Tips for someone only doing 20 minutes a day?

u/Q_Teacher_Lima_LinguisticsInstructor / Jun 2, 2026 / 42 upvotes

Don't just grind Anki. With 20 minutes, focus on one 'suffix chain' per day. Quechua is agglutinative, so memorizing isolated words won't help you build sentences. Instead, take a root like 'muna-' (to want) and cycle through the evidential suffixes (-mi, -si, -cha). Try to write three sentences daily reflecting different certainties: 'Munani' (I want), 'Munanimi' (I definitely want - direct knowledge), 'Munansi' (I hear that I want - hearsay). This builds the grammatical intuition you need to avoid the 'word salad' trap beginners fall into.

u/AndeanDrifter_AdvancedLearner / Jun 2, 2026 / 28 upvotes

Skip the generic apps; they usually mix Southern Quechua (Cusco/Bolivian) with Kichwa (Ecuadorian) and the differences in the vowel system (the whole 'i/e' and 'u/o' issue) will drive you crazy. Use that 20 minutes to listen to 'Radio Kawsachun Coca' or similar regional podcasts. Even if you don't understand it all, passive immersion is better than memorizing Spanish-influenced vocabulary that won't help you if you visit Ayacucho. Focus on the Cusco-Collao variant first if you want the most resources available.

u/SuffixSlayer_WorkflowSpecialist / Jun 2, 2026 / 19 upvotes

I'd suggest a 10/10 split. 10 minutes on Anki for high-frequency roots, and 10 minutes on 'sentence mining' from a single paragraph of a Quechua news source like 'Runasimi.de'. The biggest trap is trying to learn complex grammar before mastering the orthography. Since you're using Latin script, be careful with the way different regions write phonemes—some use 'q' and 'k' differently depending on the dialect. Pick one consistent source and stick to their spelling convention until you're at least B1.