Tehuelche is a language of the Argentinian part of Patagonia, which is now practically extinct. It was spoken by people known in Spanish as the Tehuelches Meridionales Australes, or Aonek’enk. They were also known as Patagones, Chewelches, or Chewelchos, and they lived in the region between the Santa Cruz River and the strait of Magallan. Even though some of the native speakers who were involved as consultants in the collection of linguistic data are still alive today, the language no longer functions as a vehicle for intergroup communication.
The principal objective of the Diccionario Tehuelche-Español / Indice Español-Tehuelche may be used as a companion to the grammar of this language (El tehuelche, Universidad Austral de Chile, 1998) and the texts published in this language (Testimonios de los últimos tehuelche, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1997).
Another objective of this dictionary is to serve as an inventory of Tehuelchan lexemes, particularly in view of the fact that lexical data recorded with scientific rigour used to be practically nonexistent. Only a few vocabularies were produced by distinguished amateurs who had no or almost no linguistic training.
It should be pointed out that this bilingual dictionary is both linguistic and encyclopedic in nature. As it is intended to serve as a linguistic dictionary, the Tehuelche lexemes are described phonologically, grammatically and semantically by means of a metalanguage.
As an encyclopedic dictionary it is a collection of distinct aspects of Tehuelchan culture. In view of the state of imminent disappearance of the language and the culture of the ethnic group, it was deemed necessary to document all ethnographic data that could be found.