Cities on mountains are not unusual. Looking across the mountain ranges of the world, we see settlements dotting everywhere, from the cities of the Alps, and towns in the Himalayas and the Andes. But there are some cities at altitudes that tower way above those we are accustomed to. Cities high enough such that anyone not used to the air would start to get mountain sickness after a short time walking about. In fact, in Bolivia’s El Alto International Airport, sitting at an altitude of 4000m above sea level, oxygen is supplied to travelers who would suffer from altitude sickness.

When it comes to the highest settlement on Earth, one would not need to look further than two places — the Andes, and the Himalayas. Home to mountains or plateaus that exceed 4000m and 4500m above sea level respectively, the air up there is thinner, and the pressure is lower, and would pose a challenge to anyone unused to such different environmental conditions. Out of the 5 highest settlements in the world, 4 of them lie in the Himalayas, with 3 in Tibet, China, and 1 in Nepal. But the highest among all lies in the Andes, which goes by the name of La Rinconada in Peru.

Sitting at up to 5100m above sea level, La Rinconada is a mining town home to some thousands of people. Exact numbers in recent years is not exactly known, but the 2007 census recorded that almost 17000 people live there, and the 2017 census recorded 12615 people. La Rinconada lies in the Ananea District in the province of San Antonio de Putina, near the border with Bolivia, with the majority of residents being indigenous of Quechua descent. Historically, the Inca, who established the largest empire of the pre-Columbian era called Tawantinsuyu, spoke the Quechua language, or Runa Simi, along with some of their long-term adversaries like the Huanca, Chanka, and Kañari.

Quechua was not only just a language, but its own language family as well. With many variants of Quechua still being spoken by millions today, the Quechuan languages are thriving, even being official languages of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Nevertheless, there are some challenges to teaching Quechua to younger generations, including access to written materials, print material, and software. In fact, in some areas, Quechua is still largely a spoken language, which demonstrates the current problems in the education of indigenous languages in such regions.

There are notable differences between the variants of Quechua spoken in Central Peru, Ecuador, and Southern Peru and Bolivia. Linguists have assigned two broad classifications to these variants, calling the Central Peruvian variants Quechua I, and the other variants Quechua II. Sub-categories of Quechua II exist, with Ecuador having the Quechua II-B variants, and Southern Peru and Bolivia having the Quechua II-C variants. While Quechua I and II are largely considered a dialect continua, there are some cases where a Quechua speaker from a region is unable to understand the Quechua spoken in another. This issue of mutual intelligibility has led linguists to posit that Quechua is in fact a group of languages, but where language boundaries are drawn is not really known. In fact, Ethnologue proposes 45 languages in the purported Quechua language family, divided into the two primary groups.

La Rinconada is located along the Bolivian border, making it most likely that Quechua II-C or Southern Quechua, particularly of the Puno or Northern Bolivian variants, would be used there. In fact, Southern Quechua is the most widely spoken variant of Quechua, which forms the basis for Standard Quechua. With an orthography developed, this is how Quechua is presented in the digital and online space, and in institutions across Peru and Bolivia. The full Quechua alphabet is as such:

a, ch, chh, ch’, h, i, k, kh, k’, l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, ph, p’, q, qh, q’, r, s, t, th, t’, u, w, y.

From this alphabet alone, you would probably make at least a couple of observations. One being that Southern Quechua distinguishes 3 phonemic vowels (excluding diphthongs wherever allowed), and the other being Southern Quechua distinguishing the unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective stop consonants for /tʃ/, /k/, /p/, /q/, and /t/. Some dialects or variants lack certain forms, however. The digraph “ll” represents the voiced palatal lateral approximant, drawing a parallel with how the “lh” is pronounced in some Portuguese variants. The vowels /i/ and /u/ have allophones, which are noticed with used with the consonant /q/, /qʰ/, and /q’/. “Qu” and “qi”, for example, would be pronounced as /qo/ and /qe/ respectively.

Quechua, like Eskimo-Aleut languages, is a family of agglutinating languages. This language family uses suffixes to modify word stems like nouns and verbs to give more detail about this word in relation to other words in a sentence. With a wide array of suffixes, subtler shades of meaning could be derived, adding further nuance in Quechua discourse. With a subject-object-verb word order, there are some interesting characteristics Quechua has that would make this language (and language family) stand out among the languages we have discussed thus far.

Southern Quechua distinguishes a total of 19 noun cases, using 1 or 2 suffixes to denote each case. It uses the nominative-accusative system, plus 17 more cases denoted by suffixes that are attached to the noun stem. Here is the list:

Case	Suffix	Meaning
nominative	–	(subject)
accusative	-(k)ta	(direct object)
instrumental	-wan	with / and … [noun]
abessive	-naq	without the [noun]
dative	-paq	to the [noun]
genitive	-p(a)	of the [noun]
causative	-rayku	because of the [noun]
benefactive	-paq	for the [noun, benfector]
locative	-pi	at the [noun]
directional	-man	towards the [noun]
inclusive	-piwan / -puwan	including the [noun]
terminative	-kama / -yaq	until / up to the [noun]
transitive	-(rin)ta	through the [noun]
ablative	-manta / -piqta	off / from the [noun]
comitative	-(ni)ntin	along with the [noun]
immediate	-raq	first, the [noun]
intrative	-pura	among the [noun, pl.]
exclusive	-lla(m)	only the [noun]
comparative	-naw / -hina	than the [noun]

Other kinds of suffixes attached to the noun stem are possessive suffixes, and the plural suffix -kuna. Perhaps the confusing this is, the order of noun suffixes can vary from variant to variant in Southern Quechua, which is something to be aware of when travelling in Southern Quechua-speaking areas.

Southern Quechua has a system called “bipersonal conjugation”. That means that verbs have to agree with the subject and the object. Kind of like how Nunavut Inuktitut works. Following the verb stem, the object suffix is used first, followed by the subject suffix, which is also conjugated by the tense. In addition to these, other suffixes can also change the meaning of the stem, such as the causative suffix -chi, not to be confused with the causative case marker -rayku, the reflexive suffix -ku, the suffix for mutual action -naku, and -chka to denote an ongoing action (like the present continuous tense).

Furthermore, Southern Quechua has a system of evidentiality. This is where morphemes or suffixes are used to distinguish sources of information, from hearsay to direct evidence. While there are dialectal variations for these evidential morphemes, the commonality is, that Southern Quechua distinguishes 3 levels of information sources. These are direct evidence, inferred or conjecture, and reported or hearsay.

Perhaps an interesting characteristic of Quechua (and Aymara) is how some words are associated. The word qhipa means both “behind” and “future”, with the interpretation that we are moving backwards into the future (with no reference to the 1980s film trilogy), and “front” and “past” are translated as ñawpa. Additionally, Quechua also distinguishes the inclusive (Ñuqanchik) and exclusive we (Ñuqayku), something that is present in Polynesian languages but absent in most Indo-European languages.

And there we have it. This has been a little dive into just the Quechua language variant which is most likely spoken in the world’s highest permanently inhabited settlement. It is fascinating to think about how humans have adapted to living at such extreme heights, places where the unacclimatised would likely suffer from altitude sickness. It is also interesting to learn that this language has survived Spanish colonisation, in spite of the disease and exploitation that plagued the region since the arrival of the conquistador. I believe that Quechua can continue to survive, and it would be in a better position when education tools are more developed, in addition to its related infrastructure like print and digital media.