Quechua, Puno
PrintPrimary tabs
Puno Quechua mother-tongue speaker population
In December of 1998, Andrés Chirinos published his article Las lenguas indígenas peruanas más allá del 2000 in Revista Andina, Año 16, No. 2, pp. 453-479, where he gives his count of mother-tongue speakers of Puno Quechua, oe Quechua Colla based on the 1993 census at 673,586 speakers.
Now, his count of the mother-tongue speakers of all the Southern varieties of Quechua in Peru for that year totals 2,390,750.
In October of 2019, César Itier of France in his book Runasimita Yachasun: Método de quechua, written together with Zenobio Ortiz Cárdenas of Andahuaylas, Peru, estimated the total of all Southern Quechua speakers in Peru at approximately 3 million.
Proportionately recounted, the number of Puno Quechua speakers will stand at 845,240.
We will update the L1 speaker population for Puno Quechua [qxp] in Peru, for inclusion in the next edition of the Ethnologue.
Puno Quechua Autonyn +
Puno Quechua speakers refer to their language as 'qhichwa simi' or 'qhishwa simi,' depending on spelling preferences, which sounds [qhéʃwa sími] or [qhéswa sími]. They do not use the term 'runasimi,' which is only used by Cuzco Quechua and Ayacucho Quechua speakers.
Detailed explanations on this are found in: Runasimita Yachasun. Método de quechua by César Itier and Zenobio Ortiz Cárdenas, Lima, 2019, p. 51.
César Itier also has published an article on Quechua self-names: "Quechua" y el sistema inca de denominación de las lenguas, published in 2015 in Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, Vol. 45-1, pp. 37-56.
Mr. Itier of France is one of the leading experts in Quechua studies today, and he treats Puno Quechua and North Bolivian Quechua as one dialect, called Colla Quechua or Quechua of Collao. This treatment is found in the French (2011) and Spanish (2017) editions of his dictionary of Southern Quechua, which to me is the most accurate work on Ayacucho, Cuzco, and Colla Quechua lexicology so far.
Thank you for your attention to my comment.
Aleksandr N. Natarov (a.n.natarov@gmail.com)
We will update the language names for Puno Quechua [qxp] in Peru, for inclusion in the next edition of the Ethnologue.