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Quechua book poll
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 6:55 pm
by zompist
Some of you may have seen this on my Twitter, but what the heck.
Background: I wrote a grammar and dictionary for myself long ago, but they need a lot of work. I'm conflicted on what type of book is most useful though, so I thought I'd get a feel for what possible readers want.
(You can vote for 2, but it's not very useful to me to get an answer of "write them all", so you can't vote for 3!)
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 8:17 pm
by Vijay
I actually can't access Twitter despite technically having an account on it (because I live with my parents, and my dad blocked a bunch of websites on my computer years ago, including Twitter. Later, he tried to unblock them, but when I pointed out to him that he forgot to unblock Twitter, he didn't believe me, so here we are), so I'm glad you posted it here, too.
Cusco Quechua is a language (variety?) I've specifically been trying to study for years, so I need all the textbooks I can get on it (the best resource I know of so far for Quechua is in Spanish, and it's for Ayacucho Quechua, so...). I haven't had much success with it yet (unsurprisingly), but at least I know it better than Mapudungun, which I've also been trying to study (with much, much less success).
Añay! (Do people actually say that, or is that not how people say 'thank you'?)
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 10:22 pm
by KathTheDragon
I personally find that language learning resources are harder to use than reference grammars, since it's much easier to find things in a reference grammar than a learning textbook, since the learning textbook will more than likely skip around a lot and not cover the entirety of each topic in one contiguous run of lessons.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 10:45 pm
by zompist
Vijay wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2019 8:17 pmAñay! (Do people actually say that, or is that not how people say 'thank you'?)
Without opening too many books and documents... yes, that's one way. In Ayacucho you can say
pay. There's also
yusulpayki, which I believe is Spanish (
Dios le pague with a Quechua ending).
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 11:36 pm
by Vijay
Oh okay, añay!
For whatever it's worth, while I voted for a textbook and that's what I'd prefer of the three options, I'm sure any one of the three options would be useful in reality.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:50 am
by Frislander
I would love to see a Comparative Grammar for the simple reason that Quechuan is under-appreciated as a family, as opposed to the Cusco standard which is taken as representative of the whole family.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2019 11:17 am
by Pedant
Frislander wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:50 am
I would love to see a Comparative Grammar for the simple reason that Quechuan is under-appreciated as a family, as opposed to the Cusco standard which is taken as representative of the whole family.
Plus it’s likely to be more marketable...haven’t seen a comparative grammar of the Quechuan family before, just a dictionary comparing three dialects.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:28 am
by mèþru
You could sort of have elements of #2 even if you decide on 3
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 9:15 am
by Xwtek
How do you make a poll?
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 9:52 am
by mèþru
It's in the forum settings. I think zompist currently only allows himself to create polls.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 10:37 am
by Zaarin
This thread reminds me that they were looking for someone to translate Pachacuti's dialogue from Civ6
Gathering Storm on the Civfanatics forum if someone feels up to taking a crack at it.
I tried Dido's dialogue but found my Punic not remotely up to the task--not least of all because the VA was basically speaking Israeli Hebrew with a "Phoenician accent," if you will. 
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 5:18 am
by bradrn
A bit of a bug... it looks like you can vote twice. On the other hand, I can't vote for three options at once, which at least shows that that bit of code is working properly.
EDIT: Oh - looks like that when you vote twice it removes your previous vote before it adds your current vote, so it's not a bug after all.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:53 am
by Moose-tache
A quick googling shows that Quechua reference grammars are actually a dime a dozen, surprisingly. But a birds eye view of Quechua, Aymara, and their various dialects would be something unique.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:41 am
by Vijay
Aymara isn't part of the Quechua family, though, so I'm pretty sure that's not one of the options that was proposed.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 3:50 pm
by zompist
Thanks for the votes, everyone!
The Twitter poll was for the ref grammar, but you guys are pretty strongly for the comparative grammar. Interesting!
I have grammars of Aymara and Jaqaru, so I could include information about them.
Re: Quechua book poll
Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:10 pm
by bradrn
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 3:50 pm
I have grammars of Aymara and Jaqaru, so I could include information about them.
That would be quite interesting too - I've heard they have some fascinating morphophonology. As mentioned
on the Arrakum thread on the old board:
Risla wrote:
There is a great deal of fuckery with vowel moras in Arrakum. This is directly inspired by the many hours I have done making ??? faces while trying to analyze Aymara mora adjustment in Optimality Theory (I said people could read the analysis in question, but it is so bad that I'm not letting anyone see it), and also by the intricate and eldritch patterns of its sister language Jaqaru.
[...]
I've been working idly on a summary of Aymara morphophonology directed at conlangers (it's got both complex mora adjustment processes, like what I'm absconding with, and intramorphemic laryngeal harmony, both of which are super interesting). Aymara suffixes only (~only~) specify mora deletion or addition (or lack of change) to stem-final vowels, but a number of them also specify the status of their own vowels in neutral environments without a following specifying suffix or syntactic position. There are seven (!) different suffixes in Aymara /-ta/ with different morphophonological properties, given below, [...] preceding subscript C means deleted stem-final vowel, preceding subscript V means retained stem-final vowel, preceding subscript colon means lengthened vowel, following subscript C means obligatorily deleted vowel in neutral contexts (yes, Aymara suffixes can morphologically specify deletion on themselves!) and following subscript V means obligatorily retained vowel in neutral contexts.
[...]
Aymara is a near-isolate; its only living relative is Jaqaru, which is the exact opposite of helpful for figuring this stuff out, since Jaqaru is even weirder (in essentially every regard; you should see its assorted series of affricates at PoAs between alveolar and velar...), and since these bizarre deletion patterns happen in both languages, it's hard to reconstruct an ancestor without them, and thus it's hard to reconstruct how these patterns might have arisen.