Híbito language

Híbito (Xibitoana) is a poorly attested, extinct language formerly spoken by the Híbito people along the Bombanaje, Jelache, and Huayabamba rivers, tributaries of the Huallaga River in northern Peru. The last speaker, Natividad Grández del Castillo, died between 1996 and 2000.^[2][3][4][1]

The first known documentation of Híbito was made in 1676 by the Franciscan missionary Joseph de Araujo, who is said to have written a grammar, vocabulary and catechism in the language; however, these documents have not been found.^[1]

Mochica is attested in a 43-word list in a document referred to as the "plan" collected by Bishop of Trujillo Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón between 1782 and 1785. The "plan" is part of a larger work, known as the Codex Martínez Compañón, detailing life in colonial Peru.^[5] Notably, the work also contains a number of watercolors, which were captioned by Martínez Compañón's personal secretary Pedro Agustín de Echevarri, who presumably also wrote down the "plan".

There are two copies of the "plan", one held in Bogotá and the other in Madrid. Both copies include 43-word lists for the Quechua, Mochica (Yunga), Sechura, Colán, Catacaos, Culli, Hibito and Cholón languages, as well as Spanish. The Colán and Catacaos languages are generally subsumed under the name Tallán, and they are closely related, probably dialects of a single language. The two versions of the "plan" have certain differences from each other, particularly in the spelling of the transcriptions.

A number of diacritics are employed in the vocabularies. Their meaning is not elaborated upon in the "plan", although certain diacritics are employed in only some of the languages, and are apparently not merely decorative in purpose.^[6]

The following wordlist is of the Madrid version of the manuscript.

The following data for Híbito were taken from Aurelia Gutiérrez Cerqueira, of Cholón descent.

A phrase is also glossed below: