Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present: Aymara

Orthography and Basic Phonology

There are compatible phonemic alphabets for all of the Jaqi
languages. Alphabets have been the topic of intense argument,
usually based on political and/or religious territories. The points
of contention have been (1) the vowels — whether the Aymara

Aymara 49

Table 1: Consonants

Labial

Dental

Palatal

Velar

Postvelar

Pharynegeal

Stops

Unaspirated

P

t

ch

k

q

Aspirated

P"

t"

ch"

k"

q"

Glottalized

P'

t'

ch'

k'

q'

Nasals

m

n

h

nh

Fricatives

s

X

J

Laterals

1

11

Resonants

w

r

y

three vowel system should be represented as five vowels so as
to look more like Spanish; (2) the representation of the velar
and post-velar consonants, using q and c for the velars and k,
cc, cq, qq inter alia for the post-velars; (3) the representation
of the x-j contrast, usually with jj for the post- velar fricative,
which is problematic because both x and j occur in clusters;
and (4) the representation of aspiration and glottalization. (The
Aymara prefer to use " to mark aspiration, but the official al-
phabet uses h.)

Ch, ch" , ch' are affricates. The Aymara orthography uses "
to indicate aspirated stops:/?" represents [p^], and so on for the
other aspirated stops. A ' following a consonant letter indi-
cates that the consonant is glottahzed; that is, it is produced
with a glottal closure simultaneous with the main consonant
articulation.

LI and fi represent palatal sounds, similar to (but not identi-
cal with) // of English million and ni of English onion. Nh rep-
resents the velar nasal, spelled ng in English. R is an alveolar
flap, similar to tt in English letter. X is a post-velar fricative,
whiley is a pharyngeal fricative, similar to strongly articulated
variants of English h.

Table 2: Vowels

Front

Central

Back

High

i

u

Low

a

Aymara stress is fixed on the penultimate vowel in a word.

Aymara vowels may be long or short. There are very few
lexical roots distinguished solely by vowel length. However,
vowel length does serve to distinguish grammatical inflections
and derivations. In fact, there are two morphemes whose only
expression is vowel length. In addition, part of the expression
of a particular morpheme may be to lengthen a vowel in the
stem to which it is added.

The precise quality of the Aymara vowels varies depending
on consonantal context. Vowels adjacent to post-velar conso-
nants are generally lower and/or further back relative to other
instances of the same vowel. For example, u is generally per-
ceived by speakers of English or Spanish as [o] preceding or
following a post-velar consonant; likewise, / may be heard as
[e] adjacent to a post-velar.

Hardman, M. J. 2000. Aymara. In Garry, Jane and
Carl Rubino (eds.) Facts About the World's Languages:
An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past
and Present. New York/DubHn: H. W Wilson.