A Tupian language and the co-official language of Paraguay — spoken by about 5 million people, unique among major Latin American languages for being used by both Indigenous and mestizo populations.
Where it’s spoken
Guarani (Avañe’ẽ) is co-official with Spanish in Paraguay, where it is spoken by about 90% of the population — the only Latin American country where a single Indigenous language is the majority’s mother tongue. It is also spoken in northern Argentina (Corrientes, Misiones), southern Brazil, and Bolivia. Many Paraguayans are bilingual in a code-switching variety called Jopará.
What it sounds like
Guarani has six oral and six nasal vowels — nasalization is phonemic on every vowel. It has a glottal stop and extensive nasal harmony, where nasalization spreads from a stressed nasal vowel through neighboring syllables. The language is non-tonal but uses pitch for emphasis.
How it’s written
Guarani uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics: tildes on vowels for nasalization (ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ, ỹ), the glottal-stop apostrophe (’), and the nasal letter g̃. The orthography was codified by the Ateneo de Lengua y Cultura Guaraní.
History
Jesuit missionaries documented and standardized Guarani in their 17th-century reductions, producing the first Guarani grammars. Independence-era Paraguay elevated the language; the 1992 constitution made it co-official.
Find more languages by letter
Guarani starts with G and ends with I. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Guarani":