'Guaraní' (local name: avañe'ẽ ) is an indigenous language of
South America that belongs to the
Tupí-Guaraní subfamily. It is one of the official languages of
Paraguay (along with
Spanish), where it is spoken by 94% of the population. It is also spoken by indigenous communities in neighbouring countries, including parts of northern
Argentina, eastern
Bolivia and southwestern
Brazil. It is also treated as a second official language of the
Argentine provinces of
Corrientes[1] and
Misiones[2].
It is the only
indigenous language of the Americas whose overwhelming majority of speakers are non-indigenous people. This is an anomaly in the
Americas where
language shift towards more prestigious
official languages (in this case,
Spanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker of
mestizos (people of mixed
Spanish and
Amerindian ancestry), and also of
culturally assimilated, upwardly-mobile
Amerindian people.
Jesuit priest Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, who wrote a book called ''Tesoro de la lengua guaraní'' ("The Treasure of the Guaraní Language"), described Guaraní as a language "so copious and elegant that it can compete with the most famous [of languages]."
It has been said that the
Paraguay football (soccer) team speaks Guaraní on the pitch to confuse the opposing team.
Predominance of Guaraní
Paraguay
Guaraní is, alongside
Spanish, one of the official languages of
Paraguay. Thus, for example, Paraguay's constitution is bilingual, and its state-produced textbooks are typically half in Spanish and half in Guaraní. This policy seems to suggest that the two languages are "separate but equal".
Nonetheless, the two languages have a very complicated relationship. In practice, almost nobody in Paraguay speaks "pure Spanish" or "pure Guaraní", but rather a combination which varies according to the social class, lifestyle and racial origin of the speaker. Thus, the more well-educated, more urban, and more European-descended population tends to speak Argentine-influenced Spanish with short phrases of Guaraní thrown in, while the less educated, more rural, and more Amerindian-descended population tends to speak a Guaraní with significant vocabulary-borrowing from Spanish. This latter mix is known as
Jopará .
Speakers of Guaraní who are not fluent in any other language have markedly limited opportunities for education and employment. There are very few speakers of Guaraní outside of South America. Those few that exist include scholars, missionaries, and agents of the
Peace Corps.
Argentina
Guaraní is an official language in the provinces of
Corrientes and
Misiones, alongside
Spanish.
Brazil
The Guaraní language, together with its near-identical sisters, the ''
língua geral paulista'' (presently extinct) and the ''
língua geral amazônica'' (whose modern descendant is
Nheengatu), was once as prevalent in Brazil as it still is in Paraguay. The language began a long period of decline in Brazil when the Jesuits, who had done much to spread and standardize it, were expelled from the country. However, Guaraní still survives in scattered pockets throughout Brazil. Interestingly, one of those pockets can be found in a rural district within the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil's largest city. In fact,
Olívio Jekupé, a resident of Krukutu village, located in this area, has even published a book of folk tales written in Guaraní and
Portuguese. Because of its proximity with Paraguay, in
Mato Grosso do Sul (
Ponta Porã), the Guaraní language is a second language locally.
History
Guaraní persisted with enough vigor to be made official because the
Jesuits elected it as the language to preach Roman Catholicism to the Indians (Guaraní was the language of the autonomous
Jesuit ''Reducciones'') and because Paraguay's dictators for a time shut the country's borders and thereby protected the local culture and language.
Writing system
Main articles: Guaraní alphabet
Guaraní became a written language relatively recently. The modern Guaraní alphabet is basically a subset of the
Latin alphabet (with "J", "K" and "Y" but not "W"), complemented with two diacritics and six
digraphs. Its
orthography is largely phonemic, with letter values mostly similar to those of
Spanish. All vowels can take an
acute accent (´) to mark stress (Á/á É/é Í/í Ó/ó Ú/ú), but the resulting graphemes are not letters of the alphabet. The
tilde marks nasalisation and is used with many letters that are considered part of the alphabet: Ã/ã Ẽ/ẽ G̃/g̃ Ĩ/ĩ Ñ/ñ Õ/õ Ũ/ũ Ỹ/ỹ. (Note that G/g with tilde is not available as a precomposed glyph in
Unicode).
Phonology
Guaraní only allows syllables consisting of a vowel or a consonant plus a vowel; a syllable ending in a consonant or two or more consonants together (except "
digraphs") are not possible. This is represented '(C)V(V)'.
★
Vowels: correspond more or less to the Spanish and IPA equivalents, although sometimes the allophones , are used more frequently; 'y' is the
close central unrounded vowel .
All these vowels have nasalized counterparts.
Consonants:
, , are in
complementary distribution with , and respectively.
is often pronounced , especially by bilingual speakers.
The
glottal stop is only found between vowels.
The
alveolar trill () and
alveolar lateral approximant () are not sounds native to Guaraní.
Nasal Sandhi
For
euphonic purposes, words are grouped in 'oral' and 'nasal'. A word is nasal if it has at least one of these nasal letters: ã - ẽ - ĩ - õ - ũ - ỹ - g̃ - m - mb - n - nd - ng - nt - ñ , and all the rest being oral.
A nasal word acquires different versions of prefixes and postpositions. For example, the postpositions ''pe'', ''ta'' turn into ''me'', ''nda'' respectively after nasal words.
Grammar
Guaraní is highly
agglutinative. It is a fluid-S type
active language and it has been classified as a 6th class language in the
Milewski's typology. It uses
Subject Verb Object alignment usually, but
Object Verb when the subject is not specified.
The language lacks
gender and has no
definite article.
Pronouns
Guaraní distinguishes between
inclusive and
exclusive pronouns of the first person plural.
| first | second | third |
|---|
| singular | che | nde | ha'e | |
|---|
| plural | ñande (inclusive),
ore (exclusive) | peẽ | ha'ekuéra |
|---|
Reflexive pronoun: ''je'': ''ahecha'' ("I look"), ''ajehecha'' ("I look at myself")
Conjugation
The verb is conjugated in every person and number incorporating
prefixes. As mentioned above, affixes differ based on whether the word is nasal or oral, and so the prefix for the 1st person inclusive is ''ja-'' for oral words, and ''ña-'' for nasal words.
Verb root ''guata'' ("walk"); oral verb.
| Singular | Plural |
|---|
| Person | Prefix | | Person | Prefix | |
|---|---|---|
'1' che
'' 'I' ''
| ''a''-
| a-guata
| '1' ñande (incl.)
'' 'we all' ''
'1' ore (excl.)
'' 'we (just us)' '' | ''ja''-
''ro''-
| ja-guata
ro-guata
| '2' nde
'' 'You' '' | ''re''-
| re-guata
| '2' peẽ
'' 'You all' '' | ''pe''-
| pe-guata
| '3' ha'e
'' 'S/he' '' | ''o''-
| o-guata
| '3' ha'ekuéra
'' 'They' '' | ''o''-
| o-guata
|
|
Verb root ''ñe'ẽ'' ("speak"); nasal verb.
| Singular | Plural |
|---|
| Person | Prefix | | Person | Prefix | |
|---|---|---|
'1' che
'' 'I' ''
| ''a''-
| a-ñe'ẽ
| '1' ñande (incl.)
'' 'we all' ''
'1' ore (excl.)
'' 'we (just us)' '' | ''ña''-
''ro''-
| ña-ñe'ẽ
ro-ñe'ẽ
| '2' nde
'' 'You' '' | ''re''-
| re-ñe'ẽ
| '2' peẽ
'' 'You all' '' | ''pe''-
| pe-ñe'ẽ
| '3' ha'e
'' 'S/he' '' | ''o''-
| o-ñe'ẽ
| '3' ha'ekuéra
'' 'They' '' | ''o''-
| o-ñe'ẽ
|
|
Negation
Negation is indicated by a
circumfix ''n(d)(V)-...-(r)i'' in Guaraní. The preverbal portion of the circumfix is ''nd-'' for oral bases and'' n-'' for nasal bases. For 2nd person singular, an
epenthetic ''e'' is inserted before the base, for 1st person plural inclusive, an epenthetic ''a'' is inserted.
The postverbal portion is ''-ri'' for bases ending in ''-i'', and ''-i'' for all others
| Oral verb''japo'' (do, make) | Nasal verb''kororõ'' (roar, snore) | With ending in "i"''jupi'' (go up, rise) |
|---|
| nd-ajapó-i | n-akororõ-i | nd-ajupí-ri |
| nde-rejapó-i | ne-rekororõ-i | nde-rejupí-ri |
| nd-ojapó-i | n-okororõ-i | nd-ojupí-ri |
| nda-jajapó-i | na-ñakororõ-i | nd-ajajupí-ri |
| nd-orojapó-i | n-orokororõ-i | nd-orojupí-ri |
| nda-pejapó-i | na-pekororõ-i | nda-pejupí-ri |
| nd-ojapó-i | n-okororõ-i | nd-ojupí-ri |
The negation can be used in all tenses, but for future or irrealis reference, the normal tense marking is replaced by ''mo'ã'', resulting in ''n(d)''(V)''-base-mo'ã-i'' as in ''Ndajapomo'ãi'', "I won't do it".
===
Tense and
aspect morphemes ===
★ -'kuri': marks proximity of the action. ''Ha'ukuri'', "I just ate" (''ha'u'' irregular first person singular form of ''u'', "to eat"). It can also be used after a pronoun, ''ha che kuri, che po'a'', "and about what happened to me, I was lucky"
★ -'va'ekue': indicates a fact that occurred long ago and asserts that it's really truth. ''Okañyva'ekue'', "he/she went missing a long time ago"
★ -'ra'e': tells that the speaker was doubtful before but he's sure at the moment he speaks. ''Nde rejoguara'e peteĩ ta'angambyry pyahu'', "so then you bought a new television after all"
★ -'raka'e': expresses the uncertainty of a perfect-aspect fact. ''Peẽ peikoraka'e Asunción-pe'', "I think you lived in Asunción for a while". Nevertheless nowadays this morpheme has lost some of its meaning, having a correspondence with ''ra'e'' and ''va'ekue''
The verb form without suffixes at all is a
present somewhat
aorist: ''Upe ára resẽ reho mombyry'', "that day you got out and you went far"
★ -'ta': is a
future of immediate happening, it's also used as authoritarian
imperative. ''Oujeýta ag̃aite'', "he/she'll come back soon".
★ -'ma': has the meaning of "already". ''Ajapóma'', "I already did it".
These two suffixes can be added together: ''ahátama'', "I'm already going"
★ -'va'erã': indicates something not imminent or something that must be done for social or moral reasons, in this case corresponds to the
German modal verb ''sollen''. ''Péa ojejapova'erã'', "that must be done"
★ -'ne': indicates something that probably will happen or something the speaker imagines that is happening. It correlates in certain way with the
subjunctive of
Spanish. ''Mitãnguéra ág̃a og̃uahéne hógape'', "the children are probably coming home now"
★ -'hína', ''ína'' after nasal words: continual action at the moment of speaking, present and pluperfect continuous or emphatic. ''Rojatapyhína'', "we're making fire"; ''che ha'ehína'', "it's ME!"
★ -'vo': it has a subtle difference with ''hína'' in which ''vo'' indicates not necessarily what's being done at the moment of speaking. ''amba'apóvo'', "I'm working (not necessarily now)"
★ -'pota': indicates proximity immediately before the start of the process. ''Ajukapota'', "I'm near the edge in which I will start to kill". (A particular sandhi rule is applied here: if the verbs ends in "po", the suffix changes to ''mbota''; ''ajapombota'', "I'll do it right now")
★ -'pa': indicates emphatically that a process has all finished. ''Amboparapa pe ogyke'', "I painted the wall completely"
This suffix can be joined with ''ma'', making up ''páma'': ''ñande jaikuaapáma nde remimo'ã'', "now we became to know all your thought". These are unstressed suffixes: ''ta'', ''ma'', ''ne'', ''vo''; so the stress goes upon the last syllable of the verb.
Guaraní loans to English
The words that English has borrowed from Guaraní (or maybe from its close brother,
Tupi) are mostly names of animals. "Jaguar" comes from ''jaguarete'' and "
piranha" comes from ''pira aña''. Other words are: "agouti" from ''akuti'' and "tapir" from ''tapira''. The name Paraguay is itself a Guaraní word, as (probably) is the name Uruguay.
See also
★
Old Tupi
★
Jesuit Reductions
★
Guarani languages
★
Western Argentine Guaraní
★
Paraguayan Guaraní
★
Mbyá Guaraní
Sources
1. Website of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs which contains this information
2. News Story
External links
★
Ethnologue reports for Guarani languages
★
Guarani - English Dictionary: from
★
Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
★
Guaraní Portal from the University of Mainz:
★
www.guarani.de: - online dictionary in Spanish, German and Guarani
★
www.guaranirenda.com: - about the Guarani language
★
Guaraní Possessive Constructions: - by Maura Velázquez.
★
Stative Verbs and Possessions in Guaraní: - University of
Köln
★
An article written in Guarani: - a sample of the Guarani language
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