Mapudungun

Mapudungun, classified by most specialists as an isolate, was spoken at the Spanish arrival in the mid-sixteenth century by Picunche, Mapuche, Huilliche and Cunco groups, from the Limari and Choapa valleys to the Chiloe archipelago. Its name means speech of the land; the Spanish called it Araucano or the general language of Chile. Its dialects were mutually intelligible.

It had no writing before the Spanish, and the Jesuit Luis de Valdivia published its first grammar in 1606. After the Battle of Curalaba in 1598 and the destruction of the seven Spanish cities south of the Bio Bio, Mapudungun remained the everyday language of the independent Mapuche country.

Mapudungun's use retreated north of the Bio Bio under encomienda labour, disease and mestizaje. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries the araucanization of the Pampa and Patagonia carried the language eastward across the Andes among nomadic peoples.