Guarani
Paraguayan Guarani
avañeʼẽ
Books in Guarani
Pronunciation	[ʔãʋãɲẽˈʔẽ][citation needed]
Native to	Paraguay
Ethnicity	Guaraní Paraguayan people
Native speakers	6.5 million (2020)[1]
Language family	Tupian Tupi–Guarani Guarani (I) Guaraní Guarani
Dialects	Jopará Taragui
Writing system	Guarani alphabet (Latin script)
Official status
Official language in	Paraguay Bolivia Corrientes Province, Argentina Tacuru, Brazil
Regulated by	Academia de la Lengua Guaraní (Guarani Ñeʼẽ Rerekuapavẽ)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gug
Glottolog	para1311
Linguasphere	88-AAI-f
Guarani-speaking world[2]
This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA.

Paraguayan Guarani, or simplyGuarani (avañe'ẽ),^[a] is alanguage ofSouth America that belongs to theTupi–Guarani branch^[4] of theTupian language family. It is one of the two official languages ofParaguay (along withSpanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population are monolingual speakers of the language.^[5][6]

Variants of the language are spoken by communities in neighboring countries including parts of northeasternArgentina, southeasternBolivia and southwesternBrazil. It is a second official language of theArgentine province ofCorrientes since 2004^[7] and theBrazilian city ofTacuru since 2010.^[8] Guarani is also one of the three official languages ofMercosur, alongside Spanish andPortuguese.^[9]

Guarani is one of the most widely spokenNative American languages and remains commonly used among the Paraguayan people and neighboring communities. This is unique among American languages;language shift towards European colonial languages (in this case, the otherofficial language ofSpanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal phenomenon in theWestern Hemisphere, but Paraguayans have maintained their traditional language while also adopting Spanish.

The name "Guarani" is generally used for the official language of Paraguay. However, this is part of adialect chain, most of whosecomponents are also often called Guarani.^{[citation needed]}

While Guarani, in itsClassical form, was the only language spoken in the expansive missionary territories, Paraguayan Guarani has its roots outside of theJesuit Reductions.^{[citation needed]}

Modern scholarship has shown that Guarani was always the primary language of colonial Paraguay, both inside and outside the reductions. Following theexpulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century, the residents of the reductions gradually migrated north and west towardsAsunción, a demographic shift that brought about a decidedly one-sided shift away from the Jesuit dialect that the missionaries had curated in the southern and eastern territories of the colony.^[10][11]

By and large, the Guarani of the Jesuits shied away from direct phonological loans from Spanish. Instead, the missionaries relied on the agglutinative nature of the language to formulate new precise translations orcalque terms from Guarani morphemes. This process often led the Jesuits to employ complicated, highly synthetic terms to convey European concepts.^[12] By contrast, the Guarani spoken outside of the missions was characterized by a free, unregulated flow of Hispanicisms; frequently, Spanish words and phrases were simply incorporated into Guarani with minimal phonological adaptation.^{[citation needed]}

A good example of that phenomenon is found in the word "communion". The Jesuits, using their agglutinative strategy, rendered this word "Tupârahava", a calque based on the word "Tupâ", meaning God.^[13] In modern Paraguayan Guarani, the same word is rendered "komuño".^[14]

Following the out-migration from the reductions, these two distinct dialects of Guarani came into extensivecontact for the first time. The vast majority of speakers abandoned the less colloquial, highly regulated Jesuit variant in favor of the variety that evolved from actual use by speakers in Paraguay.^[15] This contemporary form of spoken Guarani is known asJopará, meaning "mixture" in Guarani.^{[citation needed]}

Widely spoken, Paraguayan Guarani has nevertheless been repressed by Paraguayan governments throughout most of its history since independence. It was prohibited in state schools for over 100 years. However, populists often used pride in the language to excite nationalistic fervor and promote a narrative of social unity.^{[citation needed]}

During the autocratic regime ofAlfredo Stroessner, his Colorado Party used the language to appeal to common Paraguayans although Stroessner himself never gave an address in Guarani.^[16] Uponthe advent of Paraguayan democracy in 1992, Guarani was established in the new constitution as a language equal to Spanish.^[6]

Jopará, the mixture of Spanish and Guarani, is spoken by an estimated 90% of the population of Paraguay.Code-switching between the two languages takes place on a spectrum in which more Spanish is used for official and business-related matters, and more Guarani is used in art and in everyday life.^[17]

Guarani is also an official language of Bolivia and ofCorrientes Province in Argentina.^[7]

Guarani syllables consist of a consonant plus a vowel or a vowel alone; syllables ending in a consonant or containing two or more consonants together do not occur. This is represented as(C)V.

In the below table, the IPA value is shown. The orthography is shown in angle brackets below, if different.

Thevoiced consonants have oralallophones (left) before oral vowels, andnasal allophones (right) beforenasal vowels. The oral allophones of the voiced stops areprenasalized.

Some linguists additionally include the phoneme/ⁿt/ (written⟨nt⟩), though it is considered controversial as it appears exclusively in the suffix-nte.^[20] Nonetheless, it is typically included in the Guarani alphabet.

Oral/ʝ/ may be realized as[j],[ɟ],[ɟʝ],[dʒ],[ʒ], depending on the dialect, but the nasal allophone is always[ɲ].

Thepalato-alveolar sibilant/ʃ/ is often articulated closer toalveolo-palatal[ɕ].^[21]

The dorsal fricative is in free variation between[x] and[h].

The approximant/ɰ/ may be nasalized[ɰ̃] and partially labialized[ɰʷ], and may also be realized as a fricative[ɣ] or a fully labialized approximant[w].^[b]

From Spanish loanwords, what had originally been a typical alveolar trill/r/ (written⟨rr⟩) became a retroflex sibilant/ʐ/. The alveolar lateral/l/ also entered Guarani phonology through Spanish loanwords, but is now a typical phoneme (unlike/ʐ/, which is considered marginal).^[22] The consonants/f/,/ð/, and/ʎ/ may also appear in loanwords.^[23]

All syllables are open, viz. CV or V, ending in a vowel.

Theglottal stop, calledpuso in Guarani, is only written between vowels, but occurs phonetically before vowel-initial words. Because of this, some words have several glottal stops near each other that consequently undergo a number of differentdissimilation techniques. For example, "I drink water"ʼaʼyʼu is pronouncedhayʼu. This suggests that irregularity in verb forms derives from regular sound change processes in the history of Guarani. There also seems to be some degree of variation between how much the glottal stop is dropped (for examplearuʼuka > aruuka > aruka for "I bring"). It is possible that word-internal glottal stops may have been retained from fossilized compounds where the second component was a vowel-initial (and therefore glottal stop–initial) root.^[24]

/a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/ correspond more or less to the Spanish and IPA equivalents, although sometimes the open-mid allophones[ɛ],[ɔ] are used more frequently. The grapheme⟨y⟩ represents the vowel/ɨ/.^[c] Considering nasality, the vowel system is perfectly symmetrical, each oral vowel having a nasal counterpart (most systems with nasals have fewer nasals than orals).

Guarani displays an unusual degree ofnasal harmony. A nasal syllable consists of a nasal vowel, and if the consonant is voiced, it takes its nasal allophone. If a stressed syllable is nasal, the nasality spreads inboth directions until it bumps up against a stressed syllable that is oral. This includesaffixes,postpositions, and compounding. Voiceless consonants do not have nasal allophones, but they do not interrupt the spread of nasality.

For example,

/ⁿdo+ɾoi+ⁿduˈpã+i/ →[nõɾ̃õĩnũˈpãĩ]

/ro+ᵐbo+poˈrã/ →[ɾ̃õmõpõˈɾ̃ã]

However, a second stressed syllable, with an oral vowel, will not become nasalized:

/iᵈjaˈkãɾaˈku/ →[ʔĩɲãˈkãɾ̃ãˈku]

/aˈkãɾaˈwe/ →[ʔãˈkãɾ̃ãˈwe]^[25]

That is, for a word with a single stressed vowel, all voiced segments will be either oral or nasal, while voiceless consonants are unaffected, as in oral/ᵐbotɨ/ vs nasal/mõtɨ̃/.

Guarani is a highlyagglutinative language, often classified aspolysynthetic. It is a fluid-S typeactive language, and it has been classified as a 6th class language inMilewski's typology. It usessubject–verb–object (SVO) word order usually, butobject–verb when the subject is not specified.^[26]

Guarani exhibits nominal tense: past, expressed with-kue, and future, expressed with-rã. For example,tetã ruvichakue translates to "ex-president" whiletetã ruvicharã translates to "president-elect." The past morpheme-kue is often translated as "ex-", "former", "abandoned", "what was once", or "one-time". These morphemes can even be combined to express the idea of something that was going to be but did not end up happening. So for example,paʼirãgue is "a person who studied to be a priest but didn't actually finish", or rather, "the ex-future priest". Some nouns use-re instead of-kue and others use-guã instead of-rã.^[27]

Guarani distinguishes betweeninclusive and exclusive pronouns of the first person plural.

Reflexive pronoun:je:ahecha ("I look"),ajehecha ("I look at myself")

Guarani stems can be divided into a number of conjugation classes, which are calledareal (with the subclassaireal) andchendal. The names for these classes stem from the names of the prefixes for 1st and 2nd person singular.

Theareal conjugation is used to convey that the participant isactively involved, whereas thechendal conjugation is used to convey that the participant is theundergoer. However, theareal conjugation is also used if an intransitive verb expressesan event as opposed to a state, for examplemanó 'die', and even with a verb such aské 'sleep'. In addition, all borrowed Spanish verbs are adopted asareal as opposed to borrowed adjectives, which takechendal.^[28] Intransitive verbs can take either conjugation, transitive verbs normally takeareal, but can takechendal forhabitual readings. Nouns can also be conjugated, but only aschendal. This conveys a predicative possessive reading.^[29]

Furthermore, the conjugations vary slightly according to the stem being oral or nasal.

Negation is indicated by acircumfixn(d)(V)-...-(r)i in Guarani. The preverbal portion of the circumfix isnd- for oral bases andn- for nasal bases. For 2nd person singular, anepenthetic-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. However, in spoken Guarani, the-ri portion of the circumfix is frequently omitted for bases ending in-i.

The negation can be used in all tenses, but for future or irrealis reference, the normal tense marking is replaced bymoʼã, resulting inn(d)(V)-base-moʼã-i as inNdajapomoʼãi, "I won't do it".

There are also other negatives, such as:ani,ỹhỹ,nahániri,naumbre,naʼanga.

• -ramo: marks extreme proximity of the action, often translating to "just barely":Oguahẽramo, "He just barely arrived".^[30]: 198
• -kuri: marks proximity of the action.Haʼukuri, "I just ate" (ha'u irregular first person singular form ofu, "to eat"). It can also be used after a pronoun, as inha che kuri, che poʼa, "and about what happened to me, I was lucky".
• -vaʼekue: indicates a fact that occurred long ago and asserts that it's really truth.Okañyvaʼekue, "he/she went missing a long time ago".
• -raʼe: tells that the speaker was doubtful before but he's sure at the moment he speaks.Nde rejoguaraʼe peteĩ taʼangambyry pyahu, "so then you bought a new television after all".
• -rakaʼe: expresses the uncertainty of a perfect-aspect fact.Peẽ peikorakaʼe Asunción-pe, "I think you lived in Asunción for a while". Nevertheless, nowadays this morpheme has lost some of its meaning, having a correspondence withraʼe andvaʼekue.

The verb form without suffixes at all is apresent somewhataorist:Upe ára resẽ reho mombyry, "that day you got out and you went far".

• -ta: is afuture of immediate happening, it's also used as authoritarianimperative.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".

• -vaʼerã: indicates something not imminent or something that must be done for social or moral reasons, in this case corresponding to theGermanmodal verbsollen.Péa ojejapovaʼerã, "that must be done".
• -ne: indicates something that probably will happen or something the speaker imagines that is happening. It correlates in a certain way with thesubjunctive ofSpanish.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 haʼehína, "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.ambaʼapóvo, "I'm working (not necessarily now)".
• -pota: indicates proximity immediately before the start of the process.Ajukapota, "I'm near the point at which I will start to kill" or "I'm just about 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 remimoʼã, "now we came to know all your thought".

• -mi: customary action in the past:Oumi, "He used to come a lot".

These are unstressed suffixes:-ta, -ma, -ne, -vo, -mi; so the stress goes upon the last syllable of the verb or the last stressed syllable.

• -se: desiderative suffix:(Che) añemoaranduse, "I want to study".^[31]
• te-: desiderative prefix:Ahasa, "I pass",Tahasa, "I would like to pass."te- is the underlying form. It is similar to the negative in that it has the same vowel alternations and deletions, depending on the person marker on the verb.^[30]: 108

The close and prolonged contact Spanish and Guarani have experienced has resulted in many Guarani words of Spanish origin. Many of these loans were for things or concepts unknown to theNew World prior toSpanish colonization. Examples are seen below:^[32]

English has adopted a small number of words from Guarani (or perhaps the relatedTupi) via Portuguese, mostly the names of animals or plants. "Jaguar" comes fromjaguarete and "piraña" comes frompira aña ("tooth fish" Tupi:pirá 'fish',aña 'tooth'). Other words are: "agouti" fromakuti (which means "individual that eats standing up"),^[33][34] "tapir" fromtapira, "coati" fromkuatĩ (which means "what is scratched, or gashed; what has stripes across the body"),^[35] "açaí" fromĩwasaʼi ("[fruit that] cries or expels water"), "warrah" fromaguará meaning "fox", and "margay" frommbarakaja'y meaning "small cat".Jacaranda (y-acã-ratã, "that which has a firm core or heartwood"^[36] or "hard-headed"),^[37]guarana andmanioc are words of Guarani or Tupi–Guarani origin.^[38]Ipecacuanha (the name of a medicinal drug) comes from a homonymous Tupi–Guarani name that can be rendered asipe-kaa-guené, meaning a creeping plant that makes one vomit.^[39] "Cougar" is borrowed from Guaraniguazu ara.^[40]

The name of Paraguay is itself a Guarani word, as is the name ofUruguay.^[41] However, the exact meaning of either placename is subject to varied interpretations.^[42][43] (See:List of country-name etymologies.)

Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in Guarani:

Mayma yvypóra ou ko yvy ári iñapytyʼyre ha eteĩcha tekoruvicharenda ha akatúape jeguerekópe; ha ikatu rupi oikuaa añetéva ha añeteʼyva, iporãva ha ivaíva, tekotevẽ pehenguéicha oiko oñondivekuéra.^[44]

[maɨˈmaɨʋɨˈpoɾaoˈukoɨʋˈɨˈaɾiiɲapɨtɨʔɨˈɾexaẽtẽˈĩɕãtekoɾuʋiɕaɾeˈⁿdaxaakaˈtuapeᵈjeweɾeˈkope;xaikaˈtuɾupioikuaˈaaɲeˈteʋaxaaɲeteʔɨˈʋa,ĩpõɾ̃ˈãʋãxaiʋaˈiʋatẽkõtẽˈʋẽpexeˈᵑgʷeiɕaoiˈkooɲoⁿdiʋeˈkʷeɾa]

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.^[45]

A more modern translation of the wholeBible into Guarani is known asÑandejara Ñeʼẽ.^[46]

In 2019, Jehovah's Witnesses released theNew World Translation of the Holy Scriptures in Guarani,^[47][48] both in print and online.^[49]

Recently a series of novels in Guarani have been published:

• Kalaito Pombero (Tadeo Zarratea, 1981)
• Poreʼỹ rape (Hugo Centurión, 2016)
• Tatukua (Arnaldo Casco Villalba, 2017)

• Guarani Language and Culture Athenaeum
• Yvy Marãeʼỹ Foundation

• Guarani languages
• Nheengatu language
• Jopará
• Jesuit Reductions
• Mbyá Guaraní language
• Old Tupi
• Guarani Wikipedia
• WikiProject Guaraní(in Spanish)

• Barrera, Meritxell Fernández (2015).Paraguayan Guarani: Some considerations about language mixing and an acoustic study of urban and rural vowels (Thesis).Leiden University.
• Verón, Miguel Ángel (2020)."La lengua guaraní en la era digital: perspectivas y desafíos" [The Guaraní language in the Digital Era: Perspectives and Challenges].Arandu UTIC (in Spanish).VII (1).ISSN 2311-7559. Retrieved25 May 2025.

• de Carvalho, Fernando O. (2022). "A new sound change for Guarani(an): glottal prothesis, internal classification, and the explanation of synchronic irregularities".Folia Linguistica.56 (43–s1):263–288.doi:10.1515/flin-2022-2026.S2CID 249549872.
• Thun, Harald;Symeonidis, Haralambos; Dietrich, Wolf (2009)."Project directors".Guarani-Romanic Linguistic Atlas. Retrieved30 August 2025.

Guarani edition ofWikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikimedia Commons has media related toGuarani language.

• Guarani atWikibooks(in Spanish)
• Guarani Portal from the University of Mainz:
• www.guaranirenda.com – Website about the Guarani language
• Guarani and the Importance of Maintaining Indigenous Culture Through LanguageArchived 29 April 2015 at theWayback Machine
• Lenguas de BoliviaArchived 4 September 2019 at theWayback Machine (online edition)
• Duolingocourse in Guarani

• A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani – by Bruno Estigarribia, UCL Press (open access, Creative Commons license)
• Guarani Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary)
• Guarani–English Dictionary: from *Webster's Online Dictionary –The Rosetta Edition
• www.guarani.de – Online dictionary in Spanish, German and Guarani
• Guarani Possessive Constructions – by Maura Velázquez
• Stative Verbs and Possession in Guarani: –University of Cologne – by Sebastian Nordhoff
• Frases celebres del Latin traducidas al guarani(in Spanish)
• Spanish – Estructura Basica del Guarani and others
• Etymological and Ethnographic Dictionary for Bolivian Guarani
• Guaraní (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)
• 1983:Natalia Krivoshein de Canese,Gramática de la lengua guaraní
• 1990: Natalia Krivoshein de Canese, Feliciano Acosta Alcatraz,Ñe'ẽryru. diccionario guaraní-español (Paraguayan Guaraní:Ñe'eryru: avañe'e-karaiñe'e, karaiñe'e-avañe'e)

Indigenous languages of the Americas with Wikipedia

Item	Label/en	native label	Code	distribution map	number of speakers, writers, or signers	UNESCO language status	Ethnologue language status	?itemwiki
Q36806	Southern Quechua	qu:Urin Qichwa qu:Qhichwa qu:Qichwa	qu		6000000	2 vulnerable		Quechua Wikipedia
Q35876	Guarani	gn:Avañe'ẽ	gn		4850000	1 safe	1 National	Guarani Wikipedia
Q4627	Aymara	ay:Aymar aru	ay		4000000	2 vulnerable		Aymara Wikipedia
Q13300	Nahuatl	nah:Nawatlahtolli nah:nawatl nah:mexkatl	nah		1925620	2 vulnerable		Nahuatl Wikipedia
Q891085	Wayuu	guc:Wayuunaiki	guc		300000	2 vulnerable	5 Developing	Wayuu Wikipedia
Q33730	Mapudungun	arn:Mapudungun	arn		300000	3 definitely endangered	6b Threatened	Mapuche Wikipedia
Q13310	Navajo	nv:Diné bizaad nv:Diné	nv		169369	2 vulnerable	6b Threatened	Navajo Wikipedia
Q25355	Greenlandic	kl:Kalaallisut	kl		56200	2 vulnerable	1 National	Greenlandic Wikipedia
Q29921	Inuktitut	ike-cans:ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ iu:Inuktitut	iu		39770	2 vulnerable		Inuktitut Wikipedia
Q33388	Cherokee	chr:ᏣᎳᎩ ᎧᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ chr:ᏣᎳᎩ	chr		12300	4 severely endangered	8a Moribund	Cherokee Wikipedia
Q33390	Cree	cr:ᐃᔨᔨᐤ ᐊᔨᒧᐎᓐ' cr:nēhiyawēwin	cr		10875 8040			Cree Wikipedia
Q32979	Choctaw	cho:Chahta anumpa cho:Chahta	cho		9200	2 vulnerable	6b Threatened	Choctaw Wikipedia
Q56590	Atikamekw	atj:Atikamekw Nehiromowin atj:Atikamekw	atj		6160	2 vulnerable	5 Developing	Atikamekw Wikipedia
Q27183	Iñupiaq	ik:Iñupiatun	ik		5580	4 severely endangered		Inupiat Wikipedia
Q523014	Muscogee	mus:Mvskoke	mus		4300	3 definitely endangered	7 Shifting	Muscogee Wikipedia
Q33265	Cheyenne	chy:Tsêhesenêstsestôtse	chy		2400	3 definitely endangered	8a Moribund	Cheyenne Wikipedia

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