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Native to Chile, Argentina
Ethnicity 600,000 Mapuche (2002)[1]
Native speakers
260,000  (2007)[1]
  • Mapudungun
Official status
Official language in
Chile Galvarino (Chile)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-2 arn
ISO 639-3 arn
Glottolog mapu1245[3]
Core region of mapuche population 2002 by counties.


Surfaces of circles are adjusted to 40 inhabitants/km2.

Mapudungun[4] (from mapu 'earth, land' and dungun 'speak, speech') is a language isolate spoken in south-central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche people (from mapu 'earth' and che 'people'). It is also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu, and was formerly known as Araucanian.[4] The latter was the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards. Today the Mapuche avoid this exonym as a remnant of Spanish colonialism, and it is considered offensive.

Mapudungun is not an official language of Chile or Argentina, and has received virtually no government support throughout its history. It is not used as a language of instruction in either country’s educational system, despite the Chilean government's commitment to provide full access to education in Mapuche areas in southern Chile. There is an ongoing political debate over which alphabet to use as the standard alphabet of written Mapudungun. There are approximately 144,000 native speakers in Chile and another 8,400 in west central Argentina. Only 2.4% of urban speakers and 16% of rural speakers use Mapudungun when speaking with children, whereas only 3.8% of speakers aged 10–19 years in the south of Chile (the language’s stronghold) are "highly competent" in the language.[5]


See also: Mapuche history

When the Spanish arrived in Chile, they found four groups of Mapuche speakers in the region of Araucanía, from which the Spanish called them Araucanos: the Picunche (from pikum 'north' and che 'people'), the Huilliche (from willi 'south'), the Pehuenche (from Pehuen 'Araucaria araucana (a tree)'), and the Moluche (from molu 'west'). The Picunche were conquered quite rapidly by the Spanish, whereas the Huilliche were not assimilated until the 18th century. Mapudungun was the only language spoken in central Chile. The socio-linguistic situation of the Mapuche has changed rapidly. Now the majority of Mapudungun speakers are bilingual or monolingual in Spanish. The degree of bilingualism depends on the community, participation in Chilean society, and the individual's choice towards the traditional or modern/urban way of life.[6]

There is some lexical influence from Quechua (pataka- 'hundred', warangka- 'thousand') and Spanish.


Yepun is a Mapuche name given to one of the VLT Unit Telescope in Chile.[7]

Mapudungun can be divided into three broad dialect groups: north, central and south. These are further divided into eight sub-groups: I and II (northern), III–VII (central) and VIII (southern).[is this Huilliche, or is that considered a separate language?] These dialects share a high degree of mutual intelligibility, which decreases between I and VIII. The Mapudungun spoken in the Argentinean provinces of Neuquen and Rio Negro is similar to that of the central dialect group in Chile, while the Ranquel (Ranku ̈lche) variety spoken in the Argentinean province of La Pampa is closer to the northern dialect group.[5] On the Chilean side of the Andes known as Ngulumapu, a number of variations of the Mapuche language are spoken. The Pehuenche dialect is spoken by the Pehuenche living in the Andes Mountains. The Huillice (also Huilliche, Veliche) dialect was spoken south of the Tolten River; it is sometimes classified as a separate language. It now has several thousand speakers, most of whom speak Spanish as a first language. These speakers live south of the Mapuche in Chile's Valdivian Coastal Range, Osorno Province and on Chiloé Island.

In Argentina, due to the migration of Mapudungun-speaking peoples and the subsequent Araucanization of areas, the Pehuenche dialect is spoken in Neuquén (from Valdivia to Neuquén). The Moluche or Cucuruluche dialect is spoken from the Limay River to Nahuel Huapi Lake. The Huilliche or Veliche dialect is spoken in the Nahuel Huapi Lake region as well. The Ranquenche dialect is spoken in the Chalileo Department and General Acha Department in the La Pampa Province, and in the Río Colorado region.


Depending on the alphabet, the sound /tʃ/ is spelled ch or c, and /ŋ/ as g or ng. The language is called either the "speech (d/zuŋun) of the earth (mapu)" or the "speech of the people (tʃe)". An n may connect the two words. There are thus several ways to write the name of the language:

Ragileo Mapunzugun[8] Mapuzugun Cenzugun Cezugun
Unified Mapundungun Mapudungun Chendungun Chedungun
Azümchefe Mapunzugun Mapuzugun Chenzugun Chezugun



Mapudungun has partially predictable, non-contrastive stress. The stressed syllable is generally the last one if it's closed (awkán 'game', tralkán 'thunder'), and the one before last if the last one is open (rúka 'house', lóngko 'head'). There is no phonemic tone.


Mapudungun has six vowel phonemes: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, and a high central unrounded vowel, /ɨ/. These are more precisely [ɪ ë ɐ̝ ö ʊ ɘ] when stressed, and somewhat raised when unstressed.[5] The sixth vowel is spelled ï, ü, or v, depending on the alphabet.


Mapuche does not distinguish between voiceless and voiced plosives. There are three approximants (or glides). Liquids consist of the three lateral sounds and what is phonetically close to a retroflex approximant. Some authors do not recognize /s/ as a separate phoneme; rather, they class it as an allophone of /ʃ/. /ʈʂ/ (spelled as "tr", "tx" or even "x") is often described as a /tʃ/ sound followed by a /ɻ/ sound; it is similar to the sound of English tr in tree, but without aspiration. The language also has relatively rare interdental sounds /t̪/, /n̪/ and /l̪/, which contrast with their dentoalveolar counterparts; roots may have either only interdental ([l̪afken̪] 'sea, lake') or only dentoalveolar ([lwan] 'guanaco') consonants.

Labial Dental Alveolar Post-
Retroflex Palatal Velar
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive p t ʈʂ k
Fricative f θ s ʃ
Approximant central w ɻ j ɣ
lateral l ʎ

Written form[edit]

Main article: Mapudungun alphabet
Graffiti in Mapudungun meaning "War Council".

The Mapuche had no writing system before the Spanish arrived, but since then the language has been written with the Latin script. Although the orthography used in this article is based on the Alfabeto Mapuche Unificado - the system used by Chilean linguists and other people in many publications in the language - the competing Ragileo, Nhewenh and Azumchefi systems all have their supporters, and there is still no consensus between authorities, linguists and Mapuche communities. The same word can look very different in each system, with the word for "conversation or story" being written either gvxam or ngütram for example.[9]

Microsoft lawsuit[edit]

In late 2006, Mapuche leaders threatened to sue Microsoft when the latter completed a translation of their Windows operating system into Mapudungun. They claimed that Microsoft needed permission to do so and had not sought it.[10][11] The event can be seen in the light of the greater political struggle concerning which alphabet should become the standard alphabet of the Mapuche people. The initial Mapudungun was only a spoken language, without a written form.


  • The word order of Mapudungun is flexible, but with preferred patterns. A topic–comment construction is common. The subject (agent) of a transitive clause tends to precede the verb, and the object tends to follow (A–V–O order), while the subject of an intransitive clause tends to follow the verb (V–S order).[6]


Singular Dual Plural
Person First konün

( ← kon-n)


( ← kon-i-i-u)


( ← kon-i-i-n)

Second konimi

( ← kon-i-m-i)


( ← kon-i-m-u)


( ← kon-i-m-n)

Third koni

( ← kon-i-0-0)


( ← kon-i-ng-u)


( ← kon-i-ng-n)


Singular Dual Plural
Person First pen

( ← pe-n)


( ← pe-i-i-u)


( ← pe-i-i-n)

Second peymi

( ← pe-i-m-i)


( ← pe-i-m-u)


( ← pe-i-m-n)

Third pey

( ← pe-i-0-0)


( ← pe-i-ng-u)


( ← pe-i-ng-n)


First Second Third
Patient First pewün

( ← pe-w-n)


( ← pe-e-n)


( ← pe-e-n-mew)

Second peeyu

( ← pe-e-i-u)


( ← pe-w-i-m-u)



Third pefiñ

( ← pe-fi-n)


( ← pe-fi-i-m-i)

DIR pefi / INV peeyew / REFL pewi



Studies of Mapudungun[edit]

Older works[edit]


Modern works[edit]




Mapudungun language courses[edit]

See also[edit]


  2. ^ I. Municipalidad de Galvarino (7 August 2013). "Acta Reunión Nº 13 de carácter extraordinaria del Concejo Municipal" (PDF) (in Spanish). Retrieved 21 June 2014. 
  3. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Mapudungun". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
  5. ^ a b c Scott Sadowsky, Héctor Painequeo, Gastón Salamanca and Heriberto Avelino (2013). Mapudungun. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43, pp 87-96 doi:10.1017/ S0025100312000369
  7. ^ "Names of VLT Unit Telescopes". Very Large Telescope. ESO. Retrieved 18 June 2012. 
  8. ^ La Nacion (Chile) [1]
  10. ^ Reuters news article
  12. ^ http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_map



External links[edit]

Original courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapuche_language — Please support Wikipedia.
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New York Times

New York Times
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 02:00:18 -0700

Some seek greater political participation, or the expansion of cultural identity, including the Mapuche language, Mapudungun, and in some cases autonomous regions similar to those of indigenous peoples in the United States. In Chile, some estimate the ...

World Policy Institute (blog)

World Policy Institute (blog)
Tue, 30 Jun 2015 11:11:15 -0700

In Mapudungun, the native Mapuche language, “Mapu” means land and “Che” means people, thus making the Mapuche the “people of the land”— a connection still entrenched in their identity despite how Western economic policies have weakened it. On the ...

The Santiago Times

The Santiago Times
Sun, 05 Jan 2014 09:12:30 -0800

Whoever spoke Mapungdungún died. That was the consequence. The goal was to exterminate the Mapuche language, but many of the older generation kept it alive by hiding it until the dictatorship ended. Today we can, 'speak a little more,' because despite ...

Daily Mail

Daily Mail
Sat, 11 Jul 2015 05:59:21 -0700

Previously I'd only ever spent one night in the company of a homeless person. It was in a train station waiting room in northern Italy, and I was awoken in the early hours to discover I'd stolen his favourite bench. Unsure of the protocol in such a ...
Buenos Aires Herald
Tue, 21 Jul 2015 04:37:30 -0700

Outstripping them all in the province, though, was Carhué, a town sitting southwest of Buenos Aires City whose name means “green land” in the indigenous Mapuche language and is famous for its natural thermal springs. According to the local Tourist ...

Herald Sun

Herald Sun
Sun, 05 Jul 2015 07:07:36 -0700

I AM the first one to admit that when you think of Chile and adventure, Patagonia springs to mind. Images of glaciers, craggy peaks and vast, rugged landscapes tend to predominate, but as it turns out, Patagonia doesn't have the monopoly on adventure, ...

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Thu, 21 May 2015 02:56:15 -0700

Meaning “blue” in the Mapuche language, Kalfu is divided into three regionally-based labels: “Molu”, meaning starfish, for wines from Casablanca and Colchagua; “Kuda”, meaning seahorse, for wines from Leyda; and “Sumpai”, meaning mermaid, which ...

Forbes India

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Fri, 03 Jul 2015 19:48:45 -0700

Two years later, they found their answer: The Millahue Valley (the name means “place of gold” in the local Mapuche language). “I'm convinced the conditions are as good as anywhere in the world,” says Vik about why he didn't look beyond the continent.

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