Southern Quechua (
Spanish Quechua sureño; Southern Quechua
Qhichwa or
Runa Simi) is an idealized
indigenous literary language and literary norm of the
Quechua language for its southern varieties, respectively, in
Peru and
Bolivia. It was developed by combining conservative features of the two most common Quechua varieties,
Ayacucho Quechua and
Qusqu-Qullaw Quechua (spoken in
Cusco,
Puno, Bolivia, and
Argentina), which comprise the language branch of Quechua II c (according to
Alfredo Torero). The number of speakers of this branch, who would be likely to learn this orthography fairly easily, is about 5 million.
This norm has been proposed by the Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino. It has been accepted by many institutions in Peru and is also used by Microsoft in its translations of software into Quechua.
Some examples
In Bolivia, the same standard is used, except for "j", which is used instead of "h" for the sound [h] (like in Spanish).
