The Sechura language, also known as Sek, is an extinct language spoken in the

Piura Region Piura () is a coastal department and region in northwestern Peru. The region's capital is Piura and its largest port cities, Paita and Talara, are also among the most important in Peru. The area is known for its tropical and dry beaches. It is ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

, near the port of

Sechura Sechura is a city in northwestern Peru, south of Piura. It is the capital of Sechura Province in the Piura Region. The city lends its name to the Sechura Desert The Sechura Desert is a coastal desert located south of the Piura Region of Pe ...

. It appears to have become extinct by the beginning of the 20th century. The only documentation is that of an 1863 wordlist by

Richard Spruce Richard Spruce (10 September 1817 – 28 December 1893) was an English botanist specializing in bryology. One of the great Victorian botanical explorers, Spruce spent 15 years exploring the Amazon from the Andes to its mouth, and was one of t ...

, as well as a word list by Bishop Martínez Compañón (1782-1790).Martínez Compañón, Baltasar Jaime. 1985 782-1790 ''Trujillo del Perú en el siglo XVIII'', vol. 2. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica.

Classification

Sechura is too poorly known to be definitively classified. Kaufman notes that a connection between Sechura and the

Catacaoan languages The Catacaoan languages are an extinct family of three languages spoken in the Piura Region of Peru. The three languages in the family are: * Catacao or Katakao, once spoken around the city of Catacaos * Colán or Kolán, once spoken between ...

is likely and is supported by lexical evidence.

Sek family

Rivet groups Sechura and

Tallán Tallán (or ''Tacllán'', after the use of the taclla, a farming tool) was a conglomerate of ethnic groups with a common origin that settled in the plains of north-western Peru, an ethnos with a matriarchal system. (Due to their possible kinship, ...

together under the same ''Sek'' when he compares them to the Catacaoan languages. In comparing wordlists from Sechura and Tallán, Torero finds six likely cognates between the two: However, ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...

'' says the data is not compelling.

Vocabulary

Martínez Compañón (1782-1790)

Below are sample Sechura words from a manuscript (currently held in Madrid) by Bishop Martínez Compañón (1782-1790). There is another copy of the manuscript currently held in Bogotá, which Urban (2019) considers to be less reliable and not the original.Urban, Matthias. 2019.
Lost languages of the Peruvian North Coast
'. Estudios Indiana 12. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Preußischer Kulturbesitz) & Gebr. Mann Verlag. :

Spruce (1863)

Below is

's 1863 Sechura word list as transcribed by Matthias Urban (2015).Urban, Matthias (2015). El vocabulario sechurano de Richard Spruce. ''Lexis'' Vol. 39(2): 395-413. Some transcriptions are uncertain, with alternative transcriptions following semicolons. :

References

{{Reflist Languages of Peru Language isolates of South America