Mapudungun phonology

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This article deals with the phonology of the Mapudungun language, and its proposed orthographies. The Mapuche did not have a writing system when the Spanish arrived, and historically there have been a number of proposals for Mapudungun spelling, all of them using the Latin alphabet. To this day, no consensus has been achieved between authorities, linguists and Mapuche communities on an unified writing system; currently the most widely used systems are:

Alfabeto Mapuche Unificado (Unified Alphabet), used by Chilean linguists and other people in many publications in the language.
Grafemario Raguileo, made by Anselmo Raguileo Lincopil and defended by the indigenous Mapuche organization Consejo de Todas las Tierras.
"Azumchefi" (also called "Azümchefe"), proposed by the Corporación Nacional de Desarrollo Indígena as a summary of about six earlier proposals, and recognized by the Chilean Ministry of Education, but not widely used.

1 Consonants
- 1.1 Allophones
2 Vowels
3 See also

[edit] Consonants

Mapudungun has the following consonant system.

Phoneme	Unified Alphabet	Raguileo	Azumchefi	NICE	place of articulation	type of articulation
/p/	p	p	p	p	bilabial	stop
/t̪/	ṯ	*	*	t'	interdental	stop
/t/	t	t	t	t	alveolar	stop
/k/	k	k	k	k	velar	stop
/tʃ/	ch	c	ch	ch	postalveolar	affricate
/tʴ/	tr	x	tx	tr	retroflex	affricate
/f/	f	f	f	f	labiodental or bilabial	fricative
/θ/	d	z	z	d	interdental	fricative
/s/	s	s	s	s	alveolar	fricative
/ʃ/	sh	*	sh	sh	postalveolar	fricative
/ʐ/	r	r	r	r	retroflex	fricative
/m/	m	m	m	m	bilabial	nasal
/n̪/	ṉ	h	nh	n'	interdental	nasal
/n/	n	n	n	n	alveolar	nasal
/ɲ/	ñ	ñ	ñ	ñ	palatal	nasal
/ŋ/	ng	g	g	ng	velar	nasal
/w/	w	w	u, w	w	labiovelar	approximant
/j/	y	y	i, y	y	palatal	approximant
/ɣ/ or /ɰ/? (**)	g	q	q	g	velar	approximant
/l̪/	ḻ	b	lh	l'	interdental	lateral
/l/	l	l	l	l	alveolar	lateral
/ʎ/	ll	j	ll	ll	palatal	lateral

(*) Raguileo doesn't distinguish between /s/ and /ʃ/, and between /t̪/ and /t/. Also, Raguileo aims to use only one grapheme for each phoneme (no digraphs), so he uses some letters from the alphabet in a non-standard way.
(**) Corresponds to /ɨ/ in the same way that /j/ corresponds to /i/ and /w/ corresponds to /u/.