Chimuan languages


Chimuan or Yuncan is a hypothetical small extinct language family of northern Peru and Ecuador.

Family division

Chimuan consisted of three attested languages:
All languages are now extinct.
Campbell classifies Mochica and Cañar–Puruhá each as separate language families.
Mochica was one of the major languages of pre-Columbian South America. It was documented by Fernando de la Carrera and Middendorff in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively. It became extinct ca. 1950, although some people remember a few words. Adelaar & Muysken consider Mochica a language isolate for now.
Cañari and Puruhá are documented with only a few words. These two languages are usually connected with Mochica. However, as their documentation level is so low, it may not be possible to confirm this association. According to Adelaar & Muysken, Jijón y Caamaño's evidence of their relationship is only a single word: Mochica nech "river", Cañari necha; based on similarities with neighboring languages, he finds a Barbacoan connection more likely.
Quingnam, possibly the same language as Lengua Pescadora, is sometimes taken to be a dialect of Mochica, but it is unattested, unless a list of numerals discovered in 2010 turns out to be Quingnam or Pescadora as expected. Those numerals are not, however, Mochica.

Mason (1950)

Yunca-Puruhán internal classification by Mason :
;Yunca-Puruhán
Mason also included Atalán, which is no longer considered to be part of the Yunca-Puruhán family.

Vocabulary

lists the following basic vocabulary items for the Chimuan languages.