Quechua Ø

Robin Mientjes

In researching the required character set for Quechua, @Frode Bo Helland and I have come across a very weird ‘requirement’ on Wikipedia: the Ø is supposedly used in loan words. In this current version, the Ø/ø is written in Quechua loanwords and is pronounced ⟨d⟩.

This made no sense to me as a phonetic transcription, or even as a fluke, like a typical case of linguists having to make do. Instead, I think a young Wikipedia editor made an uninformed edit three years ago (sadly, he is long retired, so I can’t ask for motivations).

Now, this is just based on a hunch which is based on someone else’s hunch, but I don’t think Quechua uses Ø/ø, and doesn’t pronounce it ⟨d⟩. Is there anyone who can confirm or elucidate? If we find a common ground, I think we have good cause to change the Wiki entry.

Christian Thalmann

It does seem that Quechua is lacking a native /d/ phoneme. There appears to be no voicedness contrast in Quechua; instead, its stops observe a three-way distinction between plain, aspirated, and ejective, which are written as t, th, t', respectively:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/quechua.htm

However, given that they're not already using the letter d, I really don't see why they'd want to malappropriate ø for the purpose.

Robin Mientjes

Yes, Christian, that’s what I’m thinking. Somebody saw the table of loanword conversions and assumed the opposite: “how would a /d/ become ⟨ø⟩?” Then, in an act of ‘wiki cleaning’, they flipped the shapes around. Obviously, with the way the language is spoken, it makes a lot more sense – I understand a /d/ transforming into a ⟨ø⟩ much more than the other way around. But when you see it without knowing IPA, it might be very weird and wrong-looking.

So what I’m hoping is that somebody has a quality source on the loanword issue, or that a native speaker can chime in. That way we can correct a Wikipedia article that incorrectly details the language of eight million people – a good use of time, I’d say.

Igor Freiberger

This Wikipedia article is simply wrong. Quechua alphabet has some important regional variations, but none does include |ø|. All variations are based on Spanish alphabet and loanwords are already covered by consonantal encounters. The only issue is related to vowels |e| and |o|, removed from the oficial main Peruvian Quechua, but still needed for other variations and loanwords.

Many times, English Wikipedia is not the best source of information. For South- and Central-American native languages, Spanish Wikipedia articles use to be much more complete as it is the main language for the whole region. Even if one does not speak Spanish, it is usually possible to identify the alphabet (as for Quechua).

Other relevant sources: Runasimi, WALS, Etnolinguistica, Ethnologue, OLAC.

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a misunderstanding of some table showing “d → d, r, ø” where ø should have been ∅ (empty set).