ABSTRACT
M apudungu, also known as M apuche or Araucanian, is classified by some authorities as a Penutian language, as an outlier, that is, of a N orth American Indian stock. O thers allocate it to the A ndean-Equatorial family. W hen the Spaniards arrived in Chile they found three groups of Araucanians, one of which - the Pikumche (piku ‘north ’, che ‘people’) - was speedily conquered. By the eighteenth century the southern group too had lost its specific identity. The central group, however, the M apuche (mapu ‘land’, che ‘people’) has m aintained its identity as a socially compact and self-aware indigenous grouping, and, as such, takes second place only to the Quechua-Aymara and the Guarani. They number about 250,000 in Chile, with a further 100,000 in A rgentina. The M apuche call their language M apudungu {mapu ‘land’, daqun ‘to speak’).
