Ayacucho (also called
Chanca or
Chanka, after the former Chancas local tribe that dominated the area before Incan conquest) is one dialect of the
Quechua language, spoken in the Ayacucho region of
Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in
Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects of the language along with
Cusco Quechua. The literary standard of
Southern Quechua is based on these two closely related Quechua varieties.
Ayacucho Quechua uses only three vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, similar to Classical Arabic. Monolingual speakers pronounce these as [æ], [?], and [?] respectively, though the Spanish vowels [ä], [i], and [u] may also be used. When the vowels appear adjacent to the uvular fricative /?/, they are rendered more like [?], [?], and [?] respectively.
The orthographic representations, if different, are shown in <angled brackets>.
Notable differences from Cusco Quechua
