Mapudungun
language spoken in Chile and Argentina by the Mapuche people
Mapudungun is a language isolate spoken by Mapuche people, in Chile and Argentina. Even after the arrival of the Spaniards, ethnic groups in Argentina adopted Mapudungun, for instance Patagonians or Tehuelche. This process is named araucanization. Today, its speakers number 260,000, with 250,000 in the Central Valley of Chile and 10,000 in the Argentinian region of Patagonia.
| Mapuche | |
|---|---|
| Mapudungun | |
| Native to | Chile, Argentina |
| Ethnicity | Mapuche |
Native speakers | 260,000[1] (2007) |
Araucanian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | arn |
| ISO 639-3 | arn |
| ELP | Mapudungun |
 Region where most mapuche lived in 2002.
Orange: mapuche at the countryside; dark: mapuche in a city; white: non-mapuche. The circle of a place has an area as if 40 persons from there were living in a square of 1 km side. | |
The name of the boldo tree comes from the Mapudungun word foldo. The word "Poncho" was adopted by Spanish and many other languages. It may have come from the Mapudungun word pontro or from the Quechua word punchu.
References
change- ↑ M. Crevels (2007): South America, in Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages, Moseley (ed), Routledge, S.103–196, also Online Ethnologue