Now such requests are unnecessary, and monolingual Guaraní media is much more prevalent.
Just a few decades ago, radio DJs and their guests would have had to ask permission before speaking Guaraní. The institute, which has no state funding, has helped change attitudes toward the language, Galeano says. In 1985, he founded the Institute for Guaraní Language and Culture to promote the language. In response, Galeano has spent 34 years fighting for Guaraní to be seen in a positive light, in Paraguay and beyond. He describes it as “the underdog language.” “Guaraní has been stigmatized … since the beginning of contact,” Gynan says. Monolingual Guaraní children still struggle at Spanish-only schools, and Guaraní speakers still find it difficult to access public services in their language. However, Galeano says, such efforts are still not enough. To further promote the use of Guaraní, the government created the Languages Law in 2010, which, among other stipulations, requires that all public officials learn Guaraní and that children start school in their first language, as opposed to forcing all students to speak Spanish. In more recent decades, the Paraguayan government has tried to restore pride in the Indigenous language that is spoken by so many in the country. Once they gained this status, they were safe from harm, as their new family members would not kill them. Instead of fighting, they made contact with the Guaraní people, whose chiefs realized that if they let the Spaniards marry their daughters, they and the conquerors would become tovaja-a Guaraní word meaning brother-in-law. In 1524, Spanish colonists reached the isolated region of South America that is now Paraguay. Unlike hundreds of Indigenous languages that have been wiped out in South America since the period of European colonialism began in the 1500s, Guaraní has survived. Today Paraguayan football players still use this tactic to baffle their opponents. “In no other New World country does the vast majority of the non-Indigenous population in the entire country speak one Indigenous language.”ĭuring the War of the Triple Alliance in the late 19th century, which saw Argentina, the Empire of Brazil, and Uruguay in league against Paraguay, generals of the Paraguayan army sent messages to one another in Guaraní so their enemies would be none the wiser if they were intercepted. Gynan, an emeritus professor at Western Washington University in Washington state. “The situation in Paraguay is unique,” says linguist Shaw N. There is even a Guaraní version of the Paraguayan national anthem. Traditional food and drink, such as an iced maté drink, tereré, and a typical bread called chipa, have retained their Guaraní names. Today it is impossible to visit Paraguay without having to speak Guaraní. For me, that would mean that Guaraní didn’t exist anymore.” “We have to think about what would happen if, in the virtual world, everything happened in Spanish and nothing in Guaraní. “We all live in two worlds: the concrete world and the virtual one,” Galeano says. And that, says anthropologist and Guaraní activist David Galeano Olivera, is a problem, particularly as societies become increasingly digital. Although written works in Guaraní exist from the 17th century forward, today it is primarily considered an oral language. It has also survived centuries of colonialism and repression.īut beyond the streets or rural areas, Guaraní is conspicuously absent. It’s the only Indigenous language in the Americas spoken by a majority of the non-Indigenous population.
In a country of 6.8 million people, that’s a substantial number. The most widely spoken Indigenous language in the country, it is used by more than 5 million Paraguayans. Old women eye up potential buyers of yuyos, traditional medicinal herbs that they assure will cure any ailment, from hangovers to high cholesterol.Īs people shop, gossip, and barter, they speak overwhelmingly in Guaraní.
Shoppers peruse the multicolored array of fruits and vegetables and occasionally pause to chat with the vendors or inquire about a price. On any given day, people throng the busy market in Concepción, Paraguay.
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