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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Guarani (/ˌɡwɑːrəˈniː, ˈɡwɑːrəni/),[3] is a group of South American languages[lower-alpha 1] that belong to the Tupi–Guarani family[4] of the Tupian languages, spoken natively by the majority of Paraguayans and many minorities from its neighboring countries, mainly indigenous populations.
Guaraní | |
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Native to | Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil |
Native speakers | 6.5 million (2020)[1] |
Dialects |
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Guarani alphabet (Latin script) | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Paraguay Bolivia Argentina (Corrientes Province)[2] Brazil (Tacuru) Mercosur |
Regulated by | Academia de la Lengua Guaraní (Paraguayan) |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | gn |
ISO 639-2 | grn |
ISO 639-3 | gug |
Glottolog | para1311 |
Linguasphere | 88-AAI-f |
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Its most spoken variety is Criollo Guarani, specifically its Paraguayan subvariant, which is an official language of Paraguay, 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 Guarani are spoken by communities in neighboring countries including parts of northeastern Argentina, southeastern Bolivia and southwestern Brazil. The other subvariant of Criollo is Correntino Guarani, which is an official language of the Argentine province of Corrientes since 2004.[7][8] Guarani is also one of the three official languages of Mercosur, alongside Spanish and Portuguese.[9]
Guarani is the most widely spoken American language 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 other official language of Spanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal phenomenon in the Western Hemisphere, but Paraguayans have maintained their traditional language while also adopting Spanish.
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, 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 continuum, the components of which are also often called Guarani.