INTRODUCTION

The case of Culle, an isolated indigenous language of the northern Peruvian Andes that has been subjected to mineralization not only by Spanish hegemony but also by Quechua dominance in pre-Columbian times, provides an opportunity to address the complexity of historical multilingualism in South America.

There is solid evidence attesting to the fact that before the Spanish invasion, the Culle language was in the process of being subsumed by Quechua, which had taken root in the region with Inca hegemony, and perhaps even earlier, with the Wari expansion (Adelaar 2012). That process was cut short by the European conquest enterprise (Cerrón-Palomino 1995: 177), yet centuries later, the ancient indigenous regional language was similarly overtaken by Spanish.

Quechua, a major language family currently spoken in various territories across South America, has been the focus of ample scholarly study and research. In contrast, Culle and its linguistic legacy—visible in different aspects of the Spanish spoken in the northern Andes of Peru—has received scant attention, and its features have at times even been conflated with those of Quechua, as we will see in section 3.

Studying Culle as a language repeatedly minoritized in different historical periods can be particularly illuminating. Despite the scarcity of documentary sources for its study, academic research has been able to expand our knowledge of Culle through the use of alternative sources, such as toponymy and the analysis of regional variants of Spanish. In what follows, we will provide a succinct history of the language, present some of its most distinctive features, and discuss some possible approaches to deepen our knowledge of Culle and the culture associated with it.