Word "flag" in Aymara (original) (raw)

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wiphala

Overview
Word " wiphala "

About Aymara:

Genetic affiliation: > Borean> Nostratic> Eurasiatic-Amerind> Amerind> Southern Amerind> Andean-Chibchan-Paezan> Andean> Aymaran
External links:
Word "flag" in different languages:
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Overview

"Unancha" means "flag" in Quechua and "electrical signal" in Aymara; the mentioned use of "unancha" in Aymara Wikipedia to mean "flag" seems to have been due to a mistake in the country infobox template that included for some reason (wild copy+paste the Quechua Wikipedia?) an alien word from Quechua, as of 2006.10.
António Martins, 27 Mai 2008 and Oct 2006

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Word " wiphala "

Word:

wiphala

Script:

Latin

Etym. family:

*wiphala

Meaning:

flag

External links:

English Wikitionary entry about wiphala

As far as I can tell, "wiphala" is indeed the regular Aymara word for "flag", while "unancha" is the regular Quechua word for "flag". (Evidence of this is the Aymara Wikipedia article about the flag of Bolivia and the Quechua Wikipedia article about flags.)

However, the (Aymara) word "wiphala" is used in Quechua to refer specifically to any of the seven colored Inca flags — both the the rainbow Twantinsuyu flag and any of the 7×7 chequered flags of its nominal “four quarters”. (Evidence of this is the Quechua Wikipedia article about these flags.)

António Martins, 27 Mai 2008

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Typos and variants

The Indigenous banner is called huipala […]whipala […] wipahla.
Laila Holtet (of tawantinsuyu.com), 09 Jul 2001

The spellings "whipala" and "Wipahla" seem to be influenced by English and German, respectively, and are nothing more than typos. (The same, in the realm of speech, for a putative pronounciation of this "ph" as [f] and not [pʰ], misled by how some Romance conservative orthographies render Hellenic borrowings including "φ".)
António Martins, 25 Oct 2017

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Word " ᚛ᚃᚗᚇᚘᚕᚎᚕ᚜ "

Word:

᚛ᚃᚗᚇᚘᚕᚎᚕ᚜

Transliteration:

wiphala

Script:

Ogham

Variant:

less common orthography form of "wiphala"

Remarks:

khipu script

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Word " wipʼala "

Word:

wipʼala

Script:

Latin

Variant:

less common orthography form of "wiphala"

Some sources (namely [qch9X], among others), use the spelling "wip’ala" instead of the more usual "wiphala". Both "h" and "’" are part of most Aymara orthographies, with different phonological values: aspiration and ejectiveness. The form "wip’ala" may reflect dialectal variation or be merely an error.
António Martins, 25 Oct 2017

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Word " huipala "

Word:

huipala

Script:

Latin

Variant:

historical/residual form of "wiphala"

Remarks:

Castillian-based spelling

The form "huipala" is typically a Castillian (“Spanish”) rendering / interpretation of the [u̯]/[w] semivowel, which works well for the Latin / Romance environment it was created for (or where it evolved in), but not so much elsewhere: Many improvised “organic” orthographies based on Castillian spelling, used in/for languages of the Americas, Africa, and the Philippines, used "hu" at first to later replace it within more suitable spelling conventions, and Aymara seems to be one more of these cases. Curiously, the tables seems to have been turned, as currently Castillian texts (such as the 2009 Bolivian law) favour the Aymara spelling "wiphala" over "huipala".
António Martins, 25 Oct 2017

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