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

Department of Piura 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 i ...

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 ...

, near the port of Sechura. It appears to have become extinct by the beginning of the 20th century. The only documentation is that of an 1863 word list by Richard Spruce, 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 is likely and is supported by lexical evidence.

Sek family

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

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

'' 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 Richard Spruce'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

{{South American languages Languages of Peru Language isolates of South America