Mapudungun

Orange: rural Mapuche; Dark: urban Mapuche; White: non-Mapuche inhabitantsMapuche or Mapudungun (from mapu 'land' and dungun 'speak, speech') is an Araucanian language related to Huilliche spoken in south-central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche people (from mapu 'land' and che 'people'). It is also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu. It was formerly known as Araucanian, the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards; the Mapuche avoid it as a remnant of Spanish colonialism, and it is considered offensive.IIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIII( ← kon-n)( ← kon-i-i-u)( ← kon-i-i-n)( ← kon-i-m-i)( ← kon-i-m-u)( ← kon-i-m-n)( ← kon-i-0-0)( ← kon-i-ng-u)( ← kon-i-ng-n)( ← pe-n)( ← pe-i-i-u)( ← pe-i-i-n)( ← pe-i-m-i)( ← pe-i-m-u)( ← pe-i-m-n)( ← pe-i-0-0)( ← pe-i-ng-u)( ← pe-i-ng-n)( ← pe-w-n)( ← pe-e-n)( ← pe-e-n-mew)( ← pe-e-i-u)( ← pe-w-i-m-u)( ← pe-e-i-m-i-mew)( ← pe-fi-n)( ← pe-fi-i-m-i)( ← pe-fi-i-0-0 / pe-e-i-0-0-mew / pe-w-i-0-0) Mapuche or Mapudungun (from mapu 'land' and dungun 'speak, speech') is an Araucanian language related to Huilliche spoken in south-central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche people (from mapu 'land' and che 'people'). It is also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu. It was formerly known as Araucanian, the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards; the Mapuche avoid it 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, and only 3.8% of speakers aged 10–19 years in the south of Chile (the language’s stronghold) are 'highly competent' in the language. Speakers of Chilean Spanish who also speak Mapudungun tend to use more impersonal pronouns when speaking Spanish. 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 land (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: 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 people (from willi 'south'), the Pehuenche (from pewen 'monkey puzzle tree' Araucaria araucana), 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 sociolinguistic situation of the Mapuche has changed rapidly. Now, nearly all of Mapuche people 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. Moulian et al. (2015) argue that the Puquina language influenced Mapuche language long before the rise of the Inca Empire. This areal linguistic influence may have arrived with a migratory wave arising from the collapse of the Tiwanaku Empire around 1000 CE. There is a more recent lexical influence from the Quechuan languages (pataka 'hundred', warangka 'thousand') associated with the Inca Empire and from Spanish.