ABSTRACT

Guaraní belongs to the Tupí-Guaraní group of the Tupian family. It is spoken by well over 4 million people in Paraguay, where it is spoken by the vast majority of the population and has official status along with Spanish. The Paraguayan Guaranís are the descendants of Tupí tribes who migrated to the Paraguay River area in the fifteenth century. Guaraní has been a written language since its use in the Jesuit communities in Paraguay in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The language is also spoken, with some variations, in bordering regions of Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil – though with nothing like the political and sociolinguistic status of the Paraguayan variant.