When I was younger I was really fascinated to learn that Quechua was still spoken today. You might know Quechua as the language of the Incan Empire, or the French sporting goods company. It’s a fascinating language with evidentiality markers, bipersonal verb conjugations and lots of other features that are catnip for a grammar nerd like me. I could go on for days, but that would be missing the point I want to make here, which is that Quechua isn’t a language. Well that's a bit misleading. I should say that Quechua isn't a single language. In reality, Quechua is a term that people often use to refer to a whole group of related languages spoken throughout the Andes region of South America, many varieties of which are not mutually intelligible with each other. A rough sketch of where 'Quechua' is spoken A linguist much more informed than I am once explained it to me that using the term Quechua the way we do was like calling all the West Slavic languages (thi...
A blog about the impact of politics on langugae