal sound which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants

Geographical distribution

There are more than 2. 5 million Bolivian speakers, 420,000 Peruvian speakers and 15,000 Chilean speakers. [4] 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; today, many Peruvian and Bolivian communities which were once Aymara-speaking speak Quechua. [5]

Dialects

There is some degree of regional variation within the Aymara language, although all the dialects are mutually intelligible. [6] 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. Lake Titicaca is a lake located on the border of Bolivia and Peru. Nuestra Señora de La Paz is the administrative Capital of Bolivia, as well as the departmental capital of La Paz Department. 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. Puno is a city in southeastern Peru, located on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake at 3860 m (12421 ft above sea level 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. Iquique (iˈkike is a city in northern Chile, capital of Tarapacá Region, on the Pacific coast, west of the Atacama Desert and the Oruro may refer to Oruro Bolivia - capital of the Bolivian Oruro Department Oruro Department - one of nine departments in Bolivia It is also found in northern Potosí and southwest Cochabamba, but it is slowly being replaced by Quechua in those regions. Potosí is a city the capital of the department of Potosí in Bolivia. Cochabamba is a city in central Bolivia, located in a Valley bearing the same name in the Andes Mountain range. 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 southwest Peru and in the northeastern tip of Chile. History Francisco Antonio De Zela, a royal accountant (similar in function to a modern-day income tax auditor initiated the push for Peruvian Independence from Spain Moquegua (founded as Villa de Santa Catalina de Guadalcázar del Valle de Moquegua) is a city in southern Peru located in the Moquegua Region, of which it is the [7] .

The wider language family

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. Tiwanaku (Spanish spellings Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu) is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia. 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. Aymaran (also Jaqi, Aru, Jaqui, Aimara, Haki) is one of the two dominant Language families of the central Andes

Unique features

The language has attracted interest because it is based on a three value logic system, and thus supposedly has better expressiveness than many other languages based on binary logic. A ternary, three-valued or trivalent logic (sometimes abbreviated 3VL) is a term to describe any of several Multi-valued logic systems in which In Logic, the semantic principle of bivalence states that every proposition takes exactly one of two truth values (e

It is cited by the author Umberto Eco in The Search for the Perfect Language as a language of immense flexibility, capable of accommodating many neologisms. Umberto Eco (born 5 January 1932 is an Italian Medievalist, semiotician, Philosopher, literary critic and Novelist, best A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been Ludovico Bertonio published Arte de la lengua aymara in 1603. Ludovico Bertonio (born 1552 at Rocca Contrada near Ancona; died at Lima, Peru, 3 August[[ 625]] was an Italian Jesuit He remarked that the language was particularly useful for expressing abstract concepts. In 1860 Emeterio Villamil de Rada suggested it was "the language of Adam" (la lengua de Adán). Year 1860 ( MDCCLX) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Leap year starting Guzmán de Rojas has suggested that it be used as an intermediary language for computerised translation. Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation

Linguistic and gestural analysis by Núñez and Sweetser also assert that the Aymara have an apparently unique, or at least very rare, understanding of time, and is, besides Quechua, one of very few languages where speakers seem to represent the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. Rafael E Núñez is a professor of Cognitive science at the University of California San Diego and a proponent of Embodied cognition. Eve Sweetser is a professor of Linguistics at the University of California Berkeley, and an important figure in the field of Cognitive linguistics Quechua ( Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America. 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"). In Cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea or Conceptual domain in terms of another for example understanding Quantity 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, and possibly the Chinese word 未來 (lit. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States not yet come, meaning 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. Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997

Many languages, including English and Chinese, have words like before/前 and after/後 that are (currently or archaically) polysemous between 'front/earlier' or 'back/later'. Polysemy ( or) (from the Greek πολυσημεία = "multiple meaning" is the capacity for a sign (e This seemingly refutes 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. Quechua ( Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Bolivia: Idioma Materno de la Población de 4 años de edad y más- UBICACIÓN, ÁREA GEOGRÁFICA, SEXO Y EDAD. 2001 Bolivian Census. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, La Paz - Bolivia.
  2. ^ The other native American languages with more than one million speakers are: Nahuatl, Quechua, and Guaraní. Nahuatl ( is a group of related languages and dialects of the Aztecan or Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family Quechua ( Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America. Guaraní /gwaraˈni/ (local name avañe'ẽ) is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí-Guaraní subfamily of the
  3. ^ Rodolfo Cerron-Palomino, Lingüística Aimara, Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas”, Lima, 2000, pp 34-6.
  4. ^ Cerron-Palomino, 2000, pp 68-70.
  5. ^ Xavier Albó, "Andean People in the Twentieth Century," in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. III: South America, ed. Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 765-871.
  6. ^ SIL's Ethnologue.com and the ISO designate a Central Aymara dialect found in between Lake Titicaca and the Pacific Coast in southern Peru and a Southern Aymara dialect found in western Bolivia and northeast Chile. These classifications, however, are not based upon academic research and are probably a misinterpretation of Cerron-Palomino's classification of the language family.
  7. ^ Lucy Therina Briggs, Dialectal Variation in the Aymara Language of Bolivia and Peru, Dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, 1976; Adalberto Salas and María Teresa Poblete, "El aimara de Chile (fonología, textos, léxico)", Revista de Filoogía y Linüistica de la Universidad de Costa Rica, Vol XXIII: 1, pp 121-203, 2, pp 95-138; Cerron-Palomino, 2000, pp 65-8, 373.

References

Further reading

See also

External links

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