Languages of Paraguay
 | This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (August 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
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| Languages of Paraguay | |
|---|---|
| Official | Spanish, Guaraní |
| Immigrant | Portuguese, German |
| Signed | Paraguayan Sign Language |
The Republic of Paraguay is a mostly bilingual country, as the majority of the population uses Spanish and Guaraní. The Constitution of Paraguay of 1992 declares it as a multicultural and bilingual country, establishing Spanish and Guaraní as official languages.[1] Spanish, an Indo-European language of the Romance branch, is understood by about 90% of the population as a first or second language. Guaraní, an indigenous language of the Tupian family, is understood by 77%, and its use is regulated by the Academy of the Guaraní Language.[2][3]
According to Instituto Cervantes' 2020 report, "El Español: Una lengua viva", 68.2% of the Paraguayan population (4,946,322 inhabitants) has decent mastery of the Spanish language. The remaining 31.8% (2,306,350 inhabitants) belongs to the Group of Limited Competence, having minimal mastery of the language; the majority of them are Guaraní speakers and speak Spanish as a second language.[4] Only 7.93% are monolingual in Guaraní and do not understand Spanish, a figure that has gone down in the last thirty years.
The most distinct characteristic of Paraguayan culture is the persistence of Spanish alongside Guaraní, these being the official languages of the nation. The pidgin form of these languages is known as Jopara (with emphasis on the final syllable). For this reason, the country is often cited as one of the few countries in the world that is officially bilingual.[5] Besides Spanish and Guaraní, there are another 19 languages of indigenous origin that are spoken by about 50,000 indigenous Paraguayans. Portuguese is also spoken by some 650,000 "Brasiguayos", the majority of whom are located near the border with Brazil. Other minority languages are German, Italian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc.
According to data in the National Census of Population and Housing of the year 2012, carried out by the Dirección General de Estadísticas, Encuestas y Censos (today Instituto Nacional de Estadística), the most spoken languages in Paraguayan homes are: 46.3% Spanish and Guaraní (or Jopara), 34% only Guaraní, and 15.3% only Spanish; the rest speak other languages.[6] The departments with the highest rate of domestic Guaraní speakers, according to EPH 2017, are: San Pedro (78.87%), Caazapá (77.39%), and Concepción (71.34%), while the places that Guaraní is spoken the least include: Asunción (8.95%), Central (15.9%), and Alto Paraná (37.75%). Spanish predominates in these last few departments.
Guaraní is the only indigenous language of the Americas 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.
Indigenous languages[edit]
About 50,000 Paraguayans speak an indigenous language besides Guaraní:[7]
- Aché language
- Ayoreo language
- Chamacoco language
- Iyo'wujwa Chorote language
- Guana language
- Lengua language
- Maka language
- Nivaclé language
- Ñandeva language
- Pai Tavytera language
- Sanapaná language
- Toba Qom language
- Toba-Maskoy language
Besides Spanish, Guaraní, and all other previous languages, Portuguese, Plautdietsch, Standard German and Italian are spoken as well.[8]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ "Paraguay - Constitution, Article 140 About Languages". International Constitutional Law Project. Retrieved 2007-12-03. Cite journal requires
|journal=(help) (see translator's note) - ^ "Paraguay". 2011-06-01. Archived from the original on 2011-06-01. Retrieved 2021-08-22.
- ^ "Guaraní: Identidad histórica paraguaya - Notas - ABC Color". www.abc.com.py (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-08-22.
- ^ https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/espanol_lengua_viva/pdf/espanol_lengua_viva_2020.pdf
- ^ Turner, Christina Bolke; Turner, Brian (1993). "The Role of Mestizaje of Surnames in Paraguay in the Creation of a Distinct New World Ethnicity". Ethnohistory. 41 (1): 139–165. doi:10.2307/3536981. ISSN 0014-1801. JSTOR 3536981.
- ^ https://www.dgeec.gov.py/news/25-de-agosto-dia-del-Idioma-Guarani.php
- ^ Languages of Paraguay, Ethnologue
- ^ Paraguayan Guaraní, Ethnologue
