Learning the demonstratives adjectives and pronouns in Quechua.

There are two differences between the demonstratives adjectives in Quechua and the ones in Spanish. First, in Spanish it is necessary to make an agreement between the noun and the adjective. This rule takes place no matter the type of adjective we are talking about. Additionally, when talking about agreement, we usually are referring to gender and number. For example, in the phrase esa casa, the word esa is working as a demonstrative adjective which is singular and feminine because of the noun casa. So, if having a plural noun, the adjective has to be plural as well. On the contrary, in Quechua there is only one word for saying ese/s,esa/s (chay), that is to say, we could say chay wasikuna or chaykuna wasi(plural) and chay wasi(singular). Therefore, there is no, at least, grammatical gender agreement when using the demonstratives in Quechua although number is pointed out by adding –kuna to one of the words in a noun phrase.

Secondly, when dealing with the demonstrative pronouns and the verb ser for pointing out something, in Quechua ser (kay) does not have a grammatical representation like in Spanish. As an example, we could compare the following:

ImaTAQ jaqay…¿Qué es aquello?
JaqayQA p´anqa. Aquello es un libro.
ImaTAQ jaqayKUNA. ¿Qué son aquellos?
JaqayKUNAqa llimphi./JaqayQA llimphiKUNA. Aquellos son unos colores.

The suffixes –qa and –taq are only showing up euphony. This means that in Quechua, the demonstrative pronouns only work with how far is the object from the speaker. With regard to the concept of distance, it is the same as in Spanish, even in English.  

In summation, what we know about the functional use of demonstrative adjectives and pronouns can help us to learn them in Quechua.

By Gladys Alanoca