- Official language in
- Bolivia, Peru
- Also spoken in
- Chile, Argentina
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
Aymara is spoken mainly in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, and also in Argentina. Bolivia's constitution names Aymara as one of the country's official languages, alongside Spanish and dozens of other indigenous languages. Peru's constitution similarly makes Quechua, Aymara, and other native languages official in the areas where they predominate, next to Spanish. In Peru, Aymara is the second most-spoken native language after Quechua.
Sources
- Bolivia (Plurinational State of)'s Constitution of 2009 (English translation) — Constitute Project — Article 5 (official languages)
- Peru's Constitution of 1993 with Amendments through 2021 (English translation) — Constitute Project — Article 48 (official languages)
- Coler, Matt; Emlen, Nicholas Q.; Banegas-Flores, Edwin (2020). "Vowel deletion in two Aymara varieties." Italian Journal of Linguistics, 32(1), p.151-174 — p.152, Introduction (countries where Aymara is spoken)
- Zevallos, Rodolfo; Camacho, Luis; Melgarejo, Nelsi (2022). "Huqariq: A Multilingual Speech Corpus of Native Languages of Peru for Speech Recognition." arXiv:2207.05498 — §3.2 Aymara (countries; second most-spoken native language in Peru)
Script & pronunciation
This app's Aymara cards use three vowels — a, i, and u — each of which can also be pronounced long. Consonants come in three parallel series: a plain series, an aspirated series marked by an h after the consonant (as in ph, th, kh, and the affricate chh), and an ejective series marked by an apostrophe (p', t', k', ch'). This app's cards show both the aspirated and the ejective series together, as in Kawkhansa ("where"), with the aspirated kh, and jak'a ("near"), with the ejective k'.
Sources
- Zevallos, Rodolfo; Camacho, Luis; Melgarejo, Nelsi (2022). "Huqariq: A Multilingual Speech Corpus of Native Languages of Peru for Speech Recognition." arXiv:2207.05498 — §3.2 Aymara (three vowels, long vowels, aspirated and ejective consonant series)
Grammar essentials
Aymara's basic word order is subject–object–verb, as in this app's Naya aplicación-x ukam lurawi ("I made this app"), where the subject naya ("I") comes first and the verb lurawi ("made") comes last. Aymara word formation is almost entirely based on suffixation, with no prefixes. Negation combines a word meaning "not" — hani in academic descriptions, spelled jani in this app's cards — placed before the negated part of the sentence, with a suffix -ti attached at the end of it, as in this app's Isixa janiw q'umakiti — wasitata t'axst'am ("My laundry is not clean — can you rewash it?"). That same suffix -ti also turns a sentence into a yes/no question, as in this app's Bolsa muntati? ("Do you want a bag?"), whose card glosses munta as "you want" and -ti as the question-forming ending. A separate suffix, -wa, closes ordinary statements as a declarative marker; this app's Aka aplicaciónax inakiwa ("This app is free") ends its verb with -wa, which its card glosses as marking assertion.
Sources
- Adelaar, Willem F. H. (2017). "A Typological Overview of Aymaran and Quechuan Language Structure." Ch. 21 in The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology (Aikhenvald & Dixon, eds.), Cambridge University Press — §21.1 (p.655-656, SOV order, suffixation only); §21.12 (p.672-673, negation hani...-ti and the same clitic in polar questions); §21.13 (p.674, -wa as declarative marker)