Background

Language Family: Araucanian

Also referred to as Mapuche or Araucana, it is spoken throughout Chile.

Phonology

Consonants

In some dialects of Mapudungun, the distinction between the dental and alveolar phonemes have merged (Sadowsky et al. 2013, 89), leaving the dentals to appear as a result of allophonic variation.
/ʃ/ is rather infrequent, often alternating with /s/, yet it is still considered in most sources to be a phoneme (Smeets 2008, 23).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
Stops	p	t̪	t				k
Affricates				tʃ	ʈʂ
Fricatives	f	θ	s	ʃ	ʐ		ɣ
Nasals	m	n̪	n			ɲ	ŋ
Approximants		l̪	l			j ʎ	w
Note: The palatal approximant on the right is lateral.

Vowels

Diphthongs aren’t prevalent in Mapudungun; however, /ae/ is generally realized as one (Smeets 2008, 52). Because it can also occur as a sequence of vowels, it will not be transcribed in the rules.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ɘ	o
Low		a

Alphabet

Although there isn’t a standardization of the alphabet, the three alphabets commonly referred to provide a rather comprehensive picture in terms of depicting each phoneme. These alphabets include the Alfabeto Mapuche Unificado, the Frafemario Raguileo, and the Azumchefi (Bronzino 2015, 22). Listed below is the Alfabeto Mapuche Unificado, but following it, I have provided the orthographic variations from the other two.
Regarding the corresponding phoneme of ⟨g⟩, the Unified Alphabet uses /ɣ/ whereas the Raguileo and Azumchefi alphabets use /ŋ/. I went with the ⟨g⟩ to /ŋ/ correspondence due to the inclusion of ⟨q⟩ in the Crúbadán corpus, which based on the Raguileo and Azumchefi alphabets corresponds to /ɣ/.
Based on the Alfabeto Mapuche Unificado, the dentals are not represented in the Crúbadán corpus. With the grapheme correspondences of the other two alphabets, they appear (except /t̪/, as the distinction between it at /t/ is not maintained in either). Based on this, conflation most likely occurs between all alveolar consonants and their dental counterparts, compromising the language.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
d	/θ/
e	/e/
f	/f/
g	/ŋ/
i	/i/
ï	/ɘ/
k	/k/
l	/l/
ḻ	/l̪/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ṉ	/n̪/
ñ	/ɲ/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ʐ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
ṯ	/t̪/	not reflected in the Crúbadán corpus
u	/u/
ü	/ɘ/
w	/w/
y	/j/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
tr	/ʈʂ/
sh	/ʃ/
ng	/ŋ/
ll	/ʎ/
Orthographic Variation
c	/tʃ/	Raguileo
x	/ʈʂ/	Raguileo
tx	/ʈʂ/	Azumchefi
z	/θ/	Raguileo and Azumchefi
h	/n̪/	Raguileo
nh	/n̪/	Azumchefi
q	/ɣ/	Raguileo and Azumchefi
b	/l̪/	Raguileo
lh	/l̪/	Azumchefi
j	/ʎ/	Raguileo
v	/ɘ/	Raguileo

Lenition Rules

Geminates occur in the language, but they are often realized as single consonants (Smeets 2008, 51).
/ʐ/ can approximate to /ɻ/ (Sadowsky et al. 2013, 90).

Misc. Rules

Aspiration of some of the stops can occur (Sadowsky et al. 2013, 89).
Unstressed vowels are often deleted in word-final positions following voiceless consonants (Sadowsky et al. 2013, 94).
/ɘ/ may be deleted following a stressed syllable (ibid.).
Consonant clusters are only allowed intervocalically (Smeets 2008, 37, 38).
The velar phonemes /k/, /ŋ/, /ɣ/ tend to be fronted preceding front vowels (Sadowsky et al. 2013, 89).

References

Bronzino, Dana. 2015. “Loanword Adaptation in Spanish and Mapudungun: A Phonological and Sociolinguistic Analysis.” PhD thesis, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Bryn Mawr College.

Sadowsky, Scott, Héctor Painequeo, Gastón Salamanca, and Heriberto Avelino. 2013. “Mapudungun.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 43 (1): 87–96. doi:10.1017/S0025100312000369.

Smeets, Ineke. 2008. A Grammar of Mapuche. Mouton Grammar Library 41. Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Mapudungun

Emily Strand