Introduction
This past summer, I traveled to Ayacucho , Peru to work at a clinic in a rural neighborhood. Peru is a nation struggling to reform its education, health care, and political systems from the civil war that began in the 1980s led by a communist group called the Shining Path.
While astonished by the political unrest in certain areas, I was also mesmerized by Peru 's coast, highlands, snow-capped mountains, jungle, and tropical rainforest. It was so unlike anything I had ever witnessed before; similarly, I was struck by the fact that Peru has two national languages: Quechua and Spanish. I am so accustomed to the monolingual tradition of the United States that such a policy amused me. Upon arriving, I learned that the speakers of these two languages are not social equals. Ayacucho is an impoverished city in the Andes Mountains ; its inhabitants are largely of indigenous descent and are by and large Quechua speakers. I also visited Lima , Peru 's capital, and did not hear a word of Quechua- only Spanish and English. The language a person speaks, I learned, is generally indicative of social status and the region in which they live.
Rocio Trinidad was born in 1976 in Lima , Peru . Her family is from Ancash, where her older generations dwell and speak Quechua. She learned several phrases to communicate with them, although Spanish was her first and primary language. She later acquired English in school, taking classes for eight years. After graduating 16 years ago, she has, for the first time, left Peru in order to pursue an American degree at Duke University . Her experiences with Spanish and Quechua illustrate many trends that are not uncommon in a society with two sets of morphemes and phonemes; she offers evidence that enables us to theorize whether or not two languages can realistically coexist.
Transcription
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Data Sample 1: Quechua makes a variety of sounds that the average English speaker can't reproduce without much practice. Because most of us have never been exposed to this unique combination of consonants and guttural sounds, here is a sample of counting (feel free to repeat!). |
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Data Sample 2: Rocio introducing herself;"China Cuchi"definition For instance, the first words I learned were, like bad words, like- I can say it?- China Cuchi is like China , por una chica pero de una manera de perspectiva [for a girl from a certain perspective], cuchi - the pig , el chancho, entonces es una mujer cochina , una mujer de la vida, una mujer sucia [so then a woman of “the life”, a dirty woman]. Después otra palabra que se usa mucha es… Raq'cha china . Raq'cha es cochina. China cochina . Debe decir “sucia raq'cha china ”. Es una palabra fuerte. Chica que no se baña, chica pestosa, ¿no? [Also another word that is used a lot is raq'cha china. Raq'cha is a pig. China cochina. It means dirty pig. It's a strong insult- a girl who doesn't bathe, a filthy girl, okay?]
Como sólo sé algunas palabras, es de, aprendí a decir “No sé hablar Quechua”, que es: Manum parla Kanki runa simita . [Seeing that I only know a few words, umm, I learned to say, “I don't speak Quechua”, which is: Manum parla Kanki runa simita. ]
En Perú, por ejemplo, hay mucha discriminación, y los apellidos Quechuas no son apellidos bien vistos. Entonces muchas personas se han cambiado, trágicamente, sus apellidos. Por ejemplo, Poma es "león" en castellano, y mucha gente se ha cambiado de Poma a "león." Así como gente se ha cambiado del Quispe al "Quimper," ¿no? Para eliminar su origen indígena, ¿no? Bueno, mi apellido es "Trinidad." No es un apellido, digamos, como para cambiarse. Entonces es un apellido mas de origen española, digamos. Pero, por la discriminación, la gente opta por cambiarlo. [In Peru , for example, there is a lot of discrimination, and Quechua last names are not well seen. So many people have changed, tragically, their last names. For example, Poma is "lion" in Spanish, and many people have changed from Poma to "Lion." In this way they have also changed from Quispe to Quimper , right? To eliminate their indigenous origins, yes? Well, my last name is Trinidad . It's not a name that can change, per say. So it's a name of more Spanish descent, we say. But, because of discrimination, people opt to change them. ]
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Analysis
The general understanding, and certainly my own before visiting Peru, is that the population of a country with two national languages would speak both by approximately the same percentage of people, that both would be understood by some government officials and even some significant portion of its inhabitants. Yet after listening to Rocio's account of learning language, I find that my hypotheses are far from correct. In fact, Rocio's case is far from uncommon, as explored later by James Tollefson. The meaning of her words speaks volumes: what does it imply about a language when it must be learned solely in order to communicate with older relatives? It means that at some point in the family's line, vertical transmission of Quechua ceased to be the predominant influencing force in language development and instead the young, language-absorbing pre-adolescents trained their ears to the horizontal transmission of Spanish.
Usually linguists, anthropologists, and other social scientists see this occur with immigrant children as families migrate to foreign countries, yet Rocio's family never left confines of the nation, nor did the other Spanish-speaking yet indigenous residents of Peru . Furthermore, Rocio is not fluent in Quechua, and it does not appear that the many city-dwellers like her will ever be. There is a vast divide in the Peruvian population. Urban areas function efficiently—in Spanish—while rural communities grapple with trying to teach their children the language of their heritage and of their immediate surroundings while simultaneously urging them to learn Spanish, the language necessary for trade and consequently a better life.
Not only is there a crevasse between the two cultures and seemingly separate populations, but the first Quechua words that come to mind as Rocio is asked to recite them are derogatory phrases. Quechua words are used as insults, suggesting that only Quechua words are low enough to describe the state of certain people. It seems clear at this point that Spanish is the prestige dialect, but the next piece of evidence is very conclusive: people with Quechua words as last names frequently change these words to Spanish, thereby changing their names. This was shocking to me; a name is one thing that stays static throughout our existence—it is the key to our identity, it is by what others know us as. While sad, it is logical that a person with a name in a language associated with poverty and no education would change that to enhance his or her perception and/or salary through the corrupted world of Peruvian politics.
How does one language become prestige? Why is the Quechua speaker not the social equal of Spanish speaker? The long-standing historical answer is that the Spanish conquered the Incas and made a violent show of teaching the indigenous people to speak Spanish. There is, however, a major difference between the two languages themselves that might lead to one being more favorable than another. Spanish, derived from Latin, evolved with a pre-existing alphabet, and its speakers had no trouble understanding the concept of an alphabet, phonemes, or morphemes.
Quechua, on the other hand, evolved on the roads high in the Andes Mountains , a society of builders, sheep herders, and soldiers. They created a method of record-keeping, known as a Quipu, which was a web of strings tied with a certain number of knots tied in certain places to manage trading and debts. Aside from this, however, there was no need to represent language with symbols, and thus Quechua evolved in a culture of primary orality. It was not until 1975 (yes, thirty years ago) that the official Quechua alphabet existed, and in 1983, panels debated before deciding that Quechua should have three, instead of five, vowels. Clearly its writing system is still evolving today, but even as this is being developed, it would appear as though the language itself is rapidly shrinking. “ Peru is once again approaching the use of a common language, as in Incan times, but is now doing so at the cost of bilingualism rather than by fostering it”, says James Tollefson. The numbers support him; Inés Pozzi-Escot produced a study that concluded that Peru has decreased from 35 percent monolingual non-Spanish speakers to 9 percent from 1940 to 1981—while in the same time frame, monolingual Spanish speakers have increased from 43 to 73 percent. She goes on to highlight that many Quechua speakers who move to cities are humiliated and ashamed to speak Quechua, saying “yo no intinti quichua”, in which their denial of understanding Quechua is betrayed by their heavy accent. This has contributed to another interesting trend: traditionally only men and sons go to cities to trade and do business, and with a prevalent machismo sentiment in the air and limited access to education, women are by and large the remaining monolingual speakers of Quechua.
Perhaps the Darwin approach can be used to illustrate the reasons for such rapid expansion of Spanish. I used to think that languages evolve but without the same reasons as behind species evolution. Now, however, it is clear that a literate society has an advantage over the one stuck on the “rudimentary” stages of primary orality, especially when the rest of the world is one based on a literate culture. Another clear indication that one language may be better suited, or “fitter”, than another is the number of Spanish words which are incorporated into the Quechua vocabulary each year—namely words related to economics and trade.
So how long can a country go on with two official languages if each day the population of those who speak solely one language shrinks? What happens when that 9 percent who only speak an indigenous language dwindles to zero? I personally can't see Quechua remaining an official language much longer without serious changes in the internal political and education systems, which is sad, but true. There are few reasons for those speakers to continue speaking their native languages, especially considering how convenient it would be to simply convert to the prestige dialect—the lingua franca for all of the country—and thus be understood by all. It also begs another interesting question: have percentages moved significantly in the numbers of those who are monolingual worldwide and those who are bilingual with English as a second language? Is it really possible for there to be a universal language, and if so, will English be it?
Sources:
Escobar, Ana María. Los Bilingües y el Castellano en el Perú . Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. 1990.
Tollefson, James W. Power and Inequality in Language Education . New York : Cambridge University Press. 1995.
“ Peru ”. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570790/Peru_(country).html# s1 . Internet Download: 11/12/05
Pozzi-Escot, Inés. Plan para la Castellanización de los Niños Quechuahablantes en el Perú . Lima: Centro de Investigación de Lingüística Aplicada. 1972.
About the Author
I was born and raised in Cincinnati, OH (go reds!) and love the place with all of my heart; you should definitely visit if you get a chance. One thing new people should know about me is my passion for language- I feel that there is nothing more powerful than the connection human beings can establish with one another by overcoming such a potentially isolating barrier as language. I have studied Spanish for nine years and want to major in it, and I also took up French two years ago (my dream is to take Arabic or Hindi). In terms of travel, my first real experience abroad was three years ago when I went to Mexico City to stay with a friend who moved there after middle school. I stayed for two weeks and felt like I really got a feel for the culture. A year and a half ago, I got the opportunity to spend Christmas, New Year, and a little extra time in France (6 days in Toulousse and 12 in Paris) with a good friend of mine and her (French) family. Lastly, I just got back this summer from a life-changing experience in Ayacucho, Peru where I volunteered in a hospital for two weeks and then visited Lima. It is one of the few places I've ever been able to say "yeah, I could live here" outside of Cincinnati. My use of information technology is competent, but I still have a lot to learn. As for music, I played piano for eight years (and really regret stopping), flute for three, choir for 4, and I love listening to all kinds of music. What I would really like to learn in this course is how language is a part of the self as much as it is to humans as a species. How does language influence identity, if it even does? How does the brain change so much as we mature that learning a new language becomes harder and harder? And many other things...