Pacaraos Quechua is a variety of
Quechua spoken until the middle of the 20th century in the community of
Pacaraos (
Pacaraos District
Pacaraos District is one of twelve districts of the province Huaral in Peru.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the inhabitants of the village of Pacaraos spoke Pacaraos Quechua
Pacaraos Quechua is a variety of Quechua
Quechua may refer ...
) in the
Peruvian
Lima Region in the
Chancay valley up to 3000 m above sea level.
The Quechua of Pacaraos was investigated by the Dutch linguist
Willem F. H. Adelaar in the 1970s, when it was still spoken by women in their sixties and older. Around the year 2000 there were possibly no active speakers left, but there are probably some people with passive knowledge who grew up with their grandparents.
A peculiarity of Pacaraos Quechua is that it does not belong to any of the two main branches of the Quechua family (
Waywash
Quechua I, also known as Quechua Wáywash, or Quechua B,Alberto Escobar (comp.) '' El reto del multilingüismo en el Perú'' (1972) is one of the two branches or genealogical groups of the Quechua languages. It is composed of a great diversity of ...
and
Wampuy). In contrast to other Quechua varieties, the Quechua of Pacaraos has phonemic word accent, which is either on the penultimate or the ultimate syllable. Like the Waywash varieties but in contrast to Wampuy, it distinguishes between short and long vowels.
The first person of the verb and the possessive form for nouns is expressed by accent on the last syllable and addition of -y, e.g.: tarpuy "to sow" (root: tarpu-) - tarpúy "I sow" (cf. Waywash: , Wampuy: tarpuni) - tarpunki "you sow" - tarpun "he/she sows".
The vocabulary of Pacaraos Quechua corresponds in part with
Southern Quechua (e.g. kunan "now"), and partially with Waywash (e.g. yarku- "to rise", akshu, "potato"). Furthermore there are many loanwords from
Jaqaru or other
Aymaran languages (e.g. achara "old", uni- "to hate", wilka "sun"). Some words of Pacaraos Quechua are unique, e.g. arapu- "to answer", "clothes", "both".
Pacaraos Quechua shares many suffixes with Waywash, e.g. -ĉaw "in, on, at" or , -piq "from, out of". The accusative suffix -kta has a long form -kta and a short form -k, the latter being combined with final stress. The negation suffix -su (<*-chu) is often shortened to -s.
The gerund is expressed with -shpa, as in all Wampuy varieties.
The /q/ of Proto-Quechua is a fricative, at the end of a syllable or near a voiceless consonant it is voiceless
and otherwise voiced
In contrast to other Quechua varianties it distinguishes between a simple
(tap, e.g. "they both") and a vibrant
r(e.g. rraqak "girl"). As in some dialects of
Ancash Quechua
Ancash Quechua, or Huaylay (Waylay), is a Quechua variety spoken in the Peruvian department of Ancash by approximately 1,000,000 people. Like Wanka Quechua, it belongs to Quechua I (according to Alfredo Torero).
Classification
The Ancash Quech ...
/č/ has become
(e.g. say "that") and /s/ has turned to
(e.g. huti "name", haĉa "plant", "snow"). The
retroflex /ĉ/ has been preserved.
Bibliography
* Adelaar, Willem. 1987. Morfología del Quechua de Pacaraos. Lima, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
* Willem F. H. Adelaar, Pieter Muysken (2006). The languages of the Andes, pp. 242–249. A sketch of a Peruvian Quechua Dialect (Pacaraos).
References
{{Languages of Peru
Languages of Peru
Quechuan languages