(October 29, 2006) Chile’s Ministry for Education is developing a program to save the country’s indigenous languages from extinction by teaching them to children in indigenous communities. The program, led by Education Minister Yasna Provoste Campilla, will aim to provide teaching materials for Mapudungun, Aymara, Quechua, and Rapa Nui.

“The idea is to have a sub sector in the area of language and communication that will allow the introduction of indigenous languages into the classroom, in this way ensuring their preservation,” said Provoste.

In addition to the teaching program, Chile’s Center of Public Surveys will publish a study in November about Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche in Chile, estimated to have about 150,000 speakers. While Mapudungun is more widely spoken than many native American languages, it is notoriously difficult to teach, as it uses at least four different alphabets.

Chile has nine officially recognized living languages. At present, there is no official data about how many people speak Chile’s indigenous languages, but a census in 2002 revealed that 35 percent of Chile’s indigenous people understand their original language, while 17 percent are able to speak it.

While Chile already has two extinct languages, Kakauhua and Kunza, there could soon be an addition to these. The Yámana language from Patagonia is already extinct in Argentina, and since the death of her sister on Saturday, Cristina Calderón is its only remaining native speaker.

While there is little hope that Yámana will be saved from extinction, efforts are being made to save the southern language of Qawasqar. Linguist Oscar Aguilera has been studying Qawasquar since 1975. “About seven people use it on a day-to-day basis,” said Aguilera, “and less than a dozen speak it with any fluency.” Aguilera has managed to create a concise Spanish-Qawasquar dictionary and says he is developing materials for teaching the language to the youngest members of the community with the hope of ensuring its survival.
Language extinction is a problem causing increasing concern worldwide, both from a social and political point of view. A language becomes extinct every 15 days, taking with it its unique cultural and historical background.

“In general, you could say that the great majority of the world’s six million languages are being threatened with extinction,” said Arturo Hernández, socio-linguist at the Universidad Católica of Temuco.