Una nueva lista de palabras de la lengua mochica del siglo XIX

Abstract

This article provides a list of 125 words of the Mochica language. Created in 1865 on the initiative of Santiago C. Montjoy, then United States consul in Lambayeque, the list was discovered in the 1970s among the dispatches of the Lambayecan consuls, which are archived in the National Archives of the United States by archeologist James B. Richardson III. The list responds to a call from the American Ethnological Society, which, in its first circular that was issued in 1863, invited respondents to submit the equivalents of 180 English words in the indigenous languages of the Americas. This article discusses the circumstances of the elaboration of the list and presents a transcription of its contents and associated materials. In addition, it provides a comparison of the words with their representation in other sources and a philological analysis of selected aspects of the material. In spite of the unsystematic orthography, which one usually finds in this type of source, the wordlist offers new interpretative avenues regarding the phonetics and phonology of 19th century Mochica and the possibility of deepening our understanding of the language.

Keywords

• philology
• Mochica language
• wordlist
• Peruvian North Coast
• phonology