Aymara

Last Updated: 2020-06-26

Background

Language Family: Aymaran

• Aymara is a Native American language spoken along the Andean Mountains in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.

Phonology

Consonants

• Voiced stops are not native to Aymara, but do appear in some loanwords (Wexler 1967, xiv).
• Wexler argues for /r/ rather than /ɾ/ (Wexler 1967, xiv); Briggs, meanwhile, argues that [r] exists as an allophone of /ɾ/ (Briggs 1976, 82).
• /ŋ/ is phonemic in a small number of dialects (Briggs 1976, 82–83).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Stops	p pʰ pʼ	t tʰ tʼ			k kʰ kʼ	q qʰ qʼ
Affricates			tʃ tʃʰ tʃʼ
Fricatives		s			x	χ
Nasals	m	n		ɲ
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w	l		j ʎ
Note: From left to right, phonemes in a given cell are plain, aspirated, and ejective; the exception is in the approximants row, where the phoneme on the right of a cell is lateral.

Vowels

• Older sources also include [e] and [o], but these are allophones of /i/ and /u/ that emerge next to uvular obstruents (Wexler 1967, xiv).
• Vowel length is phonemic (Briggs 1976, 80). Long vowels are marked with an umlaut (¨) (Coler 2014, 31).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Low		a

Alphabet

• The orthography I will be using is the Unified Alphabet, which was made official by the governments of Bolivia and Peru in 1984 and 1985 respectively (Coler 2014, 31–32). Older sources, such as Wexler and Hardman, use different orthographies.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
i	/i/
j	/x/
k	/k/
k’	/kʼ/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ñ	/ɲ/
p	/p/
p’	/pʼ/
q	/q/
q’	/qʼ/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
t’	/tʼ/
u	/u/
w	/w/
x	/χ/
y	/j/
Multigraph
ch	/tʃ/
chh	/tʃʰ/
ch’	/tʃʼ/
kh	/kʰ/
ll	/ʎ/
nh	/ŋ/	only phonemic in some dialects (given the option to transcribe in the rules)
ph	/pʰ/
qh	/qʰ/
th	/tʰ/

Syllable structure

• Roots are typically either CV(C)CV or (less commonly) V(C)CV. Most suffixes are CV but there are several other options (Coler 2014, 29).
• Vowel clusters are avoided (Hardman 1981, 190).

Lenition Rules

• /x/ debuccalizes to [h] in some dialects (Briggs 1976, 84).

Misc. Rules

• Word-final vowels can be devoiced and are sometimes dropped (Hardman 1981, 190).
• /χ/ and /ɾ/ rarely if ever occur word-initially (Briggs 1976, 87).
• Glides and vowels do not occur adjacent to each other (Briggs 1976, 89).
• High vowels are lowered in uvular environments (Briggs 1976, 85).
• Nasals assimilate to following consonants (Coler 2014, 41–42).

References

Briggs, Lucy Therina. 1976. “Dialectal Variation in the Aymara Language of Bolivia and Peru.” PhD thesis, University of Florida.

Coler, Matt. 2014. A Grammar of Muylaq’ Aymara: Aymara as Spoken in Southern Peru. Brill.

Hardman, M.J. 1981. The Aymara Language in Its Social and Cultural Context: A Collection of Essays on Aspects of Aymara Language and Culture. University of Florida.

Wexler, Paul. 1967. Beginning Aymara: A Course for English Speakers. University of Washington.