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What does Quechua sound like? Traditional fabric/dyeing presentation in “runasimi”!


Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ?

My mission to learn a little Quechua (a.k.a. “Runasimi”, the language of the Incas) has been so fascinating!!

I've recorded lots of video footage about my experience here in the Andes, including my four day adventure hike towards Machu Picchu that I'll edit to share some time in January, and even footage of me using some very basic Quechua, which I'll share next week with a technical summary of the little I learned of the language in my few weeks here, for those curious about my (superficial) summary of it.

But first, I wanted to share this wonderful footage I got in the town of Chinchero, which I had passed through on a rented motorbike while exploring the Sacred Valley. In this town there is a group of people willing to demonstrate how fabrics are prepared and dyed with native plants to make traditional clothing or blankets. If you're around the area, ask for “Wiñay Away” (Calle Albergue) to see for yourself.

To make the video more interesting, they gave me the full presentation entirely in Quechua. I wanted to share how the language is naturally used by natives with you. When I searched Youtube initially to hear some Quechua, I didn't find anything useful (longer than a few seconds) and non-academic that had subtitles to hear the sounds and understand what they were saying, so I've included subtitles (captions) in English, Spanish and the original Quechua! Click “CC” on Youtube to select English, Spanish or Quechua to follow along with what Lucy is saying!

As far as I know, this is the only video on Youtube captioned entirely in Quechua 🙂 Enjoy!

Big thanks to Lucy for giving the demonstration to me, even though the camera was a little intimidating, and thanks to Soledad for helping me to understand the video enough to create the multilingual subtitles.

Your thoughts on this unique language? Let us know in the comments below!

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Benny Lewis

Founder, Fluent in 3 Months

Fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author. Benny believes the best approach to language learning is to speak from day one.

Speaks: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Dutch, Irish

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