Language of the Week 4: Guaraní

Nov 3, 2025

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Next up, we cross the Atlantic into Paraguay, home to Guaraní, the only nationally institutionally recognised Native American language. Many of its speakers are still monolingual, especially in rural areas, and the language has seen a relatively balanced co-existence with Spanish compared to many of its neighbours.

The basics

The Madeira river. Image: Kmusser (Digital Chart of the World and GTOPO data). CC BY-SA 3.0

Guaraní (Avañe’ẽ) is part of the Tupí-Guaraní branch of the wider Tupian family, a family which once also stretched across much of Brazil, Bolivia, and Uruguay, as well as into Peru and Colombia. Linguist Aryon Rodrigues believed that Proto-Tupian emerged from the Madeira River basin in approximately 3000 BC before spreading further around the Amazon’s catchment and beyond.

Guaraní is a polysynthetic language, meaning that entire concepts can be explained using one or two words. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry gives the example of na-che-mbo-hovái-ri, “he didn’t respond to me”, where the root hovái, “to face, to respond”, is expanded upon by successive affixes to build the full sentence in a single word.

Why is this language interesting?

Guaraní is fascinating to me because it represents the only example of a Native American language being spoken by a higher proportion of the population than its European counterpart. In Paraguay, the languages generally co-operate rather than compete; government, education, news, and entertainment are all at least somewhat available in Guaraní, and Spanish is mainly used as an outward-facing language when dealing with other Latin American countries.

What makes Guaraní truly exceptional is that it is also readily spoken outside of indigenous communities. During the establishment of Spanish colonies in what is now Paraguay, many indigenous people resisted learning Spanish, forcing missionaries and settlers to learn Guaraní, which over time became the lingua franca of the colony.

The making of Paraguay

Before the colonial era, many ethnic groups lived in what is now Paraguay. Indeed, there are still 15 indigenous languages spoken within its borders. Once the Spanish founded Asunción, Guaraní – already a regional lingua franca – became a unifying symbol of a new identity, one forged in opposition and resistance to the colonial forces at the door. The indigenous communities of the colony shaped Paraguay on their own terms, into a country where their language and their culture held presence in daily life.

This did not come without strong influence from colonisers, however. The establishment of a singular Guaraní identity was heavily influenced by the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in the 1600s. What started as an outsider phenomenon of people learning the language to preach Christianity quickly spread into the native population itself. By the end of the 17th century, it is estimated there were over 100,000 indigenous Guaraní living in Jesuit missions, where the language was preserved and uplifted, but also shaped to meet the Church’s needs.

The Jesuits were expelled from the colony in the 1760s, but Guaraní remained as the common language of the colony and the base on which anti-colonial and pro-independence movements were built. When the country became independent in 1811, the first ruler, Fernando de la Mora, was an advocate for Spanish cultural supremacy. He was, however, quickly ousted and replaced with the nation’s first president, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who strongly supported Guaraní as a mark of national identity. During early political conflicts, Guaraní truly became Paraguay’s language, serving as a point of national pride, differentiating it from its neighbours.

It’s not all rosy

Despite the wide adoption of an indigenous language in Paraguay, the lives of indigenous people tell a much different story. Discrimination against native Guaraní remains rife, with their communities receiving limited access to education, housing, and political representation. The poverty rate of native Paraguayans remains concerningly high, especially when compared to that of non-native populations. While the nation lifts up the language, the people who spoke it first are too often ignored.

Despite Guaraní’s status and prevalence (more of the population speaks it than does Spanish), education and governance are still dominated by Spanish, with relatively very little class time and very few resources devoted to teaching in Guaraní. This deepens the divide between non-indigenous people, almost all of whom can understand Spanish, and indigenous people, many of whom cannot. Combined with high drop-out rates in native communities, the result is a stark educational gap, caused by teaching almost entirely in a language that is not the lingua franca. Guaraní is held up in Paraguay as a symbol of the nation, but is too often just a convenient emblem wielded by those in power to deflect criticisms of discrimination.

Mba’e piko oúta ág̃a – what next?

It’s important to see where we stand now: with 90% of the country speaking the language, 48% as their primary language, Guaraní is in an exceptionally strong position. Despite the tonal shift in the previous section, the language still stands leagues above any other indigenous language in the Americas in terms of adoption, status, and security. The continued existence of the language is essentially secured for the near future.

There needs to be a substantial shake-up to the Paraguayan system to ensure the long-term equality of the Guaraní people, and of other native groups in Paraguay that are often completely excluded from the discussion about the country. Five of Paraguay’s native languages are critically endangered, and real efforts need to be made to allow them to persist. Languages go extinct very quickly if ignored (intentionally or otherwise) by those at the top, and once they’re gone, they’re gone, taking entire ways of viewing the world with them.