Puquina (or Pukina) is an

extinct language An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of r ...

once spoken by a native ethnic group in the region surrounding

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; ; ) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, both in terms of the volume of ...

(

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

and

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

) and in the north of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. It is often associated with the culture that built Tiwanaku. Remnants of Puquina can be found in the Quechuan and Spanish languages spoken in the south of Peru, mainly in

Arequipa Arequipa (; Aymara language, Aymara and ), also known by its nicknames of ''Ciudad Blanca'' (Spanish for "White City") and ''León del Sur'' (Spanish for "South's Lion"), is a city in Peru and the capital of the eponymous Arequipa (province), ...

Moquegua Moquegua (, founded by the Spanish colonists as Villa de Santa Catalina de Guadalcázar del Valle de Moquegua) is a city in southern Peru, located in the Department of Moquegua, of which it is the capital. It is also capital of Mariscal Nieto Prov ...

and

Tacna Tacna, officially known as San Pedro de Tacna, is a city in southern Peru and the regional capital of the Tacna Region. A very commercially active city, it is located only north of the border with Arica y Parinacota Region from Chile, inland f ...

, as well as in

. There also seem to be remnants in the Kallawaya language, which may be a

mixed language A mixed language, also referred to as a hybrid language or fusion language, is a type of contact language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. ...

formed from

Quechuan languages Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral " Proto-Quechua" ...

and Puquina. (

Terrence Kaufman Terrence Kaufman (1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistic ...

(1990) finds the proposal plausible.) Some theories claim that "Qhapaq Simi", the cryptic language of the nobility of the

Inca Empire The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca ...

, was closely related to Puquina, and that ''Runa Simi'' (Quechuan languages) were spoken by commoners. Moulian ''et al.'' (2015) argue that Puquina language influenced

Mapuche language Mapuche ( , ; from 'land' and 'people', meaning 'the people of the land') or Mapudungun (from 'land' and 'speak, speech', meaning 'the speech of the land'; also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu) is either a language isolate or member of the sm ...

of southern Chile long before the rise of the

. This areal linguistic influence may have started with a migratory wave arising from the collapse of the Tiwanaku empire around 1000 CE. Sometimes the term ''Puquina'' is used for the Uru language, which is distinctly different.

Classification

Puquina has been considered an unclassified language, since it has not been proven to be firmly related to any other language in the Andean region. A relationship with the Arawakan languages has long been suggested, based solely on the possessive paradigm (1st no-, 2nd pi-, 3rd ču-), which is similar to the proto-Arawakan subject forms (1st * nu-, 2nd * pi-, 3ª * tʰu-). Recently Jolkesky (2016: 310-317) has presented further possible lexical cognates between Puquina and the Arawakan languages, proposing that this language belongs to the putative Macro-Arawakan stock along with the Candoshi and the Munichi languages. However, such a hypothesis still lacks conclusive scientific evidence. In this regard, Adelaar and van de Kerke (2009: 126) have pointed out that if in fact the Puquina language is genetically related to the Arawakan languages, its separation from this family must have occurred at a relatively early date; the authors further suggest that in such a case the location of the Puquina speakers should be taken into account in the debate over the geographic origin of the Arawakan family. Such consideration was taken up by Jolkesky (op. cit., 611-616) in his archaeo-ecolinguistic model of diversification of the Macro-Arawakan languages. According to this author, the proto-Macro-Arawakan language would have been spoken in the Middle Ucayali River Basin during the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE and its speakers would have produced in this region the Tutishcainyo pottery.

Phonology

Consonants

* /h/ may also be heard as a uvular fricative � * /ʎ/ may also be heard as a voiced palatal affricate �ʎ̝

Vowels

* Sounds

, u The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...

may either be heard as fluctuates of each other, or as separate phonemes /o/ and /u/.Adelaar, Willem and van de Kerke, Simon (2009).

Vocabulary

Numerals

Pronouns

Loukotka (1968)

References

* Adelaar, Willem and van de Kerke, Simon (2009). "Puquina." In: Mily Crevels and Pieter Muysken (eds.) ''Lenguas de Bolivia'', vol. I, 125-146. La Paz: Plural editores. (in Spanish) * Jolkesky, Marcelo (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation
Available here
Language isolates of South America Indigenous languages of the Andes Extinct languages of South America Languages extinct in the 18th century Languages of Peru Languages of Bolivia {{indigenousAmerican-lang-stub