Southern Quechua in the context of "Cusco"

Quechua (/ˈkɛtʃuə/, Spanish: [ˈketʃwa]), also called Runa simi (Quechua: [ˈɾʊna ˈsɪmɪ], 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral "Proto-Quechua" language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers in 2004, and just under 7 million from the most recent census data available up to 2011. Approximately 13.9% (3.7 million) of Peruvians speak a Quechua language.

Although Quechua began expanding many centuries before the Incas, that previous expansion also meant that it was the primary language family within the Inca Empire. The Spanish tolerated its use until the Peruvian struggle for independence in the 1780s. As a result, various Quechua languages are still widely spoken, being the majority language in a number of regions of Peru, the most-spoken or co-official language in many others, and, as the Kichwa language, the second most-spoken language of Ecuador, after Spanish.

Quechua people (/ˈkɛtʃuə/, US also /ˈkɛtʃwɑː/; Spanish: [ˈketʃwa]) , Quichua people or Kichwa people are Indigenous peoples of South America who speak the Quechua languages, which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are native to Peru, there are some significant populations in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina.

The most common Quechua dialect is Southern Quechua. The Kichwa people of Ecuador speak the Kichwa dialect; in Colombia, the Inga people speak Inga Kichwa.

The Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru (Spanish: Constitución Política del Perú; Southern Quechua: Perú Suyu Hatun Kamay Pirwa 1993) is the supreme law of Peru. The current constitution, enacted on 31 December 1993, is Peru's fifth in the 20th century and replaced the 1979 Constitution. The Constitution was drafted by the Democratic Constituent Congress that was convened by President Alberto Fujimori during the Peruvian Constitutional Crisis of 1992 that followed his 1992 self-coup and dissolution of Congress, and was promulgated on 29 December 1993. A Democratic Constitutional Congress (CCD) was elected in 1992, and the final text was approved in a 1993 referendum. The Constitution was primarily created by Fujimori and supporters without the participation of any opposing entities.

The 1993 Constitution of Peru differed originally from the 1979 Constitution in that it gave greater power to the president. For example, it allowed for reelection, reduced the bicameral 240-member congress to a unicameral 120 Congress of the Republic, not only affirmed the president's power to veto found in the 1979 Constitution, but also gave him the power to use a line item veto, and mandated that all tax laws receive prior approval by the Ministry of Economics and Finance. While the Constitution of 1979 allowed the president to dissolve congress after congress censured prime ministers three times, the 1993 constitution allows the president to do so after only two censures. The Constitution allows the president to decree laws as long as they first informs the Congress of their intent to do so. If the president dissolves Congress, the Constitution gives them the power to rule until the election of a new Congress within a four-month timeline, during which time the Standing Committee of the dissolved Congress will remain functioning. Following the ouster of President Alberto Fujimori, the Constitution was amended to bar the president from immediate re-election, a status quo that had prevailed for most of the time since the Great Depression. Subsequent constitutional amendments, laws of Congress, and Constitutional Court rulings have further changed the rules of interaction among branches of government.

Cuzco Quechua (Quechua: Qusqu qhichwa simi) is a dialect of Southern Quechua spoken in Cuzco and the Cuzco Region of Peru.

It is the Quechua variety used by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua in Cuzco, which also prefers the Spanish-based five-vowel alphabet. On the other hand, the official alphabet used by the ministry of education has only three vowels.

Ayacucho (also called Chanca or Chanka after the local Chanka ethnicity that dominated the area before the Inca conquest) is a variety of Southern Quechua spoken in the Ayacucho Region, Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is the largest variety of Southern Quechua after Cusco Quechua. The literary standard of Southern Quechua is based on these two closely related Quechua varieties.