Quechua Alphabet

Quechua is not a single language but a family of closely related ones, and the alphabet on this page follows the Cusco-Collao variety of Southern Quechua; Ayacucho-Chanka uses its plain-stop subset, and Peru’s 1985 official standard was a 34-grapheme pan-alphabet. In alphabetical order it runs a, ch, chh, ch’, h, i, k, kh, k’, l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, ph, p’, q, qh, q’, r, s, sh, t, th, t’, u, w, y. Letters such as b, d, f, g and v are not part of it; they turn up only in Spanish names and loanwords. The letter c appears only inside ch, and h both on its own and inside the aspirated consonants, which is why the grid lists them as separate rows.

There are only three vowels, a, i and u. Next to q, a k pronounced far back in the throat, i and u sound lower, close to e and o, so the city of Cusco is written Qusqu but sounds like "Qosqo". The difference never tells two Quechua words apart, so the official alphabet writes three vowels; the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua in Cusco prefers writing e and o in those spots, which is why you will see both Qusqu and Qosqo, and older Spanish-based spellings such as Inca for Inka. Stress falls regularly on the second-to-last syllable, so Quechua needs no accent marks: wasi (house) is said WA-si and wasikuna (houses) wa-si-KU-na.

In Cusco and Bolivian Quechua the stops p, t, ch, k and q come in three series: plain (t), aspirated with a puff of air written with h (th) and ejective, a sharp popped sound written with an apostrophe (t’). They change meaning, as in tanta (gather), thanta (worn out) and t’anta (bread), or chaki (foot) and ch’aki (dry). Ayacucho Quechua has no aspirated or ejective consonants, so its texts use far fewer h’s and apostrophes. ll is the "lli" of million and ñ the "ny" of canyon, as in ñuqa (I), ñawi (eye) and Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road network. w and y are the glides of wawa (baby) and yaku (water).

Kichwa and the other Quechua alphabets

Ecuador's Kichwa, the northern branch of the family, has a unified alphabet of 18 letters: a, ch, h, i, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, r, s, sh, t, u, w, y. It has no q in the standard alphabet, because its back k merged with the ordinary one (hence Kichwa rather than Qhichwa); ts, z and zh occur in some regional or pre-Kichwa words, which is why Z z is in the grid. Central Quechua of Ancash and Junín, Inga in southern Colombia and Santiago del Estero Quichua in Argentina each write their own sounds with the same Latin letters, including sh and doubled vowels for length in parts of central Peru.

Before the Spanish conquest Quechua had no alphabet: the Inca state kept its numbers and records on khipu, knotted cords. The first Latin-letter grammar, by Domingo de Santo Tomás, was printed in Valladolid in 1560, and for centuries Quechua was written with Spanish spellings like hua and qu, so that Huayna Capac is Wayna Qhapaq today. Place names on maps and road signs still mix the two systems, so Cusco, Qusqu and Qosqo can all appear on the same street.

Which apostrophe Quechua uses

The apostrophe in t’anta is part of the letter, not punctuation: t and t’ are different consonants. Three characters are used for it. The plain keyboard apostrophe ' (U+0027) is what most people type and what many Quechua websites and schoolbooks contain. Word processors and phones often turn it into the curly ’ (U+2019), the closing single quotation mark, which looks the same in print. Unicode prefers ʼ (U+02BC, modifier letter apostrophe) when an apostrophe represents a modifier letter; its default word-boundary rules treat it as a letter, so pʼunchay (day) stays one word.

For chatting and everyday writing any of the three is fine. For dictionaries, databases and search, pick one and keep it, because to a computer t'anta, t’anta and tʼanta are three different words. All three are in the grid so you can copy the one your text already uses.

How to type ñ and the apostrophe in Quechua

On a phone, long-press n to get ñ; the apostrophe is on the symbols layer. Spanish and Latin American keyboards, the usual ones in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, have an Ñ key and the ¡ and ¿ keys, so Quechua needs nothing extra there.

On Windows with a numeric keypad, hold Alt and type 0241 for ñ and 0209 for Ñ, 0161 for ¡ and 0191 for ¿. With the US-International layout, type ~ then n for ñ. Watch the apostrophe on that layout: ' is a dead key, and Quechua puts it right before a vowel, so t'a comes out as tá. Type ' and then Space to get a plain apostrophe before the vowel.

With the U.S./ABC keyboard layout on a Mac, press Option+N and then n for ñ, Option+1 for ¡ and Option+Shift+/ for ¿. In HTML, write ñ and Ñ, and ʼ for the modifier apostrophe ʼ.

Where Quechua is spoken

Quechua is the language of the Andes from southern Colombia to northern Argentina. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 12 million speakers: roughly 5 million in Peru, especially in Cusco, Apurímac, Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Puno and Ancash and among migrants in Lima; about 4 million in Bolivia, around Cochabamba, Potosí, Chuquisaca and Oruro; and about 3 million in Ecuador, where Kichwa is spoken in the highlands and the Amazon. These are estimates; censuses that count only people who speak it at home give lower numbers.

Peru made Quechua an official language in 1975, and its constitution keeps it official where it predominates; Bolivia's 2009 constitution lists it among the official languages beside Spanish, Aymara and Guaraní; Ecuador's 2008 constitution makes Kichwa an official language of intercultural relations and names sumak kawsay, "good living", among its principles. Money is written S/ for the Peruvian sol (S/ 20) and Bs for the Bolivian boliviano (Bs 50), neither of which has a character of its own, while Ecuador uses the US dollar, $.

Centuries of contact with Aymara have given Southern Quechua many shared words and the same h and apostrophe consonants, so the Aymara collection looks much like this one. Spanish, with its ¡ ¿ and accented vowels, is the other language nearly every Quechua speaker writes, and it is full of Quechua words: papa (potato), choclo (corn on the cob), palta (avocado), cancha and guagua (baby). See the Spanish, Aymara, Guarani, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador collections.