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Quechuan

South American Language Families

Quechuan is a family of closely related indigenous languages spoken across the Andean region of South America, including Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina and Chile. With a combined total of several million speakers, it is the most widely spoken indigenous language family of the Americas, and one of its varieties, Cusco Quechua, was an official language of the Inca Empire.

Facts
Region
Originated in central Peru and spread across the Andes region of South America 1
Speaker Count
7,000,000 1
2011 census figure, the more conservative of two figures the source gives; an earlier 2004 estimate placed speakers at 8 to 10 million.
Proto-Language Status
Quechuan descends from a reconstructed common ancestral Proto-Quechua language; the family had already spread widely across the central Andes before the Inca Empire adopted it as an official language. 1
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Includes

Quechua, Languages
Source Wikipedia: Quechuan Languages
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Source Wikipedia: Quechuan LanguagesLead sentence 1tier 2
Quote, Lead sentence 1
Quechua (; Spanish: [ˈketʃwa]), also called Runa simi in Southern Quechua (pronounced [ˈɾʊna ˈsɪmɪ], 'people's language'), is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Quechuan Languages
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section, first paragraph
    just under 7 million from the most recent census data available up to 2011.
  • Includes: Quechua, Lead
    Quechua (; Spanish: [ˈketʃwa]), also called Runa simi in Southern Quechua (pronounced [ˈɾʊna ˈsɪmɪ], 'people's language'), is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes.
View the Source
Wikidata: Quechuan
Wikidata Q12634451, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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