Huaylas Quechua/Keyboard

existing resources

When looking for other resources, we did not find any for our specific variety of Quechua. Quechua is a macrolanguage, and the more popular varieties of Cuzco, Ayacucho, and Southern Bolivian Quechua have existing resources. However, mutual intelligibility between these variants and Huaylas Quechua is low.

On Windows, there is a catch-all Language Pack for Quechua. However, the keyboard layout is exactly the same as the keyboard layout for Spanish. Gboard, a keyboard app for Android devices, also has keyboard layouts for the three most popular varieties but not for the specific variant we are working with.

developing resources

Layout based on Spanish

°
|

!
1

 

"
2

#
3

$
4

%
5

&
6

/
7

(
8

)
9

=
0

?
'

¡
¿

       

Q
q

 

W
w

E
e

R
r

T
t

Y
y

U
u

I
i

O
o

P
p

◌́
◌̈

*
+

]
}

        

A
a

S
s

D
d

F
f

G
g

H
h

J
j

K
k

L
l

Ñ
ñ

[
{

           

Z
z

X
x

C
c

V
v

B
b

N
n

M
m

;
,

:
.

_
-

Justification

We wanted to base our layout for Huaylas Quechua on the Spanish layout since the language is spoken in Peru, a Spanish-speaking country. When creating the layout, I had to recreate the base “Spanish format”. One of the main changes we wanted to make with this layout for Hauylas Quechua was in regards to the dead key for the accent mark. In Huaylas Quechua, it is much more common for vowels to have the two dot diacritic ( ¨ ) than an accent mark ( ´ ). So, we switched the case of these marks to have the diacritic be in the lower case.