Huilliche language

Huilliche
Chesungun, chedungun
Native to Chile
Ethnicity Huilliche people
Native speakers
 unknown (2,000 cited 1982)[1]
Araucanian
  • Huilliche
Language codes
ISO 639-3 huh
Glottolog huil1244[2]

The Huilliche language (also known as Veliche and Huiliche) is an Araucanian language. In 1982 it was spoken by about 2,000 ethnic Huilliche people in Chile. It is spoken in an area south of the area inhabited by the Mapuche, in the nation's Los Lagos and Los Ríos regions; and mountain valleys, between the city of Valdivia and south toward Chiloé Archipelago. Huilliche has a dialect called Tsesungún.

Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche, is closely related to Huilliche, but they are barely understandable to each other. Most Huilliche speakers are older adults because the language is in decline; most ethnic Huilliche people currently speak Spanish as their first language.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Huilliche at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Huilliche". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

External links