Quichua of Imbabura: A Brief Phonetic Sketch of Fricatives

Abstract

Quechua is considered to be the language of the Incas. This civilization ruled during approximately 1430 to 1530. Their Empire was called Tahuantinsuyo and covered the areas currently occupied by Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, north and the central region of Chile and northeast Argentina; at present, it is in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia where Quechua still remains vigorous, at least in the sense of the number of speakers.
Quechua dialects are very diverse and vary significantly in features such as  voicing, frication, glotalization, aspiration, vowel sounds, and in the absence or presence of certain sounds. This paper presents phonetic data regarding the fricative and affricate sounds of the Quechua language; it provides current data of a language dialect spoken in the province of Imbabura- Ecuador, most commonly known as Quichua. The data were elicited from people belonging to the Otavalo indigenous community.