ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns bilingualism in the Chulumani sector of Sud Yungas province, department of La Paz, in Bolivia. In Chulumani two languages are widely spoken: Aymara and Castilian. Aymara is a native South American language spoken by some three million people in total. Sud Yungas is a region of embedded Aymara ethnicity, with few connexions with Quechua speaking regions in Peru. There are a small number of Aymara monolinguals; the local expression for this is Aymara cerrada, closed Aymara. The most noticeable use of Castilian in the countryside is for speaking to children. Even women whose active knowledge of Castilian is scant try to use it with their children. The children, in return, usually speak to parents and each other in Castilian, except when addressing a ‘closed Aymara’. Peasant women are expected to be ‘closed Aymara’ and they exploit this belief, while men are not only expected to know Castilian, but are disgraced if they cannot speak it.
