Mapudungun

language spoken in Chile and Argentina by the Mapuche people
(Redirected from Mapudungun language)

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 toChile, Argentina
EthnicityMapuche
Native speakers
260,000[1] (2007)
Araucanian
  • Mapuche
Language codes
ISO 639-2arn
ISO 639-3arn
ELPMapudungun
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.
Mapudungun text that means "Uprise Meeting".


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

  1. M. Crevels (2007): South America, in Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages, Moseley (ed), Routledge, S.103–196, also Online Ethnologue