Atacame

Atacame, also called Esmeraldeño or Takame, was the language of the Pacific coast of Ecuador's Esmeraldas region, along the lower Esmeraldas River. It is generally counted as a language isolate, with no proven relatives; it absorbed words from the neighbouring Barbacoan languages Cha'palaa and Tsafiki but almost none from Quechua.

In 1553 a slave ship wrecked in San Mateo Bay and its escaped Africans, led in time by Alonso de Illescas, intermarried with the local Nigua people to form autonomous zambo communities in which the old tongue survived. Around 1800 the traveller William Bennet Stevenson still heard Atacame in Esmeraldas, while nearby Atacames had already turned to Spanish; only a short recorded word list remains.