Mapudungun is not an official language of Chile and Argentina, having received virtually no government support throughout its history.

[7] However, since 2013, Mapuche, along with Spanish, has been granted the status of an official language by the local government of Galvarino, one of the many communes of Chile.

[12] In Cautín Province and Llifén contact with Mapuche language may be the reason why there is a lack of yeísmo among some Spanish speakers.

[15] This areal linguistic influence may have arrived with a migratory wave arising from the collapse of the Tiwanaku Empire around 1000 CE.

[15][16] There is a more recent lexical influence from the Quechuan languages (pataka 'hundred', warangka 'thousand'), associated with the Inca Empire, and from Spanish.

As result of Inca rule, there was some Mapudungun–Imperial Quechua bilingualism among the Mapuches of Aconcagua Valley at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the 1530s and 1540s.

[18] A theory postulated by chronicler José Pérez García holds that the Cuncos settled in Chiloé Island in Pre-Hispanic times as consequence of a push from more northern Huilliches, who in turn were being displaced by Mapuches.

[23] During the 17th and 18th centuries, most of Chiloé Archipelago's population was bilingual, and according to John Byron, many Spaniards preferred to use the local Huilliche language because they considered it "more beautiful".

The degree of bilingualism depends on the community, participation in Chilean society, and the individual's choice towards the traditional or modern/urban way of life.

However, according to Key, there is a closer relation still between Mapuche and the Pano-Tacanan languages from Bolivia and Peru, a connection also made by Loos in 1973.

[31][32] In 1994, Viegas Barros directly contradicted Greenberg's hypothesis and part of Key's, arguing that a connection between the Merindonal subgroup mentioned above and the Mapuche language does not exist.

[33] Current linguists reject Greenberg's findings due to methodological concerns and opt instead for more conservative methods of classification.

[10] Moreover, many linguists do not accept the existence of an Amerindian language family due to the lack of available information needed to confirm it.

Other authorities such as SIL International classify Mapuche as one of the two languages that form that Araucana family along with Huilliche.

Croese finds these relationships as consistent, but not proof, with the theory of origin of the Mapuche proposed by Ricardo E.

[35] The Mapudungun spoken in the Argentinian provinces of Neuquen and Río Negro is similar to that of the central dialect group in Chile, while the Ranquel (Rankülche) variety spoken in the Argentinian province of La Pampa is closer to the northern dialect group.

trari-SURROUND-mansun-ox-pa-CIS-rke-SURPRISE-la-NEG-(y)-(E)-a-FUT-y-IND-ngu3DUtrari- mansun- pa- rke- la- (y)- a- y- nguSURROUND- ox- CIS- SURPRISE- NEG- (E)- FUT- IND- {3DU}'Those two won't yoke the oxen here!

[44] In late 2006, Mapuche leaders threatened to sue Microsoft when the latter completed a translation of their Windows operating system into Mapudungun.

Mesa-mewtable-LOCmüle-ybe-IND/3S.SBJtithemamüllüwoodñiPOSSmüle-nbe-NOMLmi2S.POSStukupu-a-l.use-NRLD-NOMLMesa-mew müle-y ti mamüllü ñi müle-n mi tukupu-a-l.table-LOC be-IND/3S.SBJ the wood POSS be-NOML 2S.POSS use-NRLD-NOML‘On the table is the wood that you should use.’[48]The indicative present paradigm for an intransitive verb like konün 'enter' is as follows: What some authors[citation needed] have described as an inverse system (similar to the ones described for Algonquian languages) can be seen from the forms of a transitive verb like pen 'see'.

Most language revitalization efforts have been in rural communities and these efforts have been received in different ways by the Mapuche population: Ortiz says some feel that teaching Mapudungu in schools will set their children behind other Chileans, which reveals that their culture has been devalued by the Chilean government for so long that, unfortunately, some Mapuche people have come to see their language as worthless, too, which is a direct and lasting impact of colonization.

In 1776 three volumes in Latin were published in Westphalia (Chilidúgú sive Res Chilenses) by the German Jesuit Bernhard Havestadt.

A work based on Febrés' book is the Breve Metodo della Lingua Araucana y Dizionario Italo-Araucano e Viceversa by the Italian Octaviano de Niza in 1888.