El aimara como lengua oficial de los incas

Abstract

Aimara as the Inca Official Language

According to traditional prehispanic Andean history, the official tongue of the Incas was Quechua, a language whose craddle is assumed to have been the Cuzco area. In view of current Andean historical linguistics, however, it all leads to the conclusion that Quechua couldn‘t have originated in the Cuzco region, since at the time of the beginings of the Inca empire, the language spoken there was Aimara, which in turn had spread southeasthward, coming from the Central Andes. In the present paper, documentary, onomastics, and linguistic proper evidences are advanced to prove that the official language of the Incas, at least up to the reign of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, was Aimara and not Quechua.