1000090372

The follovling system of ort ography for Quechua and f,yr.mra

has gro

<'.1

out of years of study , firs t hand investie;a tion of the

phonetics of the t wo languages by several exper ts in contact with

natives her e and abvoad , and a serie s of dincuss ions in Lir.1a

groups of :·1:en of university educa ti on who ar e nativo t o t hese

languages .

1931

the Depar ÚI\lent of Indian Educa ti on of the Ministry

of Public I nstruct i on i n Lima , appoi nt ed a c-ommission t o dr aft a

sys t em of or t hogr aphy for the Quechua

l anguage . The system then

r ecomrnended and pr i nted di d not meet with genera l approva l b ecaus e

i t wa s in s ome way s more sui ted to the neec1.s of foreign philologi;J t

than to t he r equiremen t s of t he indi genous popula tion of the Andes .

Early thi s year .; (

1936)

t he Bureau of Indi an Af f a irs of the

Ministry of Labour a nd Social We lfare in Lima, commissioned Dr.

Angel Esca lante to prepare and present a system of orthogr aphy fClt'

Quechua . Dr. Esca l ante i s a na t ive of the D.epartment of Cuzco , anl.

has s polten Quechua from i.nfa ncy. He is owner and editor of the l ead–

..ing newspaper of ·Cuzco , and therefol'e a live to t he typogr aphical

nr oblems involved , He is an ex-Minister of Public Ins truction ancl.

rauch more intcr c sted in a system sui ted to the educ a tion of the

Indians than :Ln one adapted t o the needs of foreign philologi sts .

Dr , Esc rüant c heart ily we lcomed the coopera t i on of the Biblo

Societi e¡: l repres entatives in dealing with this mat ter , Through

h i s initiative the pr oposed system was submitted t o the Instituto

of Sociology , a body which take.s a special interest in matters

affecting the Ind ians, and most of whose members are we ll prepar ed

to offer an opinion on this ma tter, After discuss ing the system set

f or th below, the Insti tute recommended tha t a small cor.rrai ttoe ,

reW>e..ae~ tn.tive

of the aever!'.l schoo ls

o!:

thought

:Jn -the

::;'.;.bjc~+- ,

should exar.Jine the sys

t ~r-

and

h~':.

..;:;

a .·oport . One of the members

of this commíttce ha:. been t he outstanding protagoni s t of the tr a–

ditional sy¡;tem, while another has been one of t he chief anostles

of r ef orm along other lines than t hose now .pronosed , This-member

has

handod in a v1ri tten op inion in f avour of the apostrophe systerr.

re commended in

1931,

r ather than the adopti on of double l c tters

for the explosive , and the added h for :the aspir a t ed·, consonant il .

There wa s a l s o an Aymara scholar on the conuni ttee , Al l of these

were members of t he

193 1

Commi ss ion .

'I'he ::;e ssíon¡; of this cornmittee were presided over in person

by Dr . Escalant c , who t ook a l ead ing part i n the eluc i dat i on of

several problems . Every effort wa s made to obtain the attendanc e

of Dr . Alber t o Ostri a Guti err ez , t he Bolivian Mi nister i n Lima , but

despite a very lively i nterest and keen desire on hi8 part , i t

was i mposs i ble for h i m to a ttend owing to serious i llness . Dr. Es–

calantc undortook to dis cuss the system with the Bolivian Minister ,

and endcavcmr t o obtain by agr eement with h i m,

j oint ac ti on of the

t wo governments in its s i multaneous adopt i on .

The se l ecnguage s have bcen mis - wri tten hithe rto in Peru without

taking full advantage of t hc or t hography now in use for writing

Spani'§'h , and a lso without

any ade quate study of the ir phoneme s

which do not occur i n Spanish , Si.nce ·,however , they are indi s solubly

bound up with Spani sh, the off ic i al l anguage of t hesc rcpublic s , it

v1as

recog~üzed

to be des ireablc to rctain t hc Snanish al nhabet and

letter valucs as fa r as possible , On the other hand it was agreed

that t he orthography adopted shoul d represont faithfully the