Mochica (Yunga, Modern Mochica: ) is an extinct and revived language isolate formerly spoken by the Moche and Sican cultures in the departments of Lambayeque and La Libertad, along the Peruvian North Coast, until the 1920s. Documented beginning in the 16th century in various colonial and 19th-century sources, Mochica is characterized by its unique consonant system, particularly its laterals, clitic- rather than affix-based morphosyntax, case stacking, and numeral classifiers derived from other words. In recent times, there have been initiatives to revive the language, such as teaching it in schools and creating modern learning resources for Mochica.
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Trumai, Arawak, Kandoshi, Muniche, Barbakoa, Cholon-Hibito, Kechua, Mapudungun, Kanichana, and Kunza language families due to contact, also suggesting that similarities with Amazonian languages may be due to the early migration of Mochica speakers down the Marañón and Solimões.
The earliest published documentation of Mochica dates back to 1607 in (1607), written by Franciscan friar Luis Jerónimo de Oré (missionary, polyglot, later bishop of Concepción in Chile), containing some Mochica sentences of unknown origin. However, a 1582 manuscript believed to be hosted at the Archiepiscopal Archive of Trujillo titled Gobierno de los situmas antes de los señores yngas comenzasen a reinar, y trata quienes fueron y mandaron en aqueste valle, Cañaribamba purported to contain information in Cañari, an extinct and poorly known language of Ecuador, has Mochica texts which were copied and published elsewhere but assumed to be of Cañari origin. Following that, In 1644, the diocesan priest and parish vicar of Reque published the ('Art of the Yunga Language'), the only known colonial grammar of this language, is one of the primary sources of data on Mochica, including a descriptive grammar, religious texts, and general information about the Lambayeque region. A document known as the "plan" of Bishop of Trujillo Baltasar Jaime MartÃÂnez Compañón in his Codex MartÃÂnez Compañón, a general account of life in 18th-century Peru, contains a 43-word list in Mochica.
Towards the end of Mochica's existence as a native language in the 19th century, various scholars such as Adolf Bastian, the German physician and philologist , Walter Lehmann, Federico Villarreal, and Hans Heinrich Brüning documented Mochica, most notably Middendorf, who authored the other primary source on Mochica, a grammar incorporating some elements of Carrera's work, but also some new content. Following the death of the last fluent speakers, a number of new sources of documentation were published, by Konrad Huber (1953), who collected data from 1943-47, also including an unpublished wordlist by Rafael Quesquén, Jorge Zevallos Quiñones (1941, 1946), and Paul Kosok (1965), whose wordlist contains a large amount of errors. Finally, the last rememberer of Mochica, Simón Quesquén (1918-1995), had recordings made of his speech in Mochica in 1974, the only ones known in existence.
Colonial sources record several designations for the language now generally known as Mochica: Yunga, Mochica, Muchic/Muchik, and occasional appellatives such as Pescadora.
Oré's Rituale refers to the "Mochica" language and also uses the phrase ('Mochica of the Yungas'). In the latter case, he seems to distinguish between the language itself â called Mochica â and the northern peoples â called Yungas. At the time Yunga was employed not only as a geographic and climatic term, derived from the Quechua exonym 'warm area', but also to refer to the Mochica as an ethnic group. Carrera's Arte also consistently uses the exonym Yunga.
The Augustinian friar Antonio de la Calancha employed the form Muchic in his (1638). In the 19th century, Middendorf revived that variant and disseminated it as Muchik in works such as Das Muchik oder die Chimu-Sprache (1892). He also identified the language with that of the Chimú, partly because Quingnam (the actual language of the Chimú kingdom) was at that time unknown to scholars, whereas colonial references and traces of Mochica still existed. Furthermore, nineteenth-century archaeology often grouped Sicán and Moche material into stages labeled "proto-Chimú" or "early Chimú", which reinforced the misattribution. Later archaeological and linguistic research clarified these associations and dissociated Quingnam from Mochica.
Today, Mochica remains the most widely used term in academic literature, while some revitalization projects prefer Muchik, taken from colonial and 19th-century sources.
Mochica is classified as a language isolate by virtually all modern sources on the language. An exception is Stark (1968, 1972), which groups Mochica (Yunga) with UruâÂÂChipaya and Mayan using the comparative method. This hypothesis, however, has not been received well among the linguistic community.
According to the list of the vicar of Reque and author of the aforementioned Art, Fernando de la Carrera, the peoples who in 1644 spoke the Mochica language were as follows:
The Cultural Office of the district of Mórrope has launched a program to teach the Mochica language in an effort to preserve the regionâÂÂs ancient cultural legacy. The initiative has been well received by local residents and adopted by numerous schools. Additional cultural activities, such as the crafting of ceramics and decorated gourds (mates), have also been introduced as part of the revitalization effort.
Previously considered a dead language, Mochica is now taught in 38 schools and has around 80 teachers.
The phonology of Mochica is not known with certainty due to the differing transcriptions used by different authors. In addition, the two primary sources on Mochica were recorded over 200 years apart, with significant phonetic changes having occurred during that time.
Carrera Daza distinguishes six vowels in Mochica, represented as , with the latter sometimes being written as in different editions of his grammar. This vowel is characterized as "begin[ning] as an e and end[ing] as a u, in such a way that there are two vowels in one". A diacritic is used to indicate length, though it is mainly restricted to a few roots ( 'big') and the ending , used in the genitive construction.
The letter is sometimes used as a palatalization marker by Carrera Daza (e.g. 'bird' or 'he, it'), and diphthongs did not occur in the Mochica of his time.
In contrast, Middendorf recognizes 17 vowels, including 11 plain vowels, two "impure" vowels, and four diphthongs. The impure vowels are written as and . Middendorf admits that he was never able to correctly pronounce them, but characterizes them similarly to the of Carrera Daza. is described with a very fleeting u sound, such that in rapid speech it would sound similar to or . is described as reminiscent of the diphthong .
The vowel represented by is hotly debated in the field of Mochica studies. As no sound recordings of Mochica exist, and because the existing descriptions are rather vague, the true phonetic value cannot be discerned and any interpretations remain completely hypothetical. One hypothesis is that the sixth vowel was , commonly found in Amazonian languages. Other hypotheses have given realizations of and .
A comparison table of the vowels in Carrera Daza and Middendorf is given below.
Thus, a vowel system of Mochica would resemble the table below:
The orthography used for Spanish at the time of the writing of Carrera's grammar was very chaotic and inconsistent. One may therefore never be quite sure on the nature of consonants, especially sibilants, in Spanish colonial texts of the time.
The symbols used to represent Mochica sibilants in Carrera (1644) are and .
===== ===== The grapheme is described unanimously among Mochica scholars as representing .
===== ===== All but two authors coincide in their description of the phoneme represented by or . The only sources to disagree are Stark (1968), which interprets them both as different allophones of , being and respectively. Hovdhaugen (2004) interprets them as having a palatal pronunciation, which is represented as .
Carrera (1644) explains the distinction between and as "they have to be pronounced between them both, hurting on the last one as in ssonto, amoss." The use of "hurting" is derived from Nebrija's Gramática de la lengua castellana, who described consonants and vowels using this definition: "they were called vowels because they have voice by themselves without mixing with other letters, the others were called consonants because they cannot sound without hurting the vowels". Thus, combining the two descriptions, it may be inferred that "sounded only when the second (last) would affect the contiguous vowel", representing or .
===== ===== The digraph is derived from a normal digraph but with the inverted to represent the difference from normal . Middendorf (1892) describes his corresponding sound, written as , as similar to the German . Hovdhaugen (2004) interprets it as , Stark (1968) as , Torero (1997, 2002) as , Eloranta (2013) and Michael et al. (2015) as , Cerrón-Palomino (1995) as and Adelaar as .
===== ===== The trigraph is described as representing a sound difficult to pronounce by Carrera: "These [words] one pronounces starting with T, hurting on the Z and on the vowel, that comes after H, so that it does not say cha but tzha." He further describes the articulation of it as having the "tongue touch[ing] the palate next to the teeth". Middendorf describes it as similar to the German .
===== ===== The trigraph is, according to Carrera, articulated as "[t]he X preceding consonant has to be pronounced hurting between both in a soft way, attaching the tongue to the palate, in such a manner that the sound of the first letter, the vowel, may come out through one side and the other of the mouth". Stark (1968) identifies this sound as , Torero (2002) as a voiceless post-palatal lateral fricative , Hovdhaugen (2004, 2005) as , Adelaar (2004) as , and Salas, Eloranta and Michael et al. (2015) as .
The following consonants are unanimously agreed upon by all sources:
Michael et al. (2015) summarize their interpretations of Mochica in the following table.
A comparison of various interpretations for the letters is given below.
Mochica is typologically different from the other main languages on the west coast of South America, namely Quechuan, Aymara, and Mapudungun. Further, it contains rare features such as:
Some suffixes in Mochica as reconstituted by Hovdhaugen (2004):
Mochica maintains a distinction between inalienable and alienable possession. Inalienable nouns are divided into three noun subclasses, and alienable nouns into two, which can be distinguished from each other by their possesive prefixes. The former require a suffix when not possessed, and do not have a suffix when possessed. Some examples of these nouns are given below.
Locative forms of Mochica nouns:
Numeral classifiers in Mochica:
Mochica numerals:
Mochica is attested in a 43-word list in a document referred to as the "plan" collected by MartÃÂnez Compañón between 1782 and 1785. The "plan" is part of a larger work, known as the Codex MartÃÂnez Compañón, detailing life in colonial Peru. The work also contains a number of watercolors, which were captioned by MartÃÂnez Compañón's personal secretary , who presumably also wrote down the "plan".
There are two copies of the "plan", one held in Bogotá and the other in Madrid. Both copies include 43-word lists for the Quechua, Mochica (Yunga), Sechura, Colán, Catacaos, Culli, Hibito and Cholón languages, as well as Spanish. The Colán and Catacaos languages are generally subsumed under the name Tallán, and they are closely related, probably dialects of a single language. The two versions of the "plan" have certain differences from each other, particularly in the spelling of the transcriptions.
A number of diacritics are employed in the vocabularies. Their meaning is not elaborated upon in the "plan", although certain diacritics are employed in only some of the languages, and are apparently not merely decorative in purpose.
The following wordlist is of the Madrid version of the manuscript.
Below is the 100-word Swadesh list for Mochica.
=== ===
The only surviving song in the language is a single tonada, , preserved in the Codex MartÃÂnez Compañón:
The following is the Lord's Prayer in Mochica.