Mapudunguwelaymi am? ‘¿Acaso ya no hablas mapudungun?' Acerca del estado actual de la lengua mapuche

Native and Non-native Perception of Stress in Mapudungun: Assessing Structural Maintenance in the Phonology of an Endangered Language

“…Paradoxically, Echeverría and Contrera’s paper—although the most widely cited work on Mapudungun stress is the odd one out in terms of its account of the phenomenon. In Mapudungun-specific literature we find grammars available from the early 17th century onwards (de Augusta, 1903; de Valdivia, 1606; Febrés, 1765; Havestadt, 1777; Lenz, 1897; Salas 2006; Smeets, 2008; Zúñiga, 2006), all of which include some remarks on stress. Although details vary concerning secondary stress, as well as the placement of main stress in multi-suffix verbs and compounds, the general rule for main stress seems consistent: stress the last vowel before a consonant.…”

“…This said, descriptions of Mapudungun stress (including Echeverría and Contreras’) also provide the caveat that disyllables ending in a vowel often do not follow the general rule. This is either attributed to lexical stress (Smeets, 2008) or to free alternation (Echeverría, 1964; Sadowsky, Paniqueo, Salamanca & Avelino, 2013; Salas, 2006; Zúñiga, 2006), with the common suggestions that phrase-level phenomena might be exerting an influence (Echeverría, 1964: 48; Smeets, 2008: 49; Zúñiga, 2006: 65).…”

Mapudungun

“…If the first syllable is closed and the second open, stress falls on the first ([ˈë] ‘man’). If both syllables are closed, stress tends to fall on the final one ([ ɲˈɪɲ] ‘we (plural)’) (Zúñiga 2006). There may also be some degree of idiolectal variation in the assignment of stress.…”

“…Mapudungun (/ʊðʊˈŋʊ/ or /ʊθʊˈŋʊ/; also known as ‘Mapudungu’, ‘Mapuzugun’, ‘Mapuche’, ‘Mapuchedungun’, ‘Chedungun’ and ‘Araucanian’ or ‘Araucano’ (the latter two being archaic)) is a language isolate spoken actively by approximately 144,000 people in Chile (Zúñiga 2007), as well as by some 8,400 people in Argentina (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos 2005), virtually all of whom are bilingual in Spanish. Its ISO 639–3 code is arn .…”

“…Only 2.4% of urban speakers and 15.9% of rural speakers use Mapudungun when speaking with children (Zúñiga 2007), while only 3.8% of speakers aged 10–19 years in the south of Chile (the language's stronghold) are ‘highly competent’ in the language (Gundermann et al 2009). These factors, combined with the language's small number of speakers and the strong pressures that they face to abandon the language in favor of Spanish, indicate that Mapudungun's survival cannot be guaranteed unless the current situation changes substantially.…”