Pukina

Puquina, also spelled Pukina, is an extinct language once spoken around Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia, reaching into northern Chile. It is often linked to the people who built Tiwanaku, and at the Spanish conquest several highland groups, including the Chiribaya, still spoke it.

Its classification remains uncertain; a distant relationship with the Arawakan languages has been suggested but never proven. What is known of the language rests mainly on the Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum, printed in 1607 by the Franciscan Luis Jeronimo de Ore, and scattered glosses.

As Quechua and Spanish spread through the southern Andes, Puquina ceased to be an everyday language in the centuries after the conquest. Much of its vocabulary survives in Kallawaya, the secret mixed language of Bolivian travelling herbalists, which pairs Puquina words with Quechua grammar.