One hundred years ago
Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu
He didn't do it by hiking
through the jungle randomly
but, he had a Quechua speaking guide,
who asked the local people
where the interesting cities are and eventually they just brought him here
So actually, the local language brought him here
and the local language brought me here too
to learn a little bit of Quechua
So Quechua is a very interesting language
it's what linguists call an agglutinative language, so that's where you
have a core word and you add parts to it
which are called a "suffix"
and you add these to it, to expand on the meaning
So to give you an example, check this out
"Runasimita
rimankichu?
This means "Do you speak Quechua?"
Looks complicated enough, but this is actually made up of different units that
help you to learn the language quicker and it's very interesting when you are reading or listening
to the language that you can
make these components out and it will help you understand better
So if we take this sentence and we split it up
You can actually see the different parts, so for example we've got "Runa-simi"
And that actually is the Quechua word for "Quechua"
and it comes from "man speech"
and then 'ta' is the...
it indicates the accusative as they call it
in language learning. It just means it's the object So it's "Do you speak
QUECHUA?" rather than "Quechua is good"
So there you have Quechua as an object and then next you have "Rima", which means speak
and then "Nki", which is the
second person singular conjugation.. in other words
"You speak"
and then "Chu" which indicates it's a question. It turns his whole sentence into a question
And interestingly enough, the "Chu" particle actually exists in Esperanto
as well to turn a sentence into a question
The reason it is for there is actually from Polish.. "Czy", I think it is
but you can see if you understand each of these different components of
the words and the questions, you can learn the language a lot quicker because
you learn the building blocks and from there, anything is possible
even a complicated word starts to make sense when you know the different parts of it.
So with that in mind I had some basic Quechua, after just a couple of weeks
and I can show you a little clip of it now, of me just trying that out with the locals!
So, how are you doing? Where are you from?
I'm from Ireland
My friends and I work together in this house.
How do you prepare this food?
We cook in this traditional kitchen (Q'oncha)
with firewood, and llama droppings.
We don't use any Kerosene or gas here.
Thank you!
Thank you everyone
for inviting me here.
Now I can share this great town of Chinchero with everyone
Many thanks to the "Wiñay Away" house!