A few phonological aspects of Quingnam may be deduced from the highly limited data, namely presence of word-final stress, and allowance of consonants in the coda position, as evidenced by the word '6'. Colonial Spanish sources describe the language as more difficult than Mochica and of "obscure and of slippery pronunciation" according to chronicler
Antonio de la Calancha.
Consonants A number of sounds may be ascertained in Quingnam due to their relative incidence and corresponding phonetic values in Spanish. Among them are voiceless
stops , , ; an
affricate ;
nasals , , ; two
laterals, sometimes alternating with each other, and ; and an
approximant . Two
sibilants at different
points of articulation also appear, one
alveolar, similar in quality to and written as or , and the other
palatal as , written . The sound written as alternates with and , making it more likely to be a
tap rather than a
trill . The sound may also be postulated based on orthgraphic alternations of sequences of , (where V represents a
wildcard for any vowel) and , present in both proper names and lexical items. This sound may also be represented by and sometimes , which alternate orthographically with the above sequences.
Voiced stops represents a confusing case for determining its phonetic value; in certain cases it represented a
fricative or an approximant . , in contrast, is much clearer in its pronunciation; it is very rare in recorded
toponyms, or place names, such as , , and , the latter also written as and (which may be from
Culli, another extinct language of Peru, instead). These cases may be due to
voicing after nasals or intervocalically (between vowels). Finally, the letter occurs in combination with and in word-initial and medial position (at the start or in the middle of a word) alternating with and and after word-medially, as well as independent of other graphemes word-medially. A
hapax legomenon spelling of the name as , with word-initially, is also attested. The first case is evidently a transcription of in a Spanish orthography and the second can be explained as an instance of voicing after nasals. However, a few examples (e.g. ~ ) can be explained as a velar nasal , and some instances of independent may be due to errors in the transcription (e.g. as a misspelling of , with an approximant or fricative instead). Nevertheless, the only explanation for certain occurrences of is an intervocalic voicing, more common in medial than in initial position, although cases of these are infrequent.
Alternations A number of
alternations are noticeable in various proper names. For example, can be found in a few instances alternating with , written as or , such as in the names ~ and ~. The latter is particularly notable as it implies that both and were present in the name, possibly even
coarticulated as , pronounced as a simultaneous and . This sound is extremely rare in the world, but most notably occurs in
Muisca, a
Chibchan language.
The presence of Quingnam toponyms are distinguished from Mochica toponyms by the absence of and the presence of . Indeed, there are very few toponyms in the
Moche Valley which contain this letter. This may be due to a co-occurrence of Mochica and Quingnam in the area. In any case, the evidence for in Quingnam is very weak.
Other fricatives The other letters representing fricatives are , , , and . The first three alternate with each other before the vowel , which could indicate their phonetic value as some sort of postalveolar or palatal fricative, such as or . In addition, alternates with in both the initial and medial position, and may have still represented the fricative at the time in Spanish writing.
Nasals An extremely frequent alternation of nasals is with
zero, the absence of a sound, most commonly in the word-final position and in word-internal clusters. This may indicate a
nasalization of the preceding vowel; the letters and are interchangeable in this position, which is indicative of a lack of a precise place of articulation. Further alternations include and , particularly noteworthy because the two letters alternate in more than one
token within the same form, such as in the name ~.
Vowels Five vowels may be posited based on the available data, being , , , , and . There is no evidence to suggest that and are
allophones, or phonetic variations, of their raised counterparts and . All vowels frequently alternate with zero in the penultimate syllable of trisyllabic forms, such as in ~, with the alternating vowel's quality apparently being phonologically conditioned by the environment. For example, is present in a non-front vowel environment, and appears whenever it is also present in a form. This may be due to a
schwa-type vowel which is realized differently based on the environment, or may be a case of vowel
epenthesis due to Spanish influence, as suggested by Cerrón-Palomino. A very similar phenomenon also occurs in Mochica with its "sixth vowel", written as in the colonial grammars, so some of the examples above may actually belong to it rather than Quingnam.
Phonotactics All consonants attested, except for a hypothetical , occur in the word-initial position, although only occurs in two proper names, and . The syllable structure of Quingnam is predominantly (C)V(C), where C represents a wildcard for any consonant and V for any vowel. Very few consonant clusters can be observed in proper names; for example, there are only eight such names attested in the Moche Valley, being , , ~, , , , , and the name of Xacchcac Guamanchumo, a ruler of
Chimor. == Vocabulary ==