Mapudungun facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Mapuche |
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| Mapudungun | |
| Native to | Chile, Argentina |
| Ethnicity | Mapuche |
| Native speakers | 260,000 (2007) |
| Language family |
Araucanian
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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. |
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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.
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.
Images for kids
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Chilean Proverb written in Mapuche and Chilean Spanish. The Mapudungun alphabet used here does not reflect an agreed-upon standard. In fact, there are three distinct alphabets currently used to write the Mapuche language.
See also
In Spanish: Idioma mapuche para niños
