Mochica

Mochica is an extinct and partially revived language isolate of Peru's northern coast, historically spoken in the Lambayeque and La Libertad regions across valleys including Motupe, La Leche, Lambayeque, Zana, Jequetepeque and Chicama. Native use of the language declined sharply after around 1920, and it became fully extinct in 1995 with the death of its last fluent speaker, Simon Quesquen; UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger lists Mochica as extinct. Nearly all modern linguistic sources treat Mochica as a language isolate; a 1968 and 1972 proposal by Stark to group it with the Uru-Chipaya and Mayan languages using comparative methods has not been well received among specialists. Contemporary revitalization work has grown substantially, with the language taught in 38 schools by about 80 teachers as of 2018.