Guaraní Language Guide

Where it's spoken

Guaraní is one of the two official languages of Paraguay, alongside Spanish. Paraguay's constitution states that Paraguay is a multicultural and bilingual country with Castilian and Guaraní as official languages; this built on an earlier constitution's recognition of Guaraní as a national language, decades before it was made official alongside Spanish. Contact between Guaraní and Spanish has been extensive for centuries, and everyday speech in Paraguay commonly mixes the two languages into a blend that Paraguayans themselves call Jopara.

This app's basic yes/no card notes the same pattern: in everyday Paraguayan speech, Spanish sí and no are also commonly used alongside the Guaraní heẽ and nahániri.

Sources

• Estigarribia, Bruno (2020). A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani. London, UCL Press — pp.6, 16 (official/national language status; Jopara mixing)
• Constitution of the Republic of Paraguay (1992, rev. 2011), Article 140, English translation — via Constitute Project — Article 140

Script & pronunciation

Guaraní is written in a Latin-based alphabet known as achegety, a name formed from the names of its first three letters, a, che and ge, plus the collective plural suffix -ty. Each grapheme, whether a single letter or a two-letter digraph, is designed to correspond to one basic sound of the language. Two diacritics are used: an acute accent marks the stressed vowel of a word when that vowel is not the word's last one, and a tilde marks a vowel that is phonologically nasal. An apostrophe, called puso ("cut sound"), is used for the glottal stop.

This app's romanization field for Guaraní cards breaks the native-script text into syllables separated by hyphens and keeps the puso apostrophe, as in the greeting card Mba'éichapa, whose romanization is written Mba-'éi-cha-pa.

Sources

• Estigarribia, Bruno (2020). A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani. London, UCL Press — §2.3 "The alphabet or achegety and modern orthographic conventions in Paraguay", p.46

Grammar essentials

Guaraní allows both the subject and the object of a sentence to be left unstated, since the verb's person prefix already identifies the subject; when a subject is expressed as a separate word, it can come either before or after the verb, and when an object referring to a person is expressed as a separate word, it most often follows the verb. This app's card for "the teachers teach the children," Umi mbo'ehára ombo'e mitãnguérape, shows a subject before the verb and an object after it, and also shows the plural suffix -kuéra (here -nguéra) added to the noun mitã ("child").

Negation of a verb or other predicate is formed with a discontinuous circumfix: the prefix nda- (or na- when the verb's stem is nasal) placed before it, and the unstressed suffix -i placed after it. This app's card Ndaikũmbýi avañe'ẽ ("I don't understand Guaraní") shows this negation circumfix added to the verb aikũmby ("I understand").

The prefix je- (its allomorph oje- combines with the third-person active prefix o-) marks passive, reflexive or impersonal voice. This app's card Mba'éichapa ojehai kóva? ("How do you write this?") uses this prefix with a passive reading.

Yes/no questions are not marked by any special intonation but by the clitic =pa (or =piko), which attaches after the first phrase of the sentence, as in this app's card Nde réra mba'épa? ("What is your name?").

A purposive clause, expressing the purpose of the action named in the main clause, is marked by the word hag̃ua ("for," "in order to"), placed after the verb, as in this app's card Mboýpa hepy aha hag̃ua ygárape? ("How much is the boat tour?"), literally "how much is it for me to go by boat."

Sources

• Estigarribia, Bruno (2020). A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani. London, UCL Press — §8.1 Word order (p.230); §4.9 Verbal negation (pp.154–155); §6.3 Passive/reflexive/impersonal voice (p.207); §8.5 Questions (p.237); §12.2.3.1 Purposive (p.271)

Politeness & etiquette

Guaraní's basic imperative, used to give a command to the person being addressed, can be combined with suffixes that add further nuances of force or courtesy: the requestative -na conveys a polite, mitigated request, and the pleading -mi is mitigating with affectionate nuances. The two suffixes can also be stacked together on the same verb; a request for help such as "Help me, please" stacks exactly these two suffixes onto the verb pytyvõ ("to help"), yielding Chepytyvõmína.

This app's card for an injured ankle uses the same combination: Che pyñuã hasy — chepytyvõmina. ("I've injured my ankle — I need help.")

Sources

• Estigarribia, Bruno (2020). A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani. London, UCL Press — §4.10.3.1.2 Imperative modalizers (pp.172–174); §1.6 Contact with Spanish and other languages, "Chepytyvõmína" example (p.17)