Quechua

About Quechua

These courses introduce students to a variety of Quechua/Kichwa dialects spoken by indigenous peoples living in the Amazon and Andean regions of Ecuador. Scientific and environmental themes provide insight regarding the ways of living and representing the world embedded in the language.

Students will engage in local knowledge and Kichwa narratives about glaciers, climate change, animals, and plants. Quechua/Kichwa is taught by a native-language speaker at the University of Wisconsin Madison through a distance-learning format i.e. video conferencing.

Undergraduate

University of Utah students can complete the BA language requirement with Quechua or choose to major or minor in Latin American Studies with Quechua as their language.

All language classes are offered in a series beginning in the Fall semester (1010 and 2010) and concluding in the Spring semester (1020 and 2020), and will count towards the foreign language credits required to complete a Bachelor of Arts.

BA In Latin American Studies

The Latin American Studies major is designed to provide students with critical language and cultural skills that serve as the foundation for careers in public service, business, humanitarian work, law, and health care, among others, in Latin America and with Latino populations at home. Students pursuing the major may study Quechua as their Latin American language.

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Minor in Latin American Studies

The Latin American Studies minor is designed to be paired with another major in a discipline, so that students can combine discipline-specific skills with a degree of language and cultural competency. Students pursuing the major may study Quechua as their Latin American language.

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Quechua Courses

These courses introduce students to a variety of Quechua (known as Quichua or Kichwa) spoken by indigenous peoples living in the Amazonian region of Ecuador and are offered through a cooperative agreement between the University of Utah, the University of Pittsburgh, and Brigham Young University, in which students from each university join one another in an interactive classroom linked by distance-learning technology.

For graduate students wanting to study the language, there are also graduate-level courses available.

First-semester Cambodian for students who have no previous experience with the language. Students must receive a grade of C- or higher to continue in the series. This course develops listening and reading strategies with an emphasis on oral and written forms of communication.

Credits: 4

Second-semester Cambodian. This course continues to develop listening and reading strategies with an emphasis on oral and written forms of communication.

Credits: 4

Third-semester Cambodian. Continued emphasis on listening and speaking skills with an increased emphasis on reading and writing skills as well as the culture of people who speak Cambodian.

Credits: 4

Fourth-semester Cambodian. Maintains a strong emphasis on listening and speaking skills. Through readings of more extensive texts and informal writing as a support for speaking, it develops oral fluency toward narration/elaboration and paragraph-length discourse.

Credits: 4

This course is for graduate students who must enroll in a course 5000 or higher. It is in place of the lower-division language courses. Graduate students should enroll in this course and attend the section of Cambodian that they intend to take, and inform the instructor they are enrolled in 7300.

Credits: 1 - 4

FLAS Scholarship

Quechua is an approved language for a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, a federally funded awards offered through the University of Utah's Center for Latin American Studies. These scholarships provide funding for undergraduate and graduate students who study modern foreign languages and related area studies, and students learning Quechua are encouraged to apply!

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Community

Are you a Salt Lake community member wanting to learn Quechua?
The University of Utah offers Quechua courses for community members through Continuing Education & Community Engagement. These courses are available for academic non-credit, and you do not need to be a student to register for these courses.

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