Languages of Paraguay

Languages of Paraguay
Official languages Spanish, Guaraní
Main immigrant languages Portuguese
Sign languages Paraguayan Sign Language

The Republic of Paraguay is a mostly bilingual country, where both Spanish, an Indo-European language, and Guaraní, an indigenous language of the Tupian family, have official status.[1]

Spanish and Guaraní

Spanish is spoken by about 87% of the population, while Guaraní is spoken by more than 90%, with about 4,650,000 speakers. 52% of rural Paraguayans are monolingual in Guaraní.[2] 73% of the population is bilingual in both languages, while only 27% is monolingual either in Spanish or in Guaraní.

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.

Other languages

About 50,000 Paraguayans speak an indigenous language besides Guaraní:[3]

Besides Spanish, Guaraní and all other previous languages, Portuguese, Plautdietsch, Standard German and Italian are spoken as well.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Paraguay - Constitution, Article 140 About Languages". International Constitutional Law Project. Retrieved 2007-12-03. (see translator's note)
  2. 1 2 Paraguayan Guaraní, Ethnologue
  3. ↑ Languages of Paraguay, Ethnologue


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