Kichwa in Salasaka

The shift in use of Kichwa as reflected in vocabulary Introduction Languages of minority have a great significance to their speakers and descendants. They symbolize and even embody traditional values, religion and culture, rich oral literature, history, and a sense of rooted identity (Fishman, 1985). This is the case of the Kichwa, the second most spoken variety of the Quechua language. According to research from Penn State University, Quechua also called Runa Shimi (the language of the people) is spoken by 8 to 11 millions of people in the South American Andean region. This is the most spoken indigenous language in the entire Americas. Quechua linguistic varieties are spoken mostly in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru but also in Colombia and Argentina. But Quechua/Kichwa speakers do not live in these countries only, and its language/varieties are spread in different cultures with their own variety. However, unfortunately, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has included Quechua on the list of the endangered languages. The UNESCOS’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger shows the vulnerability of these varieties, they are spoken by 35 to 850000 people. As Durston points out, “Quechua is heavily stigmatized, and most of these speakers are either subsistence farmers or rural immigrants in the cities who have little choice but to rapidly discard it for the dominant language, Spanish”. And, from my perspective and experience living and being part of one of these cultures I can prove Kichwa language has been declining. Analyzing this issue raised questions that will be measured through a questionnaire. I wanted to discover if the use of Kichwa has declined across the last three generation of speakers? This will help me understand how solid the language is among young and old generations. This question came to me after I realized my parents were correcting me a lot when I speak to them. For instance, I was unconsciously using many Spanish words in my Kichwa language use. Thus, regarding a daily Kichwa speaking of a younger person, it seemed even more influenced by Spanish terms. The other question is related to the future of this language; will Kichwa decline because of the influence in Spanish? About a decade, it was said Kichwa had 30% of influence on its vocabulary but from that time to now, the impact is much higher and more visible. Indeed, this is something authority in my culture have been discussing about during the last years. They say parents are responsible of passing their language, culture and Kichwa cosmovision to our youth but it seems not working. My motivation in seeking to answer these questions lies in its importance for our cultural heritage and the possible extinction not just of the language but the culture as well. Based on my own experience, unfortunately, I have noticed little children are speaking just in Spanish and the few ones who speak in Kichwa do not have opportunities to communicate in Kichwa if they are out of home. Furthermore, based on these concerns, adults have a purer Kichwa language than young people and they are likely to use Spanish in extreme cases, for instance, they may go to the city, school where they are far from the Kichwa Speaking location. The other question is, younger speakers are more likely to use Spanish out of home or with people who their family close members are not, the youngest group is the one whose Kichwa is weaker, or they don’t speak or understand at all and finally, the level of education or the place where the person grew up will define the use of Kichwa, which makes them more likely to use Spanish. Methods In order to test this hypothesis, I decided to focus on basic vocabulary. I designed a vocabulary set to test these research questions. The data collection method utilized a questionnaire which gathers data such as demographic, language use, personal background, educational background, information about the language/dialect that interviewed know, attitudes towards language and most importantly the vocabulary set. To control for the difference in the language use based on the vocabulary sets between three different generations, I kept three age range groups: 18-25, 30-40 and 50 and up. Questions about their place of birth, where they have been raised, where they live, for how long, their profession, educational background, their first, second, third or an additional language in their linguistic repertoire helped to study their case as individuals and collectively in their groups to analyze their cases. Questions like the use of a particular language with different people in certain situations were also included in order to provide insight about what their language choice is. The list of vocabulary sets/groups have been carefully selected. They represent the most common aspects, activities of daily life in my culture, words that are frequently used in everyday speech. 1. Animals. - Salasaka, my parish is in the countryside, so most of the habitants dedicate to agriculture. The four animal images listed represent the most common ones in the area, it implies most people take care of them, among others. 2. Verbs. - The four verb images represent actions that are connected to everyday activities in the community. 3. Numbers. - These numbers represent small and big numbers to see in how extend people know numbers. 4. Traditional clothing. - As Salasaka culture represents an indigenous community we have our own traditional cloths that if the interviewee does not use it, his/her parents, relatives, siblings, friends or neighbors will. The main 4 sets of the vocabulary charts were the main tool to reach our objective. The interviewer (Luis Chango, my brother) approached participants speaking in Kichwa, this is a question that was included in the last part of the interview, thus just in case they didn’t speak it, he interviewed them in Spanish. He asked them to look at the image and speak out the name of the in Kichwa. In case they didn’t know it, they were asked to speak out its name even in Spanish. Finally, participants were asked to express their attitudes towards Kichwa. I wanted to know what their perception about the importance of mastering Kichwa is, if it has been useful in their life, if they feel proud of it, and if they feel children should speak it. These questions were asked to define if Kichwa has a future. Results In this section I will provide an analysis of the data collected in the questionnaire that will give a clearer understanding as to how my hypothesis fared under the conditions of my study. PARTICIPANTS GROUP TOTAL G1 18-25 7 21 G2 30-40 7 G3 50 -> + 7 The group of people have been chosen because they have a significant generational gap between each other, they represent current and past use of Kichwa. Thus, they are a good population to collect data from. So, the following chart has collected, general information such as gender, birth, where they have been raised, where do they currently live, their educational background and whether they have spoken in Kichwa or Spanish at that moment of being approached and interviewed. Thus, this shows us that we have 13 females and 8 male participants. 16 of them were born in Salasaka, 4 in Galapagos and 1 in Spain. From the people who were born in Galapagos, they were also raised there, and all the 21 participants are living in Salasaka now. Their educational background along with their profession show somehow their language usage. The G1 has a second and third level educational background and 4 them are the ones who speak Spanish. The G2 also shows almost the same result numbers in educational background, just 1 person has gotten a 3rd degree. The educational background doesn’t necessarily say that they are working on what they are or have studied.

In this language information chart, based on self-reporting, we can see the linguistic repertoire of our participants. It shows us that 66% of our participants speak Kichwa as their L1, from these percentage, just 57% are bilingual, they speak Spanish as well. On the other side, 33% people speak Spanish as their L1 and all these people does not consider Kichwa speakers even though they understand a lot of Kichwa lexis. In the case of English, just 1% speaks English.

LANGUAGE USE The data from language use follows a trend that indicates the different cases each group is likely to use. For instance, G1 orange columns show how much use of Spanish language use they have. Looking at the G2 we can see a balance on both language usages in different scenarios. Finally, G3 shows they are likely to use Kichwa most of the time no matter the scenario they are. .

These 3 charts also represent different scenarios toward the language use. When counting G1 and 2 show they do it in Spanish, on the other side G3 will do that in Kichwa. Social media has also impacted in language use, the fact that we cannot find our native language in social media impacts in when using it. Thus all 3 groups use it in Spanish. Both G1 and 2 are likely to speak in Spanish when they are in their workplace. It also reflects the place where they work, people from G1 and 2 work away from Salasaka which makes them use Spanish. Meanwhile G3 will do it in Kichwa because most of the work inside their community. With small differences the 3 groups show the use of Spanish in school settings because teachers are mostly Spanish speakers and they or their children study in the city. When reading and watching videos or Tv, the 3 groups show they practice these skills in Spanish, it can also be because this language has not taken a lot of space in formal settings as the predominant language. Finally, when listening to music 3 groups do that in both languages, just G2 and G3 would do that in low percentage in Spanish as well, but it reflects the impact the music industry has caused when influencing Kichwa language which implies they understand Kichwa even if they do not consider Kichwa speakers.

The following chart is an overall view of the use of Kichwa items in participants according to their ages. The vertical side shows the total number of Kichwa items tested and the horizontal side shows a range of age. The reference of Kichwa use is low regarding to people aged 18 until 30 years, from the 18 items they get just 8 items. The second group among 30 to 40 reaches 10 to 12 items. Finally, the oldest generation, people from 50 years and plus show to know 14 to 17 out of 18 items. This analysis brings the answer to our research question, Kichwa has declined and the youngest generation of participants show this issue.

The following chart shows a data collection of all the sets of vocabulary tested. The X side shows the vocabulary use percentage and the Y side the number of population who, by instance, from 1 to 7 represent the youngest, 8 to 14 30 to 40 and 15 to 21 the oldest from 50 years old. In the plot we can see how the oldest generation show domain in the 4 sets of vocabulary.

This is a view of the development of the 3 generations tested. The gray line are the oldest generation of participants, the orange represent the G2 and the blue line the youngest ones. We can notice from this perspective that in general the youngest participants are missing lots of Kichwa words and the three generations show a huge gap of Kichwa use.

ANIMALS As mentioned before Salasaka is an indigenous community in the countryside, so many people dedicate to agriculture, and this makes people to be surrounded by animals. In these 3 groups we can see that G1 know 2 terms (dog and cat) the most common ones in Kichwa. However, the 3rd term has been completely omitted, the 4th term on the other side faces a lack of knowledge in the term. G2 show a little more Kichwa language use in these terms, it can also be because most of them are dedicated to house tasks or agriculture, so they are using these terms more frequently. This also happens with G3, the show a lot more Kichwa language use.

VERBS These verbs represent everyday actions in the community. So, we can see from the orange columns that G1 has lexis just in Spanish, G2 has a little bit more in Kichwa and G3 a lot more. Verbs like write (killkana) or play a musical instrument (takina) are indeed heard rarely even among old generations.

NUMBERS Numbers are other sets of words that are not much used in Kichwa. So, the results above show G1 know the smallest numbers 3 and 5 only, they may use it in Spanish. This is almost the same case with the G2, the first two numbers are being used and not the rest. On the other side, G3 uses more Kichwa numbers, and their workplace and professions will influence this as well.

CLOTHING Fortunately, clothing terms are still used in high percentage. The clothing enterprises have taken a lot of place in Salasaka society recently. Thus, participants showed they know many lexis from the charts, except for the youngest participants, who may know but not use.

Conclusions The 4 sets of vocabulary used to examine our participants showed the real shift in use of Kichwa. The three generations are using different amount of vocabulary words in Kichwa. For instance, the youngest speakers use less vocabulary in Kichwa language. This compared to the 2 older generations preoccupies the small amount of Kichwa language use. As expected, old generations showed the opposite side which means their Kichwa is stronger than the young ones. This is a clear example of Kichwa language decline. If people from 18 -25 show these issues, younger generations (children, adolescents) may have less Kichwa lexis use. Furthermore, even if the young participants showed to know little Kichwa, it doesn’t mean they use them in their speech. No language can be considered the most difficult to learn in the entire world. It may vary in difficulty depending on people’s first language or the grammatical difference between one and the other. As we have seen, it may also have other factors like the use of the language at home, with family members, at work or at school. Among these difficult factors, with endangered languages, learners can struggle to find accessibility to extracurricular practice or rehearsal with native language speakers. There is a lack of consciousness even inside the native Kichwa speaking cultures which pushes coming generations not to keep the language. There is other negative factor that makes the study of Kichwa challenging this language has limited options to practice. This has been wrongly stigmatized due to most of its speakers’ use the language for a daily life in their communities or rural areas ending up considering it to be a language without prestige or useless for the “real world”. This conduces speakers to use the socially dominant language, Spanish. Even if the future of Kichwa seems dark, lots of people are working towards its maintenance. For instance, the Kichwa Institute of Science technology and Humanities of Ecuador is running lots of projects in benefit of that, young people organizations are becoming aware of its use and we may be a huge community of Kichwa language speakers in the future. Appendix: Multilingual Language Use Questionnaire

  Kichwa or/and Spanish language use: Which language do you use with these people or in ` these situations.

Kichwa Spanish When you are counting In/using social media At your workplace At the community School Reading Listening to music Watching videos/Tv   Do you know the name of this objects in Kichwa? If yes, what is it?

Salasaka woman’s traditional clothing

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