Alphabet Andes

One of the readings we had to do this week was from Andeans Worlds, a chapter focusing on the cultural exchange between indigenous Andeans and their European conquerors.  Of particular interest to me was the process by which Spaniards created a written version of Quechua, the language of the Incas (or at least the ethnic group that created the Incan empire). The author, Kenneth Andrien, made a very interesting point: that creating a written version of a language that had been very much an oral one only would have a very profound impact on how people communicated and how people kept their history.  At first glance, it seems like it shouldn’t.  After all why wouldn’t it just make it easier, more consistent?  But what Andrien says is that using the Latin alphabet to represent Quechua words was only a loose approximation.  So the immediate problem is that its corrupting the way it is spoken.  And because stories and histories were written and not collected mentally, that changed who kept them and who created them.  Which would drastically alter the way a culture created and maintained itself.

For me, the idea of written language is so ingrained that its quite hard for me to think about a language that isn’t written.  Bewildering really.  To have to change to a written one would be so disorientating and have to challenge the way one thought about truth and the trustworthiness of one’s memories.