Speakers
PrintSpeakers
The figure of 6,500 speakers for these dialects in 2003 is overly exaggerated in light of recent research (Aviva Shimelman, who gives less than 450 speakers for southern Yauyos dialects and none for northern Yauyos in 2010) and returns of the 2017 census in Peru, which registered only 278 Quechua speakers in Viñac province and 106 speakers in Madeán province (Madeán dialect) and 63 Quechua speakers in Cacra province and 22 speakers in Hongos province (Cacra-Hongos dialect). No other southern Yauyos provinces show Quechua speakers. In Ica department, San Pedro de Huacarpana province shows a maximum of 407 Quechua speakers. The current figure needs to be drastically reduced.
We will update the L1 speaker population for Yauyos Quechua [qux] in Peru, to be included in the next edition of the Ethnologue.
Comments
Dear Aleksandr,
Thank you for this information on the number of L1 speakers for Yauyos Quechua [qux] in Peru.
Best regards,
Charles Fennig
Managing Editor, Ethnologue
Please note that in spite of the fact that Aviva Shimelman found no Quechua speakers in northern Yauyos in 2010, the 2017 census gives a clear figure of 182 Quechua speakers in Alis district there.
I see now where Ethnologue is wrong in making practically no distinction between Yauyos Quechua and Chincha Quechua locations in Peru. It must describe the Yauyos Quechua location as northern Yauyos Province only. No Ica department and no Huancavelica department. In its Dialects line for Yauyos Quechua, only the districts of Huancaya, Vitis (Huancaya), Alis, Tomás (Alis), and Laraos must be given. Nothing else. All the rest belongs to Chincha Quechua. We have had this solution since 2006, when Richard Aschmann drew his map of Quechua languages, based largely on Ethnologue, but he somehow managed to disentangle the confusion contained in Ethnologue's descriptions. In light of this, the speaker population must be drastically reduced, as only Alis district had Quechua speakers according to the 2017 census in Peru, who numbered 182 then. The district's only Quechua peasant community (San Lorenzo de Alis) had a population of 232 according to the same census (ethnic population).
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