Aymaran Languages - Family Division

Family Division

Aymaran consists of 2 languages:

  • Aymara. Southern and Central dialects divergent and sometimes considered separate languages.
  • Jaqaru (Haqearu, Haqaru, Haq'aru, Aru). Kawki dialect (Cauqui, Cachuy) is divergent.

Aymara has approximately 2.2 million speakers; 1.7 million in Bolivia, 350,000 in Peru, and the rest in Chile and Argentina. Jaqaru has approximately 725 speakers in central Peru, while Cauqui had 9 surviving speakers as of 2005. Cauqui is little documented, though its relationship with Jaqaru is extremely close. Initially they were considered by Dr Martha Hardman (on very limited data at the time) to be different languages, but all subsequent fieldwork and research has contradicted this and demonstrated that they are mutually intelligible but divergent dialects of a single language.

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