Mapudungun
Mapudungun (
mapu means 'earth' and
dungun means 'to speak') is a
language isolate spoken in central
Chile and west central
Argentina by the
Mapuche (
mapu is 'earth' and
che means 'people') people. It is also known as
Mapudungu,
Araucanian (
Araucano) (the name given to the Mapuche people by the Spanish, it sometimes has a negative connotation) and
Mapuche. Its speakers number 440,000, with 400,000 in the Central Valley of Chile and 40,000 in the Argentinian region of
Patagonia. Some 200,000 people use the language regularly.
Mapadungun lacks substantive protection or promotion, despite the Chilean government's commitment to improve the situation and provide full access to education in Mapuche areas in southern Chile.
The Araucanian language, also known as Mapudungun, has been classified by some authorities as being related to the
Penutian languages of North America. Others group it among the Andean languages (Greenberg 1987, Key 1978), and yet others postulate an Araucanian-Mayan relationship (Stark 1970, Hamp 1971); Croese (1989, 1991) has advanced the hypothesis that it is related to Arawak. Other authorities regard it as an isolate language. It has had some lexical influence from
Quechua and Spanish.
When the Spanish arrived in Chile, they found three groups of Mapuche, one of which were the Picunche (from
pikum 'north' and
che 'people') who were conquered quite rapidly. Since the 18th century the southern group or Huilliche (
willi 'south' and
che 'people') has lost its specific identity, but the central group, the
Mapuche, retains it.
The term
Araucano is nowadays avoided by scholars and Mapuche alike.
Mapudungun has a number of dialects. In Argentina, the
Pehuenche dialect is spoken in Neuquén (from Valdivia to Neuquén); the
Moluche or
Nguluche dialect is spoken from Limay to Lake Nahuel Huapi; the
Huilliche or
Veliche dialect is spoken in the Lake Nahuel Huapi region as well, and also in Valdivia, Chile; and the
Ranquenche dialect is spoken in Chalileo, General Acha and in the Río Colorado region.
Two varieties of Mapudungu are still spoken. The most widely spoken is Mapudungun (also Araucano, Mapuche), the language of the
Mapuche people. There are an estimated 275,000 active users of the language, 200,000 in Chile and 75,000 in Argentina.
Huillice (also Huilliche, Veliche) has several thousand speakers, most of whom speak
Spanish as a first language, south of the Mapuche in Chile's
Valdivian Coastal Range and on
Chiloé Island.
Gordon (2005) treats these as separate languages.
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Prosody: Unlike Spanish, Mapudungun has fairly predictable, non-contrastive stress. The stressed syllable is generally on the second last syllable in words that end in a vowel, and on the final syllable in words that end in a consonant. There are some exceptions, such as when the first person plural ends in the semivowel
j, where the accent is placed on the final syllable. There is no phonemic tone.
*
Vowels: Mapudungun has six vowel phonemes: , , , , and a high central unrounded vowel, . The last sound is spelled
ï,
ü or
v depending on the alphabet used, and is pronounced as a schwa when unstressed.
*
Consonants: Mapudungun does not distinguish between voiceless and voiced consonants 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 as a separate phoneme; rather, they class it as an allophone of . (spelled as "tr", "tx" or even "x") is often described as a sound followed by a sound; it is similar to the sound of English
tr in
tree, but without aspiration.
*
Spelling: The Mapuche are not believed to have had a writing system when the Spanish arrived. Historically, there have been a number of proposals for Mapudungun spelling, all of them using the Latin alphabet. The alphabet used in this article is the one used by Chilean linguists and other people in many publications in the language ("alfabeto mapuche unificado"). This alphabet consists of the following letters:
a,
ch,
d (for //),
e,
f,
g (for //),
i,
k,
l,
l (for //),
ll (for //),
m,
n,
n (for //),
ñ (for //),
ng (for //),
o,
p,
r,
s(h),
t,
t (for //),
tr (for //),
u,
ü (for //),
w, and
y.
*
Nouns in Mapudungun do not distinguish masculine from feminine gender like Spanish, French, and other Romance languages. Instead, it distinguishes animate nouns from inanimate ones -- this opposition is reflected in the use of
pu as a plural indicator for nouns that denote animate objects and
yuka as an equivalent plural for inanimate nouns.
Chi (or
ti) can be used as a definite animate article as in
chi wentru 'the man' and
chi pu wentru for 'the men'. The number
kiñe 'one' serves as an indefinite article.
*
The personal pronouns distinguish three persons and three numbers; they are as follows:
iñche 'I',
iñchiw 'we (2)',
iñchiñ 'we (more than 2)';
eymi 'you',
eymu 'you (2)',
eymün 'you (more than 2)';
fey 'he/she/it',
feyengu 'they (2)',
feyengün 'they (more than 2)'.
*
Possessive pronouns are related to the personal forms:
ñi 'my; his, her; their',
yu 'our (2)',
iñ 'our (more than 2)';
mi 'your',
mu 'your (2)',
mün 'your (more than 2)'. They are often found with a particle
ta that does not seem to add anything specific to the meaning, e.g.
tami 'your'.
*
Interrogative pronouns include
iney 'who',
chem 'what',
chumül 'when',
chew 'where',
chum(ngechi) 'how' and
chumngelu 'why'.
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Numbers from 1 to 10 are as follows: 1
kiñe, 2
epu, 3
küla, 4
meli, 5
kechu, 6
kayu, 7
regle, 8
pura, 9
aylla, 10
mari; 20
epu mari, 30
küla mari, 110
(kiñe) pataka mari.
*
Verbs can be finite or non-finite (non-finite endings:
-n,
-el,
-etew,
-lu,
-am, etc.), are intransitive or transitive and are conjugated according to person (first, second and third), number (singular, dual and plural), voice (active, agentless passive and reflexive-reciprocal, plus two applicatives) and mood (indicative, imperative and subjunctive). In the indicative, the present (zero) and future (
-(y)a) tenses are distinguished. There are a number of aspects: the progressive, resultative and habitual are well established; some forms that seem to mark some subtype of perfect are also found. Other verb morphology includes an evidential marker (reportative-mirative), directionals (cislocative, translocative, andative and ambulative, plus an interruptive and continuous action marker) and modal markers (sudden action, faked action, immediate action, etc.). There is productive noun incorporation, and the case can be made for root compounding morphology.
The indicative present paradigm for an intransitive verb like
konün 'enter' is as follows:
| colspan=3 align="center" style="background:#9FB6CD;"|Number | | Singular | Dual | Plural |
| Person | First | kon-ün | kon-iyu | kon-iyiñ |
| Second | kon-imi | kon-imu | kon-imün |
| Third | kon-i | kon-ingu | kon-ingün |
What some authors have described as an inverse system (similar to the ones described for
Algonquian languages) can be seen from the forms of a transitive verb like
pen 'see'. The 'intransitive' forms are the following:
| colspan=3 align="center" style="background:#9FB6CD;"|Number | | Singular | Dual | Plural |
| Person | First | pe-n | pe-yu | pe-iñ |
| Second | pe-ymi | pe-ymu | pe-ymün |
| Third | pe-y | pe-yngu | pe-yngün |
The 'transitive' forms are the following (only singular forms are provided here):
| colspan=3 align="center" style="background:#9FB6CD;"|Agent | | First | Second | Third |
| Patient | First | pe-wü-n | pe-e-n | pe-e-new |
| Second | pe-e-yu | pe-wi-yu | pe-e-ymew |
| Third | pe-fi-ñ | pe-fi-mi | pe-fi / pe-e-yew |
When a third peson interacts with a first or second person, the forms are either direct (without
-e) or inverse (with
-e) and the speaker has no choice. When two third persons interact, two different forms are available: the direct form (
pefi) is appropriate when the agent is topical (i.e., the central figure in that particular passage). The inverse form (
peenew) is appropriate when the patient is topical. Thus,
chi wentru pefi chi domo means 'the man saw the woman' while
chi wentru peeyew chi domo means something like 'the man was seen by the woman'; note, however, that it is not a passive construction; the passive would be
chi wentru pengey 'the man was seen; someone saw the man'.
Older worksThe formalization and normalization of Mapudungun was effected by the first Mapudungun grammar published by the Jesuit priest Luis de Valdivia in 1606 (
Arte y Gramatica General de la Lengva que Corre en Todo el Reyno de Chile). More important is the
Arte de la Lengua General del Reyno de Chile by the Jesuit Andrés Febrés (1765, Lima) composed of a grammar and dictionary. In 1776 three volumes in Latin were published in Westfalia (
Chilidúgú sive Res Chilenses) by the German Jesuit Bernardo Havestadt. The work by Febrés was used as a basic preparation from 1810 for missionary priests going into the regions occupied by the Mapuche people. A corrected version was completed in 1846 and a summary, without a dictionary in 1864. A work based on Febrés' book is the
Breve Metodo della Lingua Araucana y Dizionario Italo-Araucano e Viceversa by the Italian Octaviano de Niza in 1888. It was destroyed in a fire at the Convento de San Francisco in Valdivia in 1928.
Modern worksFull-fledged grammars:
- 2006 - Mapudungun: El habla mapuche. Introducción a la lengua mapuche, con notas comparativas y un CD, by Fernando Zúñiga. Santiago: Centro de Estudios Públicos.
- 2000 - Mapudungun, by Fernando Zúñiga. Munich: Lincom Europa. [In English]
- 1992 - El mapuche o araucano. Fonología, gramática y antología de cuentos, by Adalberto Salas. Madrid: MAPFRE.
- 1989 - A Mapuche grammar, Ph.D. dissertation by Ineke Smeets (Leiden University). [In English]
- 1962 - Idioma mapuche, by Ernesto Wilhelm de Moesbach. Padre Las Casas: San Francisco.
- 1903 - Gramática mapuche bilingüe, by Félix José de Augusta. [1990 reprint by Séneca, Santiago.]
Dictionaries:
- 2005 - Mapuche: lengua y cultura. Mapudungun-español-inglés, by Arturo Hernández & Nelly Ramos. Santiago: Pehuén. [5th (augmented) edition of their 1997 dictionary.]
- 2001 - Ranquel-español/español-ranquel. Diccionario de una variedad mapuche de la Pampa (Argentina), by Ana Fernández Garay. Leiden: CNWS (Leiden University).
- 1997 - Diccionario ilustrado mapudungun-español-inglés, by Arturo Hernández & Nelly Ramos. Santiago: Pehuén.
- 1995 - Diccionario lingüístico-etnográfico de la lengua mapuche. Mapudungun-español-English, by María Catrileo. Santiago: Andrés Bello.
- 1960 - Diccionario comentado mapuche-español, by Esteban Erize. Bahía Blanca: Yepun.
- 1916 - Diccionario araucano, by Félix José de Augusta. [1996 reprint by Cerro Manquehue, Santiago.]
Manuals:
- 2002 - Mapudunguyu 1. Curso de lengua mapuche, by María Catrileo. Valdivia: Universidad Austral de Chile.
- 1996 - Manual de aprendizaje del idioma mapuche: Aspectos morfológicos y sintácticos, by Bryan Harmelink. Temuco: Universidad de la Frontera.
The most comprehensive works to date are the ones by Augusta (1903, 1916). Salas (1992) is a very good introduction for non-specialists, featuring a solid ethnographic introduction and a very valuable text collection as well. Zúñiga (2006) includes a complete grammatical description, a reasonable bilingual dictionary, some texts and an audio CD with text recordings (educational material, a traditional folktale and six contemporary poems). Smeets (1989) and Zúñiga (2000) are for specialists only. Catrileo (1995) and the dictionaries by Hernández & Ramos are welcome and attractive additions to Augusta's older work.
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Spanish-Mapudungun glossary*
Mapudungun-Spanish Dictionary from the U. Católica de Temuco*
Mapuche-Spanish dictionary*
Freelang Dictionary*Aprueban alfabeto mapuche único (Oct 19, 1999).
El Mercurio de Santiago.
* Campbell, Lyle (1997)
American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
* Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) (2005)
Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 15th ed. Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
* Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (2005)
Encuesta Complementaria de Pueblos Indígenas (ECPI), 2004-2005 - Primeros resultados provisionales. Buenos Aires: INDEC. ISSN 0327-7968.
