A Look at Chile’s Indigenous Languages

Posted in Uncategorized by admin on April 28th, 2011

The official language of Chile is Spanish. However, there are a few other languages spoken in the country by a large portion of the population. They are indigenous tongues and have been in existence before Spanish was taken to Chile.

Mapudungun

Speakers of this tongue are called the Mapuche. They are located in south-central Chile and there are about 400,000 in the country. Outside of Chile, other countries have Mapudungun speakers such as neighboring Argentina.

Chilean Quechua

Quechua speakers are found in many places in the South America. The Chilean version is said to be comparable to Bolivian Quechua. Some experts even say all the versions of Quechua all may be dialects of one main source language.

Aymara

This tongue is widely spoken in neighboring Peru and Bolivia where it is considered an official language alongside of Spanish. Its people are the Aymaran people and they are located in the Andes.

When the Spanish arrived, these tongues were not abolished. However, there was and has always been some effort to get the indigenous peoples to drop their languages and embrace Spanish. In many instances, it became shameful to speak an indigenous language. Today, however, the languages are respected and promoted and taught alongside of Spanish.