Learn Quechua Through Topics You Actually Care About

LingoBear creates short Quechua passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. Quechuan family of Andean South America, official in Peru and Bolivia, Latin script, agglutinative SOV grammar with evidential suffixes, ~10M speakers.

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Every word in your Quechua reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help — useful for parsing long agglutinative words with evidential suffixes.

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Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Quechua reading passage — from Andean folklore to Cusco city life.

What is Quechua and where is it spoken?

Quechua (Runa Simi, 'people's language') is a family of related languages spoken across the Andes, with around 10 million speakers in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, southern Colombia, northern Chile and northwestern Argentina. The two main branches are Quechua I (central Peru, including Ancash and Huánuco varieties) and Quechua II, which covers most southern Peruvian and Bolivian varieties including the historic Cusco-Collao prestige form.

What grammar features does Quechua have?

Quechua is agglutinative with SOV word order and no grammatical gender. Suffixes encode case, person, tense, mood and aspect, often stacking five or more on a single root. A famous feature is its evidential suffix system: -mi 'I have personal knowledge', -si 'I was told', -chá 'I infer'. There is also an inclusive/exclusive 'we' distinction (ñuqanchik vs ñuqayku).