Mochica is a Chimuan language formerly spoken along the northwest coast of Peru and in an inland village. First documented in 1607, the language was widely spoken in the area during the 17th century and the early 18th century. By the late 19th century, the language was dying out and spoken only by a few people in the village of Etén, in Chiclayo. It died out as a spoken language around 1920, but certain words and phrases continued to be used until the 1960s. It is best known as the supposed language of the Moche culture, as well as the Chimú culture/Chimor.
a case system in which cases are built on each other in a linear sequence; for example, the ablative case suffix is added to the locative case, which in turn is added to an oblique case form;
all nouns have two stems, possessed and non-possessed;
The reconstruction or recovery of the Mochican sounds is problematic. Different scholars who worked with the language used different notations. Both Carrera Daza like Middendorf, devoted much space to justify the phonetic value of the signs they used, but neither was completely successful in clearing the doubts of interpretation of these symbols. In fact their interpretations differ markedly, casting doubt on some sounds. Lehman made a useful comparison of existing sources, enriched with observations of 1929. The long-awaited field notes of Brüning from 1904-05 have been kept in the Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg, though still unpublished. An additional complication in spellings interpretation of different scholars is the fact that between the 16th and the 19th century the language experienced a remarkable phonological change that make even more risky to use the latest data to understand older material.
Vowels
The language probably had six simple vowels and six more elongated vowels: /i, iː, ä, äː, e, eː, ø, øː, o, oː, u, uː/. Carrera Daza and Middendorf gave mismatched systems that can be put in approximate correspondence:
Carrera Daza
a, â
e
i
o, ô
u, û
œ
Middendorf
a, ā, ă
e
ī,, ĭ
ō,, ŏ
u, ū, ŭ
ä, ů
Surviving records
The only surviving song in the language is a single tonada, Tonada del Chimo, preserved in the Codex Martínez Compañón among many watercolours illustrating the life of Chimú people during the 18th century: Quingnam, possibly the same as Lengua Pescadora, is sometimes taken to be a dialect, but a list of numerals discovered in 2010 which is suspected to be Quingnam or Pescadora is not Mochica.
Learning program
The Gestión de Cultura of Morrope in Peru has launched a program to learn this language, in order to preserve the ancient cultural heritage in the area. This program has been well received by people and adopted by many schools, and also have launched other activities such as the development of ceramics, mates, etc.
