Las investigaciones se inician/The research begins

Allillanchu Kashanki? What, you don´t know what that means??? Well, If you were here learning about Quechua like me and working with the language you might! Allillanchu Kashanki means How are you (doing)? So, as you may have guessed, I´ve been working with Quechua over the past few days! Here´s a bit of a summary of what I´ve been up to.

Monday I went to school as normal and began my class in Quechua. We are being taught by Dany Vargas, another great professor from La Academia Latinoamericana. Dany is a very amicable guy who really has fun teaching us about the language and the culture that goes along with it. For instance, did you know that despite being an official language of Peru (along with Spanish and Aymara), there is no Quechua version of the constitution? Also, despite having an almost 14% by population speaking rate, the education system has historically almost entirely ignored the Quechua speakers and insisted that all language instruction be done in Spanish. These facts are very sad and they help me to think more about my research and how it can, in a way, put Quechua on a larger pedestal so that maybe something can be done.

Anyway, class is really good. We are basically working with the vocab now and learning what we can as we go. It isn´t as daunting as I thought but it is a bit frustrating being a linguist and having to take things slowly with the language . The very conjugation structure seems very straightforward and the vocab isn´t that bad, I think for the most part that the pronunciation and the particles (things attached to the end of the words to designate different meanings) are going to cause the most problems for most people.

After class I got to work for about 4 hours at the hostel painting instead of chopping flowers so I felt a bit less destructive. The great part of the evening, however, was having my contact for research show up at the door ready to work. I ended up getting a solid hour of recording done and it honestly felt great afterwards to have actually done something and to be moving forward in the project. Afterwards we had dinner at a Pollo a la Brasa restaurant for one of my friend´s birthdays. It was an altogether festive night for me and everything seemed to be working out great.

Today we did more of the same in the classroom but we began to work on numbers. They are pretty complicated as well. For example, the number 1532 in Quechua is: waranqa pisqa pachak kinsa chunka iskaniyuq. A bit of a mouthful as I´m sure you can see. The principle isn´t hard, it´s just the execution and being able to replicate it when it´s test time. We just happen to have a test tomorrow so that theory will be put to the test!

After Class I went out to lunch as usual and made my way to the DRE-C, the Dirección Regional de Educación- Cusco to meet my contact for some more recordings. I enjoyed navigating the Plaza de Armas and its side streets to find out where I was going and then afterwards when I had gotten my two hours of recordings (double what I got yesterday!!!) and I was making my way back to the hostel I was so wrapped up in the atmosphere of the city in its preparations for independence day that I couldn´t help but stop and "smell the roses" a bit longer than I wanted to. I ended up taking about 2 hours to get back but I was really happy with my explorations.

So, after the past two days I am feeling a bit "fat and happy" as we like to say, in regards to my research. Not only do I have more than 30% of the actual data gathered, but I also have an appointment for tomorrow with my professor Dany to get another hour in at least so I feel like I´ve really gotten moving in the right direction. I was worried last week that I wouldn´t ever get anything done and I wouldn´t have the proper thesis and then I wouldn´t get into grad school (I know, a bit overblown), but this week has really been encouraging so far.

Thanks for sharing in my triumphs and trepidations these past few days and I hope you are all beginning your weeks swimmingly. We have Thursday and Friday off for Peruvian Independence and I´ve already hung my Peruvian Flag out the window so I should be good for a few days enjoying myself and getting things squared away where they need to be. Here´s a parting picture from another day just to keep you updated and excited (and to keep you reading til the end :) ):



Also, if you like the photos there´s a link here to my facebook photo album of the trip so far: http://www.facebook.com/pfabian53?v=photos#!/album.php?aid=192536&id=536061990