Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua

The Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua (AMLQ, Highest Academy of the Quechua Language; Quechua: Qheswa simi hamut'ana kuraq suntur) is a private institution in Cusco, founded in 1990, concerned with the "purity" of Quechua.

The AMLQ takes the point of view that there is only one single Quechua language and that the present Quechua of the city of Cusco, with all its regional peculiarities (and not any intermediate form like Southern Quechua) should be the official standard for all Quechua; it uses the term "Inka Quechua" (quechua inka or inka qheswa) to refer to present-day Cusco Quechua. The AMLQ vehemently promotes the old Quechua alphabet established by the Peruvian government in 1975, which corresponds mostly to the current alphabet fixed in 1985, but by contrast contains the five vowels a, e, i, o, u.

The AMLQ refers to a law (No 25260) passed by the Peruvian Congress on June 6, 1990, establishing a Quechua language academy in the city of Cusco. However, it gets almost no money at all from the State, and because its opinions on orthography are counter to those of the Peruvian Education Ministry and almost all linguists and professionals working in Quechua education, the Academy has had little real involvement in this.

For a number of reasons, the AMLQ has generally hostile and very poor relationships with most linguists working on Quechua, who have often heavily criticised its approach.

External links

• Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua on Facebook
• Noemí Vizcardo Rozas: hablaquechua (member of AMLQ)
• A critical analysis by a sociolinguist of the motivation behind the AMLQ's positions, and whether they are helpful to Quechua, or counterproductive.
• Another linguist's experiences, both positive and negative, of working with the AMLQ.
• The Politics of Quechua: student research in Cusco, Peru
• Traslate-quechua online Translate online quechua to/from English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Arabian etc.

Publicacions

• AMLQ (Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua) y Municipalidad del Qosqo (1995): Diccionario Quechua-Español-Quechua/Qheswa-Español-Qheswa Simi Taqe. Cusco. Online version (pdf 7,68 MB).