Quechua (Runasimi) is anAmerican aborigen language native toSouth America and related toAymará, both members of the Quechumaran linguistic stock. It was the official language of theTawantinsuyu (Inca Empire), and today is spoken in various dialects by some 8 to 13 million people throughout South America. The language's dominion spans the entire South American continent starting as far north as southernColombia andEcuador,Peru andBolivia, and northwesternArgentina and northernChile. The dialect as it is spoken in Colombia and Ecuador is known asQuichua (Runashimi), and because of its frequent unintelligibility with the main branch of the language, it borders on being classed as separate. Despite this, all dialects are nonetheless considered a single tongue, consequently making it the most widely spoken of allSouth America languages in theAmericas.
The language was extended beyond the limits of the empire by theCatholic Church, which chose it to preach to Indians in theAndes area. It has, along withSpanish and Aymará, the status of an official language in both Peru and Bolivia. Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the introduction of theLatin alphabet, Quechua had no written alphabet. It did have a system of accountance withkhipu-strings.
Quechua is a very regular language, but a large number of infixes and suffixes change both the overall significance of words and their subtle shades of meaning, allowing great expressiveness. It includes grammatical features such asbipersonal conjugation and conjugation dependent on mental state and veracity of knowledge, spatial and temporal relationships, and many cultural factors.
A number of Quechualoanwords have enteredEnglish viaSpanish, includingcoca,condor,guano,gaucho,jerky,inca,llama,pampa, andpotato. The wordlagniappe comes from the Quechua wordnyap ("something extra") with the articlela in front of it,la ñapa, in Spanish.