Tags: Language.
The Mapuche language Mapudungun (from mapu ‘earth land’ and dungun ‘speak speech’) is a language isolate spoken in south-central Chile by approximately 144000 people and west central Argentina by approximately 8400 people called the Mapuche (from mapu ‘earth’ and che ‘people’) people. Almost all Mapudungun speakers are bilingual in Spanish. Mapudungun is also spelled Mapuzugun and sometimes called Mapudungu or Araucanian. The latter was the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards.
