Guarani language

This article is about the Paraguayan language. For other varieties of Guarani, see Guarani dialects. For the currency, see Paraguayan guaraní.
Guarani
Paraguayan Guarani
Avañe'ẽ
Pronunciation [ʔãʋ̃ãɲẽˈʔẽ]
Native to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia
Ethnicity Guarani people
Native speakers
 4.9 million  (1995)[1]
2.5 million monolinguals (2002 census)[1]
Tupian
Guarani alphabet (Latin script)
Official status
Official language in
  Paraguay
 Corrientes[2] (Argentina)
 Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-1 gn
ISO 639-2 grn
ISO 639-3 gug
Glottolog para1311[3]

{{{mapalt}}}

Guarani-speaking world
Books in Guarani

Guarani (/ˈɡwɑrəniː/ or /ɡwærəˈniː/),[4] specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guarani (endonym avañe'ẽ [aʋãɲẽˈʔẽ] 'the people's language'), is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupi–Guarani subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual.[5][6] It is spoken by communities in neighboring countries, including parts of northeastern Argentina, southeastern Bolivia and southwestern Brazil, and is a second official language of the Argentine province of Corrientes since 2004;[7] it is also an official language of Mercosur.[8]

Guarani is one of the most-widely spoken indigenous language of the Americas and the only one whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This is an anomaly in the Americas where language shift towards European colonial languages (in this case, the other official language of 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 in 1639 published the first written grammar of Guarani in a book called Tesoro de la lengua guaraní ("Thesaurus of the Guarani Language"), described it as a language "so copious and elegant that it can compete with the most famous [of languages]."

The name "Guarani" is generally used for the official language of Paraguay. However, this is part of a dialect chain, most of whose components are also often called Guarani. See Guarani dialects.

History

Traditional Guarani people, including children, still speak Guarani as a first language. Today, it is one of the healthiest Native languages of the Americas.

The persistence of Guarani is, contrary to popular belief, not exclusively, or even primarily, due to the influence of the Jesuits in Paraguay. While Guarani was, indeed, the only language spoken in the expansive missionary territories, Paraguayan Guarani has its roots outside of the Jesuit reductions.

Modern scholarship has shown that Guarani was always the primary language of colonial Paraguay, both inside and outside the reductions. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century, the residents of the reductions gradually migrated north and west towards Asunción, 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.[9][10]

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 calque terms from native morphemes. This process often led the Jesuits to employ complicated, highly synthetic terms to convey Western concepts.[11] 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.

A good example of this phenomenon is found in the word "communion". The Jesuits, using their agglutinative strategy, rendered this word "Tupârahaba", a calque based on the word "Tupâ", meaning God.[12] In modern Paraguayan Guarani, the same word is rendered "komuño".[13]

Following the out-migration from the reductions, these two distinct dialects of Guarani came into extensive contact for the first time. The vast majority of speakers abandoned the less-practical, highly regulated Jesuit variant in favor of the more organic, hybridized Paraguayan dialect.[14]

Writing system

Main article: Guarani alphabet
Church of the Pater Noster in Guarani.

Guarani became a written language relatively recently. Its modern alphabet is basically a subset of the Latin script (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. The tilde is used with many letters that are considered part of the alphabet. In the case of Ñ/ñ, it differentiates the palatal nasal from the alveolar nasal (as in Spanish), whereas it marks stressed nasalisation when used over a vowel (as in Portuguese): ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ, ỹ. (Nasal vowels have been written with several other diacritics: ä, ā, â, ã.) The tilde also marks nasality in the case of G̃/g̃, used to represent the nasalized velar approximant by combining the velar approximant "G" with the nasalising tilde. The letter G̃/g̃, which is unique to this language, was introduced into the orthography relatively recently during the mid-20th century and there is disagreement over its use. It is not a precomposed character in Unicode, which can cause typographic inconveniences – such as needing to press "delete" twice – or imperfect rendering when using computers and fonts that do not properly support the complex layout feature of glyph composition.

Only stressed nasal vowels are written as nasal. If an oral vowel is stressed, and it is not the final syllable, it is marked with an acute accent: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý. That is, stress falls on the vowel marked as nasalized, if any, else on the accent-marked syllable, and if neither appears, then on the final syllable.

Phonology

Guarani only allows syllables consisting of a consonant plus a vowel or a vowel alone; syllables ending in a consonant or two or more consonants together are not possible. This is represented (C)V.

Oral and nasal vowels
Front Central Back
Close /i/, /ĩ/ /ɨ/, /ɨ̃/ /u/, /ũ/
Mid /e/, /ẽ/ /o/, /õ/
Open /a/, /ã/

Consonants:

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

Labial Alveolar (Alveolo
-)Palatal		 Velar Lab. velar Glottal
Stop Voiceless p t k kʷ
⟨ku⟩		 ʔ
⟨'⟩
Nasal/Voiced ᵐb ~ m
⟨mb⟩ ~ ⟨m⟩		 ⁿd ~ n
⟨nd⟩ ~ ⟨n⟩		 ᵈj ~ ɲ
⟨j⟩ ~ ⟨ñ⟩		 ᵑɡ ~ ŋ
⟨ng⟩		 ᵑɡʷ ~ ŋʷ
⟨ngu⟩
Fricative s ɕ
⟨ch⟩		 x ~ h
⟨h⟩
Approximant ʋ ~ ʋ̃
⟨v⟩		 ɰ ~ ɰ̃
⟨g⟩ ~ ⟨g̃⟩		 w ~ w̃
⟨gu⟩ ~ ⟨g̃u⟩
Flap ɾ ~ ɾ̃
⟨r⟩

The voiced consonants have oral allophones (left) before oral vowels, and nasal allophones (right) before nasal vowels. The oral allophones of the voiced stops are prenasalized.

There is also a sequence /nt/ (written ⟨nt⟩). A trill /r/ (written ⟨rr⟩) and the consonants /l/, /f/, and /j/ (written ⟨ll⟩) are not native to Guarani, but come from Spanish.

Oral [ᵈj] is often pronounced [dʒ], [ʒ], [j], depending on the dialect, but the nasal allophone is always [ɲ].

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

⟨g⟩, ⟨gu⟩ are approximants, not fricatives, but are sometimes transcribed [ɣ], [ɣʷ], as is conventional for Spanish. ⟨gu⟩ is also transcribed [ɰʷ], which is essentially identical to [w].

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

Glottal stop

The glottal stop is only written between vowels, but occurs phonetically before vowel-initial words. Because of this, Ayala (2000:19) shows that some words have several glottal stops near each other, which consequently undergo a number of different dissimilation techniques. For example "I drink water" 'a'y'u is pronounced hay'u. This suggests that even irregular verbs in Guarani are regular underlyingly. There also seems to be some degree of variation between how much the glottal stop is dropped (for example aru'uka > aruuka > aruka for "I bring"). It is suspected that the glottal stop was not an original phoneme but that word-internal glottal stops are only fossilized compounds where the second component was a vowel-initial (and therefore glottal stop–initial) root.[15]:19

Nasal harmony

Guarani displays an unusual degree of nasal 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 in both directions until it bumps up against a stressed syllable that is oral. This includes affixes, 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][16]

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/.

Grammar

Guaraní is a highly agglutinative language, often classified as polysynthetic. It is a fluid-S type active language and it has been classified as a 6th class language in Milewski's typology. It uses subject–verb–object word order usually, but object–verb when the subject is not specified.

The language lacks gender and has no definite article, but due to influence from Spanish, la is used as a definite article for singular reference, and lo for plural reference. These are not found in pure Guarani (Guaraniete).

Nouns

Guarani exhibits nominal tense: past, expressed with -kue, and future, expressed with -rã. For example, tetã ruvichakue translates to "ex-president" while tetã 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 didn't end up happening. So for example, pa'irãgue is "a person who studied to be a priest but didn't actually finish," or rather, "the ex-future priest." Note that some nouns use -re instead of -kue and others use -guã instead of -rã.[17]

Pronouns

Guarani 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/ hikuái (*)

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

Conjugation

Guarani stems can be divided into a number of conjugation classes, which are called areal (with the subclass aireal) and chendal, respectively. The names for these classes stem from the names of the prefixes for 1st person singular.

The areal conjugation is used to convey that the participant is actively involved, whereas the chendal conjugation is used to convey that the participant is the undergoer. Note that intransitive verbs can take either conjugation, transitive verbs normally take areal, but can take chendal for habitual readings. Nouns can also be conjugated, but only as chendal. This conveys a predicative possessive reading.[18]

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

person areal aireal chendal
walk use be.big
1s a-guata ai-poru che-tuicha
2s re-guata rei-poru nde-tuicha
3s o-guata oi-poru i-tuicha
1pi ja-guata jai-poru ñande-tuicha
1px ro-guata roi-poru ore-tuicha
2p pe-guata pei-poru pende-tuicha
3p o-guata oi-poru i-tuicha

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 Guarani. 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. However, in spoken Guarani, the "-ri" portion of the circumfix is frequently omitted for bases ending in "-i".

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 nda-jajupí-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".

There are also other negatives, such as: ani, ỹhỹ, nahániri, naumbre, na'anga.

Tense and aspect morphemes

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"

These two suffixes can be added together: ahátama, "I'm already going"

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, "mi"; so the stress goes upon the last syllable of the verb or the last stressed syllable.

Other verbal morphemes

Determiners

Guarani English Spanish
1 – Demonstratives:
(a) With near objects and entities (you see it)
Ko this este, esta
Pe that ese, esa
Amo that/yonder aquel, aquella
Peteĩ-teĩ (+/- va) each cada uno
Ko'ã, ã, áã these estos, estas
Umi those esos, esas, aquellos, aquellas
(b) Indefinite, with far objects and entities (you do not see it -remembering demonstratives ):
Ku that (singular) aquel, aquella
Akói those (plural) aquellos, as
(c) Other usual demonstratives determiners:
Opa all todo, toda, todos, todas (with all entities)
Mayma all todos, todas (with people)
Mbovy – some, a few, determinate
Heta a lot of, very much muchos, muchas
Ambue ( +/- kuéra) other otros, otras
Ambue another otro, otra
Ambueve: The other el otro, la otra
Ambueve other, another otro, otros, (enfático) –
Oimeraẽ either cualquiera
Mokoĩve both ambos, ambas
Ni peteĩ (+/- ve) neither ni el uno ni el otro

Spanish loans in Guarani

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 the New World prior to Spanish colonization. Examples are seen below:[21]

Semantic category Spanish Guarani Gloss
animals vaca vaka cow
caballo kavaju horse
cabra kavara goat
religion cruz kurusu cross
Jesucristo Hesukrísto Jesus Christ
PabloPavlo Paul (saint)
place names Australia Autaralia Australia
Islandia Iylanda Iceland
Portugal Poytuga Portugal
foods queso kesu cheese
azúcar asuka sugar
morcilla mbusia blood sausage
herbs/spices canela kanéla cinnamon
culantro kuratũ coriander
anís ani anise

Guarani loans in English

English has adopted a small number of words from Guarani (or perhaps the related Tupi) via Portuguese, mostly the names of animals. "Jaguar" comes from jaguarete and "piranha" comes from pira aña. Other words are: "agouti" from akuti, "tapir" from tapira, "açaí" from ïwasa'i, and "warrah" from aguará meaning "fox". The name of Paraguay is itself a Guarani word, as is the name of Uruguay. However, the exact meaning of either placename is up to varied interpretations. (See: List of country-name etymologies)

Example text

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

Mayma yvypóra ou ko yvy ári iñapyty'yre ha eteĩcha tekoruvicharenda ha akatúape jeguerekópe; ha ikatu rupi oikuaa añetéva ha añete'yva, iporãva ha ivaíva, tekotevẽ pehenguéicha oiko oñondivekuéra.[22]

(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.)

Literature

The translation of the Bible into Guarani is known as Ñandejara Ñe'ẽ.[23]

See also

Sources

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Guarani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Ley n.º 5598 Poder Legislativo de Corrientes, 28 September 2004 (Spanish)
  3. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Paraguayan Guarani". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
  5. ↑ Mortimer, K 2006 "Guaraní Académico or Jopará? Educator Perspectives and Ideological Debate in Paraguayan Bilingual Education" Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 21/2: 45-71, 2006
  6. ↑ Romero, Simon (12 March 2012). "In Paraguay, Indigenous Language With Unique Staying Power". The New York Times.
  7. ↑ Website of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs which contains this information (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Incorporación del Guaraní como Idioma del Mercosur MERCOSUR official page (Spanish)
  9. ↑ Wilde, Guillermo (2001). "Los guaraníes después de la expulsión de los jesuitas: dinámicas políticas y transacciones simbólicas.". Revista Complutense De Historia De América (in Spanish) 27.
  10. ↑ Telesca, Ignacio (2009). Tras los expulsos: cambios demográficos y territoriales en el paraguay después de la expulsión de los jesuitas. Asunción: Universidad Católica "Nuestra Señora De La Asunción".
  11. ↑ [['La hispanización del guaraní jesuítico en 'lo espiritual' y en 'lo temporal'. Segunda parte: Los procedimientos.'|Harald Thun]] (2008). Geschichte Und Aktualität Der Deutschsprachigen Guaraní- Philologie: Akten Der Guarani-Tagung in Kiel Und Berlin.
  12. ↑ Restivo, Paulo (1724). Vocabulario de la lengua guaraní (in Spanish). Madrid.
  13. ↑ Guarania, Félix (2008). Ñande Ayvu Tenonde Porãngue'i: Nuevo diccionario guaraní́-castellano, castellano-guaraní́: Avañe'ẽ -karaiñe'ẽ, Karaiñe'ẽ-avañe'ẽ. Asuncion: Servilibro.
  14. ↑ Melia, Bartomeu (2003). La lengua guaraní́ en el Paraguay colonial (in Spanish). Asunción: CEPAG.
  15. ↑ Ayala, Valentín (2000). Gramática Guaraní. Asunción: Centro Editorial Paraguayo S.R.L.
  16. ↑ Walker (2000) Nasalization, neutral segments, and opacity effects, p. 210
  17. ↑ Guasch, P. Antonio (1956). El Idioma Guarnai: Gramática e Antología de Prosa y Verso. Asuncion: Casa América. p. 53.
  18. ↑ Caralho, Jao de(1993) Peixes de Ámérica do Sul, Universidade de Rio de Janeiro
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Graham, Charles R. (1969). Guarani Intermediate Course. Provo: Brigham Young University.
  20. ↑ Blair, Robert et al. (1968). Guarani Basic Course: Book 1. p. 50.
  21. ↑ Pinta, J. (2013). "Lexical strata in loanword phonology: Spanish loans in Guarani". Master's thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
  22. ↑ "Guarani language, alphabet and pronunciation". Omniglot.com. Retrieved 2013-08-26.
  23. ↑ "Guarani Bible officially included in the Vatican" (in Spanish). Última Hora. 2012-10-23.

External links

Guarani edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Resources