676

in speech, is heavily Spanish-influenced in syntax and

has an impoverished lexicon of suffixes. Radio Aymara is
used by radio announcers translating orally directly from
Spanish scripts. It is characterized by Spanish syntactic
patterning and by a superabundance of Spanish loans, with
the Aymara sometimes reduced to final suffixes. A number
of announcers are now consciously trying to make their
translations less literal, however, seeking to interpret
the sense rather than gloss word for word.

As noted in 3-3.3, the entry of Spanish loanwords
into Aymara, which occurs in all Aymara dialects, is
nothing new. Some early Spanish loans (certain roots and
stems, diminutive suffixes, and expressions of thanks)
have been completely adapted to Aymara phonology (Aymarized)
and are perceived by monolinguals and bilinguals alike as
natively Aymara; others are more or less adapted to Aymara
phonology according to the degree of the speaker's control
of Spanish and attitude toward Aymara. A rather large
number of loans may occur even in the speech of mono-
Tinguals if they wish to show familiarity with the
prestige language, Spanish; in that case loans may alter-
nate with native Aymara doublets, as occurred in the
speech of an elderly monolingual woman in Tarata, Peru.

(A definition of Aymara monolingual may here be attempted:
a person who produces grammatical sentences only in

Aymara, although possibly using a rather extensive Spanish