Huilliche language

Huilliche is a moribund branch of the Araucanian language family, closely related to Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche, though the degree of mutual intelligibility between the two remains a subject requiring further research. It is spoken in Chile's Los Lagos and Los Rios regions and in mountain valleys between the city of Valdivia and the Chiloe Archipelago to the south. About 2,000 ethnic Huilliche people spoke the language in 1982, but by 2012 it survived among only a few elderly speakers, with younger ethnic Huilliche speaking Spanish as their first language, leaving it critically endangered.