It is the Quechua variety used by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua in Cusco, which also prefers the Spanish-based five-vowel alphabet.[2] On the other hand, the official alphabet used by the ministry of education has only three vowels.[3]
Phonology
Vowels
Quechua only has three vowel phonemes: /a//i/ and /u/, with no diphthongs. Monolingual speakers pronounce them as [æ,ɪ,ʊ] respectively, but Spanish realizations [ä,i,u] may also be found. When the vowels appear adjacent to uvular consonants (/q/, /qʼ/, and /qʰ/), they are rendered more like [ɑ, ɛ, ɔ], respectively.[4] There is debate about whether Cusco Quechua has five /a,e,i,o,u/ or three vowel phonemes: /a,ɪ,ʊ/.[5]
While historically Proto-Quechua clearly had just three vowel phonemes /*a, *ɪ, *ʊ/, and although some other Quechua varieties have an increased number of vowels as a result of phonological vowel length emergence or of monophthongization, the current debate about the Cusco variety seems to be not phonological in matter but just orthographic.[6]
About 30% of the modern Quechua vocabulary is borrowed from Spanish, and some Spanish sounds (such as /f/, /b/, /d/, /ɡ/) may have become phonemic even among monolingual Quechua speakers.
↑Ebina, Daisuke (2011). "Cusco Quechua". In Yamakoshi, Yasuhiro (ed.). Grammatical Sketches from the Field. Tōkyō: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. pp.1–39.
↑Adelaar, Willem F. H. (2014). "The Andean three-vowel system and its effect on the development of a modern orthography for the Aimaran and Quechuan languages". Scripta. 6: 33–46. hdl:1887/71388.
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