Muchik

Muchik, better known as Mochica and in colonial records as Yunga, is the extinct language isolate of the Peruvian north coast, spoken across the desert valleys of Lambayeque and La Libertad that were home to the Moche civilization from about 100 to 800 and to its Sicán or Lambayeque successor between 750 and 1375. Its peculiar lateral sounds struck every Spanish cleric who heard it.

Documentation began early: a manuscript of 1582 preserves Mochica texts, and Fernando de la Carrera Daza printed the Arte de la lengua yunga at Reque in 1644, the only colonial grammar.

Quechua and Spanish spread along the coast under Inca and then Spanish rule, steadily narrowing the language's domain; by the nineteenth century Muchik survived only in a few villages around Chiclayo and Eten, where scholars such as Ernst Middendorf raced to record it.