Guaraní language
Encyclopedia
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní (ɡwɑrəˈniː; endonym avañe'ẽ aʋãɲẽˈʔẽ 'Ava language'), is an indigenous language of South America
that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní 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 half of the rural population is monolingual. It is spoken by communities in neighbouring countries, including parts of northern Argentina
and southwestern Brazil
, and is a second official language of the Argentine province
of Corrientes
.
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 mestizo
s (people of mixed Spanish
and Amerindian ancestry), and also of culturally assimilated
, upwardly-mobile Amerindian people.
Jesuit priest Antonio Ruiz de Montoya
, who wrote a book called Tesoro de la lengua guaraní ("The Treasure of the Guaraní Language"), described Guaraní 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 Guaraní. See Guaraní dialects.
elected it as the language to preach Roman Catholicism to the Indians (Guaraní was the language of the autonomous Jesuit Reducciones
) and because Paraguay's dictators for a time shut the country's borders and thereby protected the local culture and language.
(with "J", "K" and "Y" but not "W"), complemented with two diacritics and six digraph
s. 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's not the final syllable, it's 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.
Consonants:
IPA value is shown. The orthography is shown in angle brackets below, if different.
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].
The glottal stop
is only written between vowels, but occurs phonetically before vowel-initial words.
⟨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.
es, postpositions, and compounding. Voiceless consonants do not have nasal allophones, but they do not interrupt the spread of nasality.
For example,
However, a second stressed syllable, with an oral vowel, will not become nasalized:
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/.
, classified often 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 Guaraní (Guaraniete).
pronouns of the first person plural.
Reflexive pronoun: je: ahecha ("I look"), ajehecha ("I look at myself")
The areal conjugation is used to convey that the participant was actively involved, whereas the chendal conjugation is used to convey that the participant is Undergoer. Note that transitive verbs can take either conjugation, intransitive 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.
Furthermore, the conjugations vary slightly according to the stem being oral or nasal.
n(d)(V)-...-(r)i in Guaraní. 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
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.
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; so the stress goes upon the last syllable of the verb.
(Guarani-English-Spanish)
Ko: this – este, esta
Pe: that – ese, esa
Amo: that – aquel, aquella
Peteĩ-teĩ (+/- va): each – cada uno
Ko’ã , ã, áã: these – estos, estas
Umi: those- esos, esas, aquellos, aquellas
Ku – that (singular) – aquellos, as
Akói – Those (plural) – aquellos, as
Opa : all – to do, toda,todos, todas (with all entities)
Mayma – all . todos, todas ( with people)
Mbovy – : some, a few, determinated
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
Ni peteĩ (+/- ve): neither – ni el uno ni el otro
" comes from jaguarete and "piranha
" comes from pira aña. Other words are: "agouti
" from akuti, "tapir
" from tapira and "açaí" from ïwasa'i. The name of Paraguay is itself a Guaraní word, as is the name of Uruguay
.
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages
Tupian languages
The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...
. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
(along with Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of the rural population is monolingual. It is spoken by communities in neighbouring countries, including parts of northern Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and southwestern Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, and is a second official language of the Argentine province
Provinces of Argentina
Argentina is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city...
of Corrientes
Corrientes Province
Corrientes is a province in northeast Argentina, in the Mesopotamia region. It is surrounded by : Paraguay, the province of Misiones, Brazil, Uruguay, and the provinces of Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Chaco.-History:...
.
Guaraní is the only indigenous language of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This is an anomaly in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
where language shift
Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
towards European colonial languages (in this case, the other official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
of Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
) has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker of mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
s (people of mixed Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
and Amerindian ancestry), and also of culturally assimilated
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
, upwardly-mobile Amerindian people.
Jesuit priest Antonio Ruiz de Montoya
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya was a Jesuit missionary in Paraguay.-Life:Montoya was born at Lima, Peru.Montoya entered the Society of Jesus on 1 November 1606. In the same year he accompanied Father Diego Torres, the first provincial of Paraguay, to this mission.In co-operation with Fathers Cataldino...
, who wrote a book called Tesoro de la lengua guaraní ("The Treasure of the Guaraní Language"), described Guaraní 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 Guaraní. See Guaraní dialects.
History
Guaraní persisted with enough vigor to be made official because the JesuitsSociety of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
elected it as the language to preach Roman Catholicism to the Indians (Guaraní was the language of the autonomous Jesuit Reducciones
Jesuit Reductions
A Jesuit Reduction was a type of settlement for indigenous people in Latin America created by the Jesuit Order during the 17th and 18th centuries. In general, the strategy of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called Indian Reductions , in order to Christianize, tax,...
) and because Paraguay's dictators for a time shut the country's borders and thereby protected the local culture and language.
Writing system
Guaraní became a written language relatively recently. The modern Guaraní alphabet is basically a subset of the Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
(with "J", "K" and "Y" but not "W"), complemented with two diacritics and six digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s. Its orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
is largely phonemic, with letter values mostly similar to those of Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. The tilde
Tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
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
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
when used over a vowel (as in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
): 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
Precomposed character
A precomposed character is a Unicode entity that can be defined as a combination of two or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacritical mark, such as é...
in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, 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's not the final syllable, it's 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
Guaraní only allows syllables consisting of a vowel or a consonant plus a vowel; syllables ending in a consonant or two or more consonants together are not possible. This is represented (C)V(V).- Vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ correspond more or less to the Spanish and IPA equivalents, although sometimes the allophones [ɛ], [ɔ] are used more frequently; y is the common South American vowel ɨ.
| 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.
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Labio- dental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
(Alveolo-) Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Lab. Velar | Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
p | t | k | kʷ ⟨ku⟩ |
ʔ ⟨'⟩ |
||
| Voiceless fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | ɕ ⟨ch⟩ |
x / h ⟨h⟩ |
||||
| Voiced stop Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
mb ~ m ⟨mb⟩ ~ ⟨m⟩ |
nd ~ n ⟨nd⟩ ~ ⟨n⟩ |
ᵈj ~ ɲ ⟨j⟩ ~ ⟨ñ⟩ |
ŋɡ ~ ŋ ⟨ng⟩ |
ŋɡʷ ~ ŋʷ ⟨nɡu⟩ |
||
| Voiced approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
ʋ ~ ʋ̃ ⟨v⟩ |
ɰ ~ ɰ̃ ⟨g⟩ ~ ⟨g̃⟩ |
w ~ w̃ ⟨gu⟩ ~ ⟨g̃u⟩ |
||||
| Flap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:... |
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].
The glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
is only written between vowels, but occurs phonetically before vowel-initial words.
⟨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.
Nasal Harmony
Guaraní 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 affixAffix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es, 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]
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 languageAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
, classified often as polysynthetic. It is a fluid-S type active language and it has been classified as a 6th class language in Milewski's typology
Milewski's typology
Milewski’s typology is a language classification system proposed in the 1960s by the Polish linguist Tadeusz Milewski. In this classification active and tripartite languages were omitted because they were little known at that time....
. It uses subject–verb–object word order usually, but object–verb
OV language
In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, i.e. heads are often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place adpositions as postpositions...
when the subject is not specified.
The language lacks gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
and has no definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
, 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 Guaraní (Guaraniete).
Pronouns
Guaraní distinguishes between inclusive and exclusiveClusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
pronouns of the first person plural.
| first | second | third | |
|---|---|---|---|
| singular | che | nde | ha'e |
| plural | ñande (inclusive), ore (exclusive) |
peẽ | ha'ekuéra/ hikuái (*) |
- Hikuái is a Post-verbal pronoun (oHecha hikuái – they see )
Reflexive pronoun: je: ahecha ("I look"), ajehecha ("I look at myself")
Conjugation
Guaraní 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 and 2nd person singular.The areal conjugation is used to convey that the participant was actively involved, whereas the chendal conjugation is used to convey that the participant is Undergoer. Note that transitive verbs can take either conjugation, intransitive 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.
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.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Negation
Negation is indicated by a circumfixCircumfix
A circumfix is an affix, a morpheme that is placed around another morpheme. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, that are attached at the end; and infixes, inserted in the middle. See also epenthesis...
n(d)(V)-...-(r)i in Guaraní. 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
| 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 | nd-ajajupí-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
Tense and aspect morphemes
- -kuri: marks proximity of the action. Ha'ukuri, "I just ate" (ha'u irregular first person singular form of u, "to eat"). It can also be used after a pronoun, ha che kuri, che po'a, "and about what happened to me, I was lucky"
- -va'ekue: indicates a fact that occurred long ago and asserts that it's really truth. Okañyva'ekue, "he/she went missing a long time ago"
- -ra'e: tells that the speaker was doubtful before but he's sure at the moment he speaks. Nde rejoguara'e peteĩ ta'angambyry pyahu, "so then you bought a new television after all"
- -raka'e: expresses the uncertainty of a perfect-aspect fact. Peẽ peikoraka'e Asunción-pe, "I think you lived in Asunción for a while". Nevertheless nowadays this morpheme has lost some of its meaning, having a correspondence with ra'e and va'ekue
The verb form without suffixes at all is a present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
somewhat aorist
Aorist
Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
: Upe ára resẽ reho mombyry, "that day you got out and you went far"
- -ta: is a futureFuture tenseIn grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
of immediate happening, it's also used as authoritarian imperativeImperative moodThe imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
. 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"
- -va'erã: indicates something not imminent or something that must be done for social or moral reasons, in this case corresponding to the GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
modal verbModal verbA modal verb is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality -- that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation...
sollen. Péa ojejapova'erã, "that must be done" - -ne: indicates something that probably will happen or something the speaker imagines that is happening. It correlates in certain way with the subjunctive of SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. 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 ha'ehína, "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. amba'apóvo, "I'm working (not necessarily now)"
- -pota: indicates proximity immediately before the start of the process. Ajukapota, "I'm near the edge in which I will start 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 remimo'ã, "now we became to know all your thought". These are unstressed suffixes: ta, ma, ne, vo; so the stress goes upon the last syllable of the verb.
Determiners
1 – Demonstratives:(Guarani-English-Spanish)
- a) – with near objects and entities (you see it)
Ko: this – este, esta
Pe: that – ese, esa
Amo: that – 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) – aquellos, as
Akói – Those (plural) – aquellos, as
- c) Other usual demonstratives determiners:
Opa : all – to do, toda,todos, todas (with all entities)
Mayma – all . todos, todas ( with people)
Mbovy – : some, a few, determinated
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
Ni peteĩ (+/- ve): neither – ni el uno ni el otro
Guaraní loans to English
English has adopted a small number of words from Guaraní (or perhaps the related Tupi) via Portuguese, mostly the names of animals. "JaguarJaguar
The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus, and is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar's present range extends from Southern United States and Mexico...
" comes from jaguarete and "piranha
Piranha
A piranha or piraña is a member of family Characidae in order Characiformes, an omnivorous freshwater fish that inhabits South American rivers. In Venezuela, they are called caribes...
" comes from pira aña. Other words are: "agouti
Common agouti
The popular term Agouti designates several rodent species of the genus Dasyprocta that inhabit areas of Middle America, the West Indies, and northern South America. They are related to guinea pigs and look quite similar but have longer legs. The species vary in color from tawny to dark brown with...
" from akuti, "tapir
Tapir
A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...
" from tapira and "açaí" from ïwasa'i. The name of Paraguay is itself a Guaraní word, as is the name of Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
.
See also
- Guaraní languagesGuaraní languagesThe Guaraní languages are a group of half a dozen or so languages in the Tupí–Guaraní language family. The best known language in this family is Guaraní, the national language of Paraguay.The Guaraní languages are:...
- JoparáJoparáJopará The majority of Paraguayans, particularly younger ones, speak some form of jopará.Since 1992, under the Paraguay's Ministry of Education and Culture Act, Guaraní in its "pure form" — different from the day-to-day speech of jopará — has been taught in schools...
- Jesuit ReductionsJesuit ReductionsA Jesuit Reduction was a type of settlement for indigenous people in Latin America created by the Jesuit Order during the 17th and 18th centuries. In general, the strategy of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called Indian Reductions , in order to Christianize, tax,...
- Mbyá GuaraníMbyá GuaraníMbyá Guaraní is a Tupi–Guaraní language spoken 16,050 Brazilians, 3,000 Argentines, and 8,000 Paraguayans. It is 75% lexically similar to Paraguayan Guaraní.Mbyá Guaraní is one of a number of "Guaraní dialects" now generally classified as distinct languages....
- Old Tupi
External links
- Guaraní at WikibooksWikibooksWikibooks is a Wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit....
- Ethnologue.com
- Guarani–English Dictionary: from *Webster's Online Dictionary – The Rosetta Edition
- Guaraní Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary)
- Guarani and the Importance of Maintining Indigenous Culture Through Language
- Guarani Portal from the University of Mainz:
- www.guarani.de: – online dictionary in Spanish, German and Guarani
- www.guaranirenda.com: – about the Guarani language
- Guaraní Possessive Constructions: – by Maura Velázquez
- Stative Verbs and Possessions in Guaraní: – University of KölnKOLNKOLN, digital channel 10, is the CBS affiliate in Lincoln, Nebraska. It operates a satellite station, KGIN, on digital channel 11 in Grand Island. KGIN repeats all KOLN programming, but airs separate commercials...
- http://www.datamex.com.py/guarani/neenga/neejoapy_latineeme.html Frases celebres del Latin traducidas al guarani
- http://albino-guaranikupyty.blogspot.com/ Spanish – Estructura Basica del Guarani and others