Languages of Chile Languages of Chile The Republic of Chile is an overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking country, with the exceptions of isolated native and immigrant communities. According to Ethnologue, Chile has nine living languages and seven extinct. Of the 18 million Chileans, some 17 million speak Chilean Spanish as their first language. It is a Spanish dialect which is sometimes difficult for speakers of the Castilian variant of Spanish to understand. It is very similar to Andalusian Spanish in pronunciation but it does have a lot of local slang. There are some 1,700,000 Mapuche living in Chile, of whom 114,000 speak Mapudungun. Huilliche dialect or
Official languages of the United Nations endangered languages. In 2002, it was reportedly proposed to the then current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that the UN develops a 'Semi-Official' or 'Regional' language status for commonly spoken languages that do not have Official status so that a higher percentage of the worlds population could be familiar with UN actions. As of 2006, the six official languages are the first or second language of 2.8 billion people on the planet, which is less than half of the world population. The list of potential 'Semi-Official' or 'Regional' languages, many of which can be considered lingua francas in their areas,