Sechura

Sechura was a language of the northern coast of Peru, spoken in the area around the port town of Sechura in the present-day department of Piura. Almost everything known about the language comes from two short word lists, one of 43 words compiled by the bishop Baltasar Jaime Martinez Companon between 1782 and 1790, and a second gathered by the botanist Richard Spruce in 1863. It is generally classified as a language isolate, though some proposed cognates have led a few scholars to suggest a possible kinship with the neighboring Tallan language, a connection that remains unproven; the language is considered to have gone extinct by the start of the twentieth century.