The Aymara FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction to the Website
  1. Who maintains this website? My name is Jorge Pedraza Arpasi and I am the peruvian native Aymara speaker who maintains this website, since 1994. Along these years we had fee.unicamp.br, xoom.com, geocities.com as our parent URLs and since July 2000 we are at aymara.org, we hope our definite place. I am not a Linguist, instead it I am a Professor of Mathematics and the manutention of this site is entirely based on my voluntary incidental work.
    On the other hand, my English learning process began a little late. Hence, I am not comfortable when I write in English. Despite my efforts I am conscius that my written English must have a great Spanish/Latino flavour and, possibly, many mistakes. Every time you find at this site an English error, excuse me please. And if you can it, send me the respective correction. Thanks.
  2. The maintainer belongs to an organization? Although the helping of many friends, until now, I am the unique reponsible for this site.
  3. What is the purpose of this site? The purpose of this site is to provide information about the following subjects of Aymara:
    • Aymara language It is the fundamental subject. In this site there are reprinted articles from different authors remarking the most important characteristics of this language such as its roots and suffix agglutination and its four person paradigm. Our goal is to have as complete as possible both on-line grammar and dictionaries Aymara/Español and Aymara/English. As first step we have a online dictionary based on the (Apache, PHP, MySQL) trio.
    • Aymara's People History Since there were not a writting system in the ancient Aymara culture, the Aymara ancient history is mainly re-constructed on the basis of the Spanish books published almost imediately after the Spanish conquering of the Inca empire. Another source are recent results of archeology and antropology. It seems that the Aymara history begins inside some place of central Asia and it continuates with Tiwanaku. After the Spanish conquest the history of Aymara people is blended with the history of the Quechua people. Their unique diffrence has been their languages. In all the reamins these people are identical specially in their suffering and backwarding in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Nowadays it is estimated that the 70% of the Aymara speakers are in the cities becoming bilinguals. Some few of them had left the poorness and even are important government officials of these countries. The cost(high) of this integration process is the decreasing rate of Quechua and Aymara speakers.
    • Aymara culture Also we are concerned with the ancient and modern Aymara culture showing their most important achievements.
  4. This site offers a translation service? The use of the interactive dictionaries of this site is without any constraint. However, if you have a translation problem which cannot be solved by our online dictionaries you can submit translation request taking care about the following
    • Aymara-->English The Aymara words must be submitted in the official alphabet "unico". We wont response if the words have not the right orthography. This because we would need a lot of guessing to check the wrong wrote words. For the sake to understand that, consider this situation: Suposse a person from Latvia asks you for the word "prorrteebiti" saying that it is an english word. Very few people will be capable to guess that the Latvian is asking about "production".
    • English-->Aymara We will do the traslation without any guarantee, only based on the "most aproximately" meaning criteria.
    • Payment The translation of texts with more than three (03) words will need a previous payment. This payment will be useful to cover the costs of this site (Remote webhosting, Local ISP, telephone line, etc).
  5. This site can be viewed by any browser? Yes, in this site we avoid the use of java because it demands a high effort of the client(visitor) computer. Rather it we use a simple HTML and for the dictionaries the server side language PHP. Thus, this site can be viewed with any browser including the text-baseds like the lynx.
Aymara Language
  1. Where is the geographical origin of Aymara? It is believed that Aymara language belongs to the Altaic family, from Asia, which has Turkic(Turkish), Mongolic(Mongolian) and Tungusic as its foremost members. Mongol language has a similar agglutinating properties with roots and suffixes as Aymara has.
  2. Why the name Aymara? It is almost right that the term "aymara" is dervation of the phrase Jaya mar aru, where jaya=far, mara= year, aru= language. Therefore, according to this, "aymara" would mean "ancient language".
  3. How many speak Aymara? According the last censuses of both Bolivia (1992) and Chile (1992) and Perú (1993) there are 1.237.658 Bolivian speakers of Aymara, 296.465 Peruvian speakers and 48.477 Chilean ones.
  4. Which are the languages of the same family of Aymara? There exists two dying languages: the Jaqaru and the Kawki. According to the 1993 census of Peru, the number of Jaqaru speakers must be less than 600 in the Tupe/Yauyos province(see Geografia Aymara) and there is not any signal on the living Kawki. These two languages have a similar structure of the Aymara, according to SIL documents, in a 75%.
  5. There exists an Aymara alphabet? Yes, there is a good official alphabet called "único" issued as the DS 20227 (Decreto Supremo) on 1984/05/09 by the Bolivian government. Also it was recognized by the RM 1218 (Resolución Ministerial) on 1985/11/18 by the Peruvian government. This alphabet has 26 consonants y 3 vowels.
  6. Why 3 vowels instead of 5? Because, in Aymara, the consonantes are dominants over the vowels. This means the vowels need to adaptate themselves(as allophones) to the consonants of their neighborhood. As an example take the word asu(=baby) whose last vowel is u. Close to the consonant x, in the word asuxa sounds as "asoxa"(in Spanish), while close the consonant m, in the word asuma sounds as "asuma"(in Spanish). Thus, in a five vowel system, for each consonant close the final vowel u of the word asu would need a rule to write it. From this, almost all the especialists agree that, a tree vowel system for Aymara is more convenient than a five vowel system.
  7. How is the stress in Aymara? Each Aymara word has an unique stressed syllable. Normally they are stressed next to last syllable. However the contracted words(with loss of the last vowel) may have the stress on the last syllable. For instance Kamisaraki by contraction becomes Kamisarak
  8. How is its four grammatical persons system? The Aymara has 4 grammatical persons: Singular: 1)Naya= I, 2)Juma= You, 3)Jiwasa= You and I, 4)Jupa= He/She. Plural: 1)Nänaka= We (interlocutor excluded) 2)Jumanaka=You, 3)Jiwasanaka= We (interlocutor included) 4)Jupanaka=They.
  9. In according to the existent categories (inflecting, agglutinating, isolating) in which category is the Aymara? The Aymara language is a system of roots(verbs, nouns, adjectives) and suffixes, thus it is in the agglutinating category. It has been shown that the Aymara has more than 130 suffixes. By composing adequately the roots and suffixes M.J. Hardman had estimated an Aymara vocabulary with more thant 363.394.720 words. Example of combination aruña(=to speak), then the aymara word aruskipasipxañanakasakipunirakïspawa(=It is my personal knowledge that it is necessary for all of us, including you, to make the effort to communicate) is a composition of 14 sufixes with the root aruña.
  10. There are books in Aymara? Since the readers interested on Aymara books are few, the publications are very limited. The main reasons for this poorness of readers are that the education system in both Bolivia, Peru and Chile is in Spanish; and on the other hand the few Aymara speakers who are able to read Aymara, by knowing the Aymara alphabet, have not financial conditions to support a possible Aymara books bussiness. However there are non governmental efforts from isolate organizations like RADIO SAN GABRIEL de LA PAZ, la voz del pueblo aymara. It is very significant to see that the entire transmission of this radio is in Aymara. The productors, the programmers, the broadcasters, etc. are authentic Aymara speakers and, furthermore, it has a little Aymara library selling Aymara books published by themselves.
  11. How is the trivalent logic in Aymara? All the European languages, included the English, obey the two-valued Aristotelian logic, i.e., any sentence may have only two values either true or false. Based on the three-valued logic pardigm of the Polish professor J. Lukasiewicz, Ivan Guzman de Rojas proposed a model of Aymara sentences with 3 values: true(jisa), false(jani) and maybe-true/maybe-false(ina).
  12. How is the linguistic relation between the Aymara and Quechua? There are a list with 190 words which are commons for both Aymara and Quechua. But, according to M.J. Hardman, a structural analysis of the respective grammars along a comparative analysis of the different regional dialects of the Quechua lead to conclude that such a list of common words must be a result of interligual borrows instead a common origin.
Aymara People's History
  1. The Aymara speakers are an particular ethnical goup? Ethnically they are from the same group who populated all the Americas since 12000 BC and who were mostly known as indians.
  2. How is the relationship between the Aymara people and the Titicaca lake? It is a relation which begins with the name "titicaca" which comes from to Aymara words titi(=cat), and qaqa(=grey colour), that is, titicaca means "the gray cat". The Titicaca plateau is over 12.000 feet above the sea level therefore it must have a non-living climate, but the waters of the lake warm all the region allowing to live millions of persons. After the Inca conquest, the region remains Aymara. Pedro Cieza de Leon tell us that this plateu was the most populated territory of the all Inca Empire. Under the Spanish domain began the penetration of the Quechua language by the North side. However, nowadays the Titicaca plateu is still majority Aymara.
  3. Out of the Titicaca plateau, what other places in the were inhabitated by Aymaras?In Peru, at Arequipa provinces (the Collaguas), at Apurimac provinces (the Aymaraes), at Cuzco provinces(the Canchis and the Canas), at Puno northeast provinces(Pucara, Putina, Ayaviri). All these provinces now are Quechua speakers. In Bolivia, at Potosí, Cochabamba, and Oruro, Chuquisaca. In the north of Argentina(Humahuaca) and all the north of Chile(Chuquicamata, Calama, Arica, Tarapaca).
  4. Tiwanaku spoke aymara? In the XIX century the frenchmen Castelnau and others proposed that the builders of Tiwanaku were from a dissapeared race, probably from Egypt, and the present Aymara "imbecilic race" had not any chance to be descendants of these skilled builders. On the other hand Arthur Posnansky asserted that Tiwanaku was the cradle of the american man. For him the builders of Tiwanaku migrate to other places of all the americas engendering all the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. Although this, Posnasky gave not any credit to the present indians inhabitating the Titicaca plateu as descendants of the builders of Tiwanaku. Recently the historian/anthropogist Alan Kolata is proposing a new theory based on new excavations and the experimentation of the "field raised" agricultural method. According to this theory Tiwanaku was a multilingual state with Aymara, Pukina and Uru/Chipaya living together in a harmonic way.
  5. After Tiwanaku, which were the most important Aymara states? The Aymara most important societies with independent political organizations were the Lupaqas, the Collas(Qullas), the Paqajes, the Carangas, the Canas, the Canchis, and the Charcas.
  6. Why the Aymara (region, people) is denotated by Colla? The Collas(Qullas) was one Aymara state, its most impressive vestige is the Sillustani ruins. Among the Aymara states, it seems that they were the first to resist the Inca expansion. Maybe this was the reason when the Incas conquered all this region and the south they called such a territory as Collasuyo (Qullasuyu). Pedro Cieza de Leon followed such a denomination, that is, for him Colla meant all the Aymara people and region.
  7. How was the Inca empire conquest of the Aymara people? Another question with non accurate answers. One hand of historians say that the Inca empire attached the Aymara people in a pacific and respectfully way and the empire learned and took the Aymara cultura anologously as the Romans took the Greek culture. On the other hand some other historians theorize that the conquest of the Aymara states were after bloody wars and under the Inca dominance there were many uprisings. Whatever the right version on the Inca's dominance, a fact is: for some reason the Incas did not were able to impose the imperial Quechua language over the Aymara language, at least not around the Titicaca lake.
  8. How was the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire? The conquest of the enormous Inca empire began when a bunch of one hundred and half Spaniards, suposedly attending a party invitation of the Inca emperor, deceived and took him as hostage. Such a situation was a completely new one because in the theocratic Inca state its emperor wa believed as a god. The astonished Inca army was unable to have a quick reaction to face such a crucial circumstance. Meanwhile these few Spaniards were able to do alliances with some native nations conquered before by the Incas. These nations saw the Spaniards as the warlords to lead them to its independence from the Incas. After murdering the Inca emperor, the Spaniards allied with thousands of native fighters, especially from the Cañaris and the Wankas, were invincible in the decisive battles. A few years after the comsummation of the conquest, much of these native allied were very repentant from its fatal mistake, but was too late.
  9. How was the situation of the Aymara people after the Spanish conquest? Under the Spanish rule the status of the Aymara people and all the other native people was even worse than the African slaves because these last, at least had a money price. The natives(indiada) were considered objects found into the encomiendas and completely free for the Spanish lord of such encomienda. So they were forced to do the most harsh/dangerous work at the mines where millions of natives died, especially at Potosi. This was a real genocide committed by Spain which needs, at least, a formal statement of both repentance and apologies.
  10. Why the Aymara people are divided into three diferent countries? Immediatly after the last battle of the independence war in 1824, the entire territory where live the Aymara people was inside the Peruvian Republic. One year later in 1825, the Alto Peru region separates from Peru becoming the Republic of Bolivia. Such separation broke the Titicaca plateau and hence the Aymara people in two chunks, each one belonging to two different countries. Years later, in 1879 broke out the war of Chile against both Bolivia and Peru. Chile won the war and hence it conquered some Aymara regions from Bolivia and Peru. In this way, nowadays the Aymara people are divided into three countries.
  11. How was/is the situation of the Aymara people under the rule of the republics? With the arise of the new republics the supossed enhancement of the Aymara and other native people was not real. Furthermore, some historians think that it was worse than the Spanish colonial times. Until the first half of the XX century; the pongos, almost slave indian servants, were very common into the houses of rich white hacendados. Presently the new native Aymara speakers mostly born in remote regions. Thus, for the improvement of their lives they are forced to go to the urban centers where, soon they feel silly because their Aymara origin. The Bolivian/Peruvian/Chilean Spanish speaker societes do not tolerate the native languages. Hence, the urbanized native Aymara speaker is forced to hide its mother tongue before the society and its sons. This results in the high level of decreasing rate of Aymara speakers.
  12. Which one is the main economical activity of the Aymara people? There is not an accurate information on this. But it is rougly estimated that the 80% of Aymara speakers live at the cities with informal/peripherical jobs. Of course, they practice the bilingualism. On the other hand the remainders 20% are living in the rural zones managing small and poor farms.
  13. There exist representative organizations fro Aymara people? During almost all the years of the XX century there were organizations claiming to be representatives of the Aymara and other native indians. The people have a very limited confidence on the leaders of these organizations. This happens because these supposed leaders abandoned to native cause after they had got benefits for himselves. On the other hand, it is very significant notice that there are some people with Aymara/native origin enjoying good social positions after either working or studying hardly. Because their honesty, they did not used the Aymara cause in their careers.
  14. Which Latin American countries have native indian majority? They are Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia. The indians and mestizos in each one of these 5 countries are over 80% of their populations.
  15. Which is the political weight of the Aymara people in Peru, Bolivia or Chile? In Bolivia, by the first time, during the presidential period 1993-1998 the native Aymara speaker Victor Hugo Cárdenas was elected vice-presindent of the Republic of Bolivia. In Puno city, which is the capital of Puno departament the native Aymara speaker Gregorio Ticona Gomez was elected as the major of the city for the period 1998-2003. Recently, at September 2000, arose a new national Aymara leader in Bolivia Felix Quispe, el Mallku
  16. What is the Aymara nation? The Aymara nation is the entire group of speakers of Aymara language. It is the Aymara people with their historical achievemet on preserving their language from other dominant languages influence, during the last 5 centuries
Aymara Culture
  1. Which is considered the main achievement of the Aymara culture? The main contribution of the Aymara culture to the humanity is the domesticación of the potato. When the Spaniards conquered the Inca empire they found the potato cultivated and consumed in all the territory. Nevertheless, only in the Titicaca plateu they found over 200 varieties. Ancient Aymara people also invented the technique of dehydration of the potato with aims of storage, in form of ch'uñu(chuño). This technique is based on the interaction of the nocturnal cold and diurnal burning sun of the 4000 meters of height of the Titicaca region.
  2. Why the name potato? The right name for potato should have been some denotation derived from its Aymara name ch'uqi but by the reluctance of the Spaniards to accept it like food, were the English those who named and presented to the rest of the world like "potato" which, everything indicates, is a word from an Caribbean language.
  3. How is the history of the potato? After the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire, the potato was rejected like food by the Spaniards for approximately 2 centuries. One of the reasons: the potato was not cited in the bible, therefore could not to be a food of God. The English take the potato for Europe where, initially, it was a decorative plant. It were in Ireland, that did not have other nutritional alternatives, where the potato becomes quickly, in the exclusive food. This dependency pronounces dramatically when it appears a plague that ends whole harvests of the Irish. Until now they remember such calamity as the Irish Famine. Since the acceptance of the Irish, after the English (English potato), the potato is accepted anywhere in the world, as a food of first order.
  4. What were chulpas? Chulpas were tombs and temples. The ancient Aymara societies were necrotheits, that is, each dead became a god then he had to have his chulpa. The completion of chulpa was as the hierarchy of the deceased, to greater hierarchy better processed chulpa. The ruins of Sillustani and Cutimbo are examples of tombs of the ancient elite of Collas and Lupaqas. These vestiges of Sillustani and Cutimbo allow to establish that the handling of the colossal architecture of the stone with these fine completions is not an exclusive patrimony of the Inca culture, inside the Andes. At least, the ancient Aymara builders developed in an independent way its own masonry.
  5. What metals dominated the ancient Aymaras? Since the fine and colossal construction of chulpas, of the elite, demanded high accuracy, it is easy to deduce that instrumenos of mixed metals as bronze were of the total dominion of the Collas and Lupaqas. In addition, of course, to the other pure ones as the copper, gold, etc.
  6. How it is the origin of the Andean music ? It is obvious that in the Andes always music has been cultivated. But recently, it is known as "Andean music" the music which is preformed basicaly by 4 instruments: siqu, charango, big drum and quena. Until the 1960 years these instruments were rejected by the inhabitants of the large cities and only were preformed by the natives in remote countryside zones. In the second half of the sixties the Chilean youth initiates a political-cultural rebellious movement. This attitude takes as its symbol a musical movement denominated nueva canción(new song) or canción protesta(protest song) which exclusively is played by using the 4 indigenous musical instruments. The first exponents of this new song are Victor Jara, Inti Illimani, Kollawara and Quilapayun. Later this music is spread and accepted by Andean students of the others paises, specially of Bolivia and Peru, which at these time were under dictatorial governments. At the beginning of eighties the nueva canción leaves its political message and is accepted commercially transforming itself into Andean music. Nowadays, there exist hundreds of groups, especialists on this music, trying to reach commercial success. In this commitment, it is very frequent to see them acting in the squares and subway stations of the European and USA cities. Few of them see the acomplishment derived from their efforts.
  7. Which are the origins of the Andean musical instruments? Siqu has Aymara origin and today, also, it is known as zampoña or the spanish form siku. The suffix aymara -iri denotes actor/performer, so that siquri, in aymara, means the perfomer of siqu. Charango is of later creation to the Spanish conquest, because originally the stringed instruments were not known in the Andes. Originally they were done with the shell of the armadillo that in Aymara is known like khirkhinchu. Mostly, the historians maintains that khirkhinchu was created in the Aymara zone during the century XVII. The big drum and the quena had simultaneous origins in several places of the Andes and previous to the Spanish conquest.
  8. What about of the Aymara dance? There are many dances with aymara origin. This diversity has turned to Oruro and Puno like the folkloric capitals of Bolivia and Peru, respectively. Native dances and mestizo dances are classified in two groups. The origins of the native dances go back to times previous to the Spanish conquest, therefore they have few elements of European origin. Unfortunately, these dances have few acceptance in the Altiplano cities, solely being practiced by countryside native people. Examples of these dances: Chaqallus, Lawa K'umus, Chuqilas, K'usillos, etc. On the other hand the mestizo dances are the ones with later origin to the Spanish conquest. Thus, they have European and native elements in a balanced way. At the times of celebrations, specially catholic, widely they are accepted and executed in the urban centers of the plateau of the Titicaca. Its suits, called traje de luces(suit of lights), for the similarity of the suits of the Spanish bullfigthers, are richly ornamented by false gem stones causing that his acquiring/rent be expensive. Examples of these dances: diablada, caporal, morenada, etc.

AYMARA UTA