300px, in the Bishopric of Trujillo, the '' city of Trujillo'' is shown as the main representative place of this language The Quingnam language was a

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

language that was spoken by the

Chimú Chimor (also Kingdom of Chimor or Chimú Empire) was the political grouping of the Chimú culture (). The culture arose about 900 CE, succeeding the Moche culture, and was later conquered by the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui around 1470, fi ...

people, who lived in the former territories of the Mochicas: an area north of the Chicama Chao River Valley. At the height of Chimú conquests, the language was spoken extensively from the Jequetepeque River in the north, to the Carabayllo (near present-day

Lima Lima ( ; ), founded in 1535 as the Ciudad de los Reyes (, Spanish for "City of Biblical Magi, Kings"), is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rive ...

) in the south. Fishermen along the Chimú coast spoke a language called ''Lengua Pescadora'' (fisherman language) by Spanish missionaries, and disambiguated as

Yunga Pescadora Yunga may refer to: * Yunga region of Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina * Yunga District, a district of Peru * two provinces of Bolivia: Nor Yungas Province and Sud Yungas Province * Yunga language (Peru) * Yunga language (Australia) * Yu ...

by linguists; this may be the same as Quingnam. A letter found during excavations at Magdalena de Cao Viejo in the El Brujo Archaeological Complex includes a list of decimal numerals which may be Quingnam or Pescadora, but they are not Mochica. The Quingnam language became extinct shortly after the arrival of the

conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (; ; ) were Spanish Empire, Spanish and Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colonizers who explored, traded with and colonized parts of the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia during the Age of Discovery. Sailing ...

s. The core Chimú city,

Chan Chan Chan Chan (), sometimes itself called Chimor, was the capital city of the Chimor kingdom. It was the largest city of the pre-Columbian era in South America. It is now an archeological site in the department of La Libertad west of Trujillo, P ...

, was in the vicinity of the new Spanish city of Trujillo and became overwhelmed by it, with people needing to pick up the language of the conquerors for trade and survival.

Numerals

Below are numerals from an early 17th-century manuscript found at

Magdalena de Cao Magdalena de Cao is a town in Northern Peru, capital of the district Magdalena de Cao of Ascope Province in the region La Libertad. This town is located some 56 km northwest of Trujillo city in the agricultural Chicama Valley. See also * Paij ...

(Quilter et al. 2010,Quilter, Jeffrey. 2010
Moche: archaeology, ethnicity, identity
''Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Études Andines'' 39(2): 225-241. as transcribed by Urban 2019Urban, Matthias. 2019.
Lost languages of the Peruvian North Coast
'. Estudios Indiana 12. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Preußischer Kulturbesitz) & Gebr. Mann Verlag.). Although the manuscript does not indicate which language the numerals belong to, Quingnam is assumed as it is the most likely candidate based on location and other clues: : The numerals ''tau'' (4), ''sut'' (6), ''canchen'' (7), and ''pachac'' (100) are loanwords from a variety of

Quechua II 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" l ...

References

{{South American languages Languages of Peru Unclassified languages of South America