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Guarani language

Guarani
Paraguayan Guarani
Avañe'ẽ
Pronunciation [ʔãʋ̃ãɲẽˈʔẽ]
Native to Paraguay, Bolivia
Native speakers
8 million (date missing)
4.8 million
Dialects
Guarani alphabet (Latin script)
Official status
Official language in
Paraguay, Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog para1311
Linguasphere 88-AAI-f
Map-Guaraniphone World.svg
Guarani-speaking world
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Guarani (/ˈɡwɑːrən/ or /ɡwærəˈn/), 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 family 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. 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; it is also an official language of Mercosur.

Guarani is one of the most-widely spoken indigenous languages of the Americas and the only one whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This is an interesting 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.


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