The ethnonym "Aymara" may be ultimately derived from the name of some group occupying the southern part of what is … See more

It is often assumed that the Aymara language descends from the language spoken in Tiwanaku on the grounds that it is the native language of that area today. That is very far from certain, however, and most specialists … See more

There is some degree of regional variation within Aymara, but all dialects are mutually intelligible.
Most studies of the language focused on either the Aymara spoken on the southern Peruvian s… See more

There are roughly two million Bolivian speakers, half a million Peruvian speakers, and perhaps a few thousand speakers in Chile. At the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, Aymara was the dominant la… See more

Aymara has three phonemic vowel qualities /a i u/, which, in most varieties of the language, occur as either long or short (i.e. /iː i aː a uː u/). Long vowels are indicated in the spelling with a diaeresis in writing: ä, ï, ü. The high v… See more

Beginning with Spanish missionary efforts, there have been many attempts to create a writing system for Aymara. The colonial sources employed a variety of writing systems heavily influenced by Spanish, the most wides… See more