Links to the Best Quechua Websites

• A very full and highly informative Quechua language site by Serafín Coronel-Molina, a Peruvian native Quechua-speaker and linguist, author of the 2^nd edition of the Lonely Planet Quechua Phrasebook, and who now teaches Quechua in the USA: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html

• For a good introduction (through the level of linguistics can get quite advanced), try the main entry on Quechua in the open web encyclopaedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua.

• An excellent and very smart multilingual site by Philip Jacobs, with pages not only in English but also in Quechua (bravo!), German, Spanish and French: www.runasimi.de

• In Spanish, on the Quechua of Cochabamba, with some pages in French (the author is French, Jean‑Luc Ancey): http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm.

• For a whole suite of websites on the history and archaeology of all the main indigenous cultures of Peru (not just the Quechua people by any means!), with a wealth of beautifully presented information, link to the homepage of the superb Centro Cultural Perú Virtual website, with its links in the right‑hand column: www.perucultural.org.pe. The same links and a few more are available at: http://revistandina.perucultural.org.pe/enlaces.htm.

• A great website on the other main Andean language family, Aymara, is Aymara Uta website at www.aymara.org. Particularly recommended is the page with an excellent introduction to the Aymara language family.

• The entire text of two major Quechua dictionaries is now available for download free, or online search, at: www.runasimipi.org.

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Top Sites in Languages Other Than English

• The full Spanish version of my own Sounds of the Andean Languages website: www.quechua.org.uk/Sounds.

• An excellent and very smart multilingual site by Philip Jacobs, with pages not only in English but also in Quechua (bravo!), German, Spanish and French: www.runasimi.de

• In Spanish, as well as English and with some texts in Quechua, the very full site by the Peruvian Serafín M. Coronel-Molina: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html

• In Spanish, on the Quechua of Cochabamba, with some pages in French (the author is French, Jean‑Luc Ancey): http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm.

• The Spanish version of my own general Quechua website (a smaller selection of pages than in the English version, but also some not on the English site): www.quechua.org.uk/Sp/Main/.

• In Spanish, for background on history and archaeology the superb and huge Centro Cultural Perú Virtual website (see above), with its links in the right‑hand column: www.perucultural.org.pe.

• In Quechua itself, there aren’t many other websites yet, but one is www.quechuanetwork.org, also with English and Spanish pages.

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General Information on Quechua Language

• A very full site with resources for learning Quechua, university courses and bibliography, by Serafín M. Coronel-Molina: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html

• http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/quechua.html

• On the Quechua of Cochabamba (Bolivia), by Jean-Luc Ancey, pretty similar to Cuzco Quechua, and with very good details on phonetics and alphabets: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm

• One of the earliest good Quechua sites on the web, by Mark Rosenfelder, with a nice general introduction for non-specialists: www.zompist.com/quechua.html.

• A great site about the famous Huarochirí Quechua manuscript of 1608(?), by Frank Salomon, who co-wrote the book on the manuscript. This website includes excerpts of the text in Quechua with facing Spanish and English translations, a full bibliography relating to manuscript, and some other materials relevant to Quechua.

• A site for a telecommunications programme for Andean communities?! But anyway some good information on Quechua: www.quechuanetwork.org, and they’ll send you regular email newsletters in Quechua.

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Quechua Linguistics

Other than my own pages. particularly those on Quechua Linguistics and Hot Issues in Quechua, try:

• The now very extensive Wikipedia pages in Quechua (unified spelling system) at qu.wikipedia.org.

• A full and informative Quechua language site by Serafín Coronel-Molina, a Peruvian native Quechua-speaker and linguist, author of the 2^nd edition of the Lonely Planet Quechua Phrasebook, and who teaches Quechua in the USA: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/quechua.html

• A site with good details on Quechua phonetics and the competing 3- and 5-vowel alphabets, based on the Quechua of Cochabamba (Bolivia), pretty similar to that of Cuzco: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm

• Besides the nice general introduction for non-specialists at: www.zompist.com/quechua.html there are some other pages on this site highly recommended also for linguists, on how to establish whether languages – including Quechua – are or are not related to others. And for a bit of informative fun too, try the linguistics rubric on his main page.

• A pretty cool page on ten weird and wonderful languages, including Quechua

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Quechua Language and Dialect Classification

The following sites are mostly on the classification of Quechua as related to other languages (i.e. not much at all!) and of Quechua dialects between each other.

• My page on my current research project, a comparative study of some twenty Quechua and Aymara Varieties with a map of Quechua dialects and the Quechua family tree.

• The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas

• The linguasphere site, where you can download a detailed dialect classification of the various dialects of Quechua.

• www.aymara.org with many serious linguistic articles on the Andean languages downloadable.

• Amerind Language Links

• Amerind languages: Dictionaries, Grammars, and other online Resources

• Language and dialect classification for Quechua – the Ethnologue homepage www.sil.org/ethnologue/, including a dialect classification and many dialect maps, may be of great interest to linguists. I should point out, though, that most linguists have very strong and well-founded reservations about the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) / Instituto Lingüístico de Verano (ILV), and indeed like myself will have nothing to do with them, because of their close links to missionary organisations (who largely fund the SIL). Their blinkered priority is bible translations for the so-called ‘unevangelised’ indigenous peoples (a repulsive concept in itself, with all the arrogant baggage that goes with it…), and all other aims lose out to this one. For one tiny example of the very damaging effects of their bible-first approach on work on the Andean languages, see Cerrón-Palomino (1992), particularly endnote 1.

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Quechua Practice On-Line: Lessons and Texts

• www.quechuanetwork.org will send you regular email newsletters in Quechua if you sign up.

• Email lists of Quechua speakers (beginners and advanced lists)

• Links to pages with text in Quechua

• A great site about the famous Huarochirí Quechua manuscript of 1608(?), by Frank Solomon, who co-wrote the book on the manuscript. This website includes excerpts of the text in Quechua with facing Spanish and English translations, a full bibliography relating to manuscript, and some other materials relevant to Quechua.

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Quechua

• The homepage of UCHPA – literally Ash(es) – the one group I know of who sing rock music in Quechua, from Ayacucho, Peru: http://www.uchpa.com.

• Page in Quechua and Spanish, with some Quechua literature

• Some more on-line texts are at: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm

• Basic Quechua lessons, in English and Spanish (widest range of reference info, well organised)

• 3 on-line Quechua lessons, in English

• 5 on-line Quechua lessons, in Spanish

• The entire text of two major Quechua dictionaries is now available for download free, or online search, at: www.runasimipi.org.

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Quechua by Country/Region

If you’re searching the internet for information on Ecuadoran and Argentinean Quechua, remember that it is generally known in those countries as Quichua instead (i.e. spelt with an i). Even in other regions, many people prefer this spelling.

• Quechua of Cochabamba (Bolivia), pretty similar to that of Cuzco: http://members.tripod.com/~jlancey/Quechua.htm

• Argentine Quechua – pages mostly in Spanish.

• Another Argentine Quechua website.

• The Cuzco Quechua Academy could be very useful if you're in Cuzco, but there are things it's best to know about them first ... see my page on this and get their link

• There is also a Quechua Academy of Cochabamba (Bolivia), I’m not sure whether they have a website, more information on this soon.

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Learning Quechua

• My page on learning Quechua, including University courses, and learning it in Cuzco and Bolivia, with some more specific links.

• Detailed info on University courses in Quechua around the world.

• Further page with information on six U.S. Universities with Quechua courses.

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Best Links Pages
lists of Quechua-related links

• A huge list of sites to do with Andean cultures (Quechua is under “Andean Languages”)

• A geocities list of Quechua sites

• Another geocities list, of Andean sites

• Anthro Net - the Andes

• www.aymara.org has a links page for the other big Andean language family, Aymara.

• Amerind Language Links

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Other Andean Languages

For a few introductory details on other Andean languages, see the following webpages on my site:

• Basic introduction to other Andean languages beside Quechua.

• My bibliography page for general Andean linguistics, with a note on the different competing spelling systems used for the Aymara languages.

The only major Andean language family still surviving is the one variously known as Jaqi, Aru or Aymara, which includes not just the Altiplano (or ‘southern’) Aymara, but the other member of the family, Jaqaru—Kawki still spoken (just!) in a few villages in the mountains of central Peru (Lima department.

• The Aymara Uta website www.aymara.org has an excellent introduction to the Aymara language family, a good bibliography, and many detailed linguistic articles on the Andean languages downloadable from it.

• Another good and extensive site on the Aymara family, with online lessons, courses, bibliographies and other resources, is run by the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara at www.ilcanet.org.

• On my Sounds of the Andean Languages section at www.quechua.org.uk/sounds you can hear and compare pronunciations in each of these, and read a little about the origins of the Aymara family.

• There’s my own basic Aymara bibliography page.

• The first, and for a long time only linguist to have worked intensively on the Jaqaru—Kawki language is Dr Martha Hardman, at the University of Florida. She is the author of the two core grammars on the language, and of various other works on the Aymara (which she prefers to call Jaqi) language family in general. Her personal webpage and personal publications list are also very useful for this language family.

• My own site includes this basic bibliography section, and an article (in Spanish) by Dante Oliva León on the endangered Central Aymara language Jaqaru—Kawki.

For the endangered languages of the Uru-Chipaya family spoken in a few villages in the Bolivian Altiplano, see also my basic introduction to other Andean languages. There’s probably very little on the net, but this site by a linguistic research group currently working on them is a good introduction: www.mpi.nl/DOBES/teams/Uru-Chipaya/Uru-Chipaya.html

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Quechua Cultural Background: History, Art, Fiestas, Beliefs, etc.

• There is also this nice site on the Incas, and their amazing ancestor civilisations, full of great pictures too: www.theincas.com

• A link to my page with a bit of information on a few traditional fiestas.

• Another of Frank Salomon’s sites, The Khipu Patrimony of Rapaz, is about a Quechua-speaking highland village in Peru which still keeps its traditional community khipu, the old Inca and pre-Inca system of record-keeping using knotted strings.

• For more on the original pre-Colombian khipu, see the website on Gary Urton’s research project on them at Harvard.

• There are plenty of websites on traditional Quechua art, particularly weaving – see the links pages above. One great place to go for this is around Sucre in Bolivia, both the Tarabuco area, and the Jalq’a area around Potolo and Maragua. Both areas are famous for their indigenous traditions, not least their superb weavings – even if you’re really not a fan, make this stuff the one type you see! The wonderful, haunting Jalq’a khuru and saqra motifs (imaginary wild animals and underworld gods, red on black) are classic indigenous American imagery. A visit to the excellent ASUR foundation museum in Sucre is very highly recommended for background information on both these areas (click here or here for their website). Tarabuco has a famous, if rather touristy, market every Sunday. The Jalq’a area especially is in any case a fascinating region, with craters, dinosaur footprints, Inca trails, and superb mid-altitude Andean scenery including the Chataquila ridge – see the Bradt Publications book on Hiking in Peru and Bolivia. There’s a similar foundation now working with villagers in and around Cuzco too, with an office and showroom/‌shop on Avenida del Sol opposite the Post Office.

• The best markets to go to – though of course all are now increasingly catering for tourists as much as if not more than locals – are probably Pisac (P’isaq) near Cuzco in Peru, Tarabuco in Bolivia, and Otavalo in Ecuador.

• The homepage of Uchpa – literally ash(es) – the one group I know of who sing rock music in Quechua, from Ayacucho, Peru: http://www.uchpa.com.

• By the by, a page by a Quechua linguist from the USA on … US Interventions in Latin America – very worth reading!

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Other Useful Sites

• Cusco City Homepage

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