Aymaran (also Jaqi or Aru) is one of the two dominant language families in the central Andes alongside Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara language, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru language and Kawki language languages of Peru.
Hardman (1978) proposed the name Jaqi for the family of languages, Alfredo Torero Aru 'to speak', and Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino Aymaran, with two branches, Southern (or Altiplano) Aymaran and Central Aymaran (Jaqaru and Kawki). Other names for the family are Jaqui (also spelled Haki) and Aimara.
Quechuan languages, especially those of the south, share a large amount of vocabulary with Aymara, and the languages have often been grouped together as Quechumaran. This proposal is controversial, however; the shared vocabulary may be better explained as intensive borrowing due to long-term contact.
Family division
The Aymaran family of languages includes:
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Aymara language. Southern and Central dialects divergent and sometimes considered separate languages.
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Jaqaru (Haqearu, Haqaru, Haq'aru, Aru).
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Kawki (Cauqui, Cachuy).
Aymara has approximately 2.2 million speakers; 1.7 million in Bolivia, 350,000 in Peru, and the rest in Chile and Argentina. Jaqaru has approximately 725 speakers in central Peru, and Kawki had 9 surviving speakers as of 2005. Kawki is little documented though its relationship with Jaqaru is quite close. Initially, they were considered by Martha Hardman (on very limited data at the time) to be different languages, but all subsequent fieldwork and research has contradicted that and demonstrated that they are mutually intelligible but divergent dialects of a single language.
History
The Aymaran linguistic homeland may have been the southern Peruvian coast, particularly the area of the
Paracas culture and the later
Nazca culture. Aymaran speakers then migrated into the highlands and played a role in the
Huari Empire. Sometime between the collapse of the
Tiwanaku Empire and the rise of the Inca, some Aymaran speakers invaded the
Altiplano, while others moved to the northwest, presumably ancestral to the Jaqaru and influencing
Quechua I. Aymaran varieties were documented in the southern Peruvian highlands (including Lucanas, Chumbivilcas, and Condesuyos) by the 1586 Relaciones geográficas, and they appear to have persisted up until the 19th century. The eastern and southern Bolivian highlands were still predominantly Aymara-speaking around 1600, but may have adopted Quechua as a result of development of the mining industry.
[Adelaar, Willem F. H.. Chapter Languages of the Middle Andes in Areal-typological Perspective. Germany, De Gruyter, 2012.]
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Kechua languages,
Kunza language,
Leco language, Uru-Chipaya,
Arawak languages, and
Pukina language families due to contact.
Phonology
Vowels
Aymaran languages have only three
phonemic Vowel , which in most varieties of Aymara and Jaqaru are distinguished by length. Length is commonly transcribed using diaereses in Aymara and length diacritics in Jaqaru.
Consonants
Though Aymaran languages vary in terms of consonant inventories, they have several features in common. Aymara and Jaqaru both contain phonemic stops at
Labial consonant, alveolar,
palatal,
Velar consonant and
uvular points of articulation. Stops are distinguished by ejective and aspirated features. Both also contain alveolar, palatal, and
Velar consonant fricatives and several central and lateral approximants.
Morphophonology
Aymaran languages differ from Quechuan languages in that all verbal and nominal roots must end in a vowel, even in loanwords: Spanish
habas ("beans") became Aymara
hawasa and Jaqaru
háwaša. This feature is not found in other Andean languages.
Like Quechuan languages, Aymaran languages are highly agglutinative. However, they differ in that many agglutinative suffixes trigger vowel suppression in the preceding roots. An example is the loss of final vowel in the word apa ("to take"), when it becomes ap-su ("to take out").
See also
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Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift
Bibliography
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Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The languages of the Andes. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press.
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Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. .
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Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.
