736

in detail points up the need for collaborative research by
native and non-native speakers in’ studies of regional

and social linguistic variation.

10-2.7 Attitudes toward Aymara language and culture

From the evidence of this study it appears that
many Aymara speakers are ambivalent about their language
and culture. As pointed out by J. Llanque Chana (1974)
for Peru, negative attitudes are fostered by an educational
system unprepared to deal with language and cultural back-
grounds of students whose first language is not Spanish
and by the undeniable fact that acquisition of Spanish
makes the difference between living an economically and
socially marginal existence and entering the mainstream of
modern Peruvian life. The same factors prevail in Bolivia.

The most negative attitudes were found in Tarata and
Sitajara, Peru. In the former, few persons would even
admit to knowing Aymara, although eventually one was found
from a nearby town who seemed to enjoy speaking (and singing
in) the language. In Sitajara a very articulate elderly
monolingual woman, obviously a gifted talker, expressed
considerable bitterness against Aymara, as if its presence
in her brain were to blame for her failure to know Spanish.
A bilingual man in Huancané, a Seventh Day Adventist, ex-
pressed the belief that Aymara language and culture were
inferior to Spanish and that no useful purpose would be

served by teaching people to read and write Aymara.