About me

Aldo Berríos pingey tañi üy. Chillkatuken Mapudungun.
(/ˌal.d̪o.be.ˈri.os pi.ˈŋej ta.ɲi.ˈəj || tʃiʎ.ˈka.tu.ken ma.ˌpu.θu.ˈŋun/)
“My name is Aldo Berríos. I study Mapudungun.”

I’m a research student at the University of Edinburgh in the first year of a PhD in linguistics. I’m currently working on the field of Historical linguistics, under the supervision of Dr Benjamin Molineaux and Dr Patrick Honeybone.

I hold an MA on Applied Linguistics from the University of Concepción, Chile. I’m interested on Mapudungun’s (iso ARN, isolated) phonetics and phonology, as well as in the preparation of educational materials to teach Mapudungun. I have participated in the publication of materials aimed at promoting the revitalisation of Mapudungun.

My MA thesis is about phoneme frequency in Mapudungun, in which I studied this phonological feature using a list of mono-morphemic lexical units prepared from Augusta’s Dictionary, first published in 1916 and edited in 2017. This thesis can be viewed and downloaded here (in Spanish).

Interests

  • Mapudungun morphology and phonology

  • Historical linguistics

  • Language revitalization of Mapudungun

Current participation in organisations that promote Mapudungun

I currently participate in two organisations aimed at promoting and teaching Mapudungun both on Internet and in the city of Concepción, Chile. The first project is Kimeltuwe, which was created in 2015 and has more than 200.000 followers in Facebook. The other project is Fiw-Fiw ñi Dungun, an organisation that teaches Mapudungun through online courses and summer camps since 2019. In this organization, we create our own materials and provide training to form new teachers of the language.

  • Digital art and educational project Kimeltuwe · Link. You can learn more about Kimeltuwe in this report by Risingvoices written in English.

  • Language Institute Fiw-Fiw ñi Dungun ffd.cl · Link

Teaching

I taught Cultura y Lengua Mapuche (Mapuche Language and Culture) (Código 940408) at the Anthhopology School, Universidad de Concepción, and Introducción a la lengua y cultura mapuche (Introduction to Mapuche language and culture)(Código 731575), at the Departamento de Castellano, Facultad de Humanidades y Arte, Universidad de Concepción.

Other activities

Committee member in the following academic activities:

Interviews

I have given interviews regarding my work in Mapudungun's language revitalization effort:

  • Alvarado, G. (2022). Aldo Berríos (Fiestoforo): “Siempre he pensado que el mapuzugun es una lengua de futuro.” Lenguas Radicales, 1(3) · PDF
  • Carilaf, V. (entrevistado); Berrios, A (entrevistado) y Becerra, R. (entrevistador) (2017). Del compromiso político-cultural a la acción educativa en internet. Entrevista a Víctor Carilaf y Aldo Fiestóforo Berríos. En Becerra, R. y G. Llanquinao (Eds.), Mapun Kimün. Relaciones mapunche entre persona, tiempo y espacio. Editorial Ocholibros. pp. 271-292 · PDF