Introduction to Aymaran

Aymaran dialects

Dialects edit

There is some degree of regional variation within the Aymara language, although all the dialects are mutually intelligible.[1] Most study of the language has focused on either the Aymara spoken on the southern Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca or the Aymara spoken around La Paz. Lucy Therina Briggs classifies both of these regions as being part of the Northern Aymara dialect, which encompasses the department of La Paz in Bolivia and the department of Puno in Peru. The Southern Aymara dialect is spoken in the eastern half of the w:Iquique province in northern Chile and in most of the Bolivian department of Oruro. It is also found in northern Potosí and southwest Cochabamba, but it is slowly being replaced by Quechua in those regions. Intermediate Aymara shares dialectical features with both Northern and Southern Aymara and is found in the eastern half of the Tacna and Moquegua departments in southwest Peru and in the northeastern tip of Chile.[2].


  1. SIL's Ethnologue.com and the ISO designate a Central Aymara dialect found in between Lake Titicaca and the Pacific Coast in southern Peru and a Southern Aymara dialect found in western Bolivia and northeast Chile. These classifications, however, are not based upon academic research and are probably a misinterpretation of Cerron-Palomino's classification of the language family.
  2. Lucy Therina Briggs, Dialectal Variation in the Aymara Language of Bolivia and Peru, Dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, 1976; Adalberto Salas and María Teresa Poblete, "El aimara de Chile (fonología, textos, léxico)", Revista de Filoogía y Linüistica de la Universidad de Costa Rica, Vol XXIII: 1, pp 121-203, 2, pp 95-138; Cerron-Palomino, 2000, pp 65-8, 373.