The Bilingualism of Paraguay

Bibliographic Data

ID9870509
AuthorsDonald F Fogelquist (corresponding author)
Year1950
Volume33
Issue1
Pages23
Publication date1950-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispania (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2133 • E-ISSN: 2153-6414
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/333483
OpenAlexW2319101544
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Of the nations of the New World, Paraguay is the only one that is bilingual. There are several countries (Bolivia, Mexico, Peru) where more than one language is spoken, countries in which there is an official European language, but in which large segments of the population still retain their indigenous tongue. Yet Spanish has always been the language of the literate classes, and it would be rare to find an educated person well versed in one of the more primitive languages, such as Nahua or Quichua. The case of Paraguay is different. To be sure, Spanish is the official language of the country, but as a part of his racial heritage, every Paraguayan also learns Guarani. The use of Guarani is by no means limited to rural regions or to uneducated classes. In Paraguay, journalists, school teachers, lawyers, doctors, professors, and cabinet ministers all speak Guarani just as fluently as Spanish. Here the rarity would be the person who could not speak the indigenous language. In some educated families parents have been known to prohibit the use of Guarani by their children, presumably because they fear that it will corrupt their Spanish, but this is as futile as trying to keep the children from breathing the same air as other people breathe. Guarani is heard on all sides, and something more powerful than parental authority would be required to keep a child from learning it. It is the popular language of Paraguay, the language that Paraguayans feel is peculiarly their own. The average person prefers it to Spanish, and one may even hear well-educated people assert that Guarani is a more expressive language than Spanish. Paraguayans are wont to tell one that Guarani lends itself particularly well to the expression of tender sentiment and is, therefore, ideal for lovers. They often add that it is equally expressive and useful when a repertory of insults is required. It also appears that the stock of popular jokes in Guarani is much more abundant than it is in Spanish. Four centuries of contact with Spanish have not been sufficient to establish definitely the supremacy of Spanish over Guarani. This would not be strange in a country where there had been little mixing of races, but such is not the case in Paraguay. Here the population is overwhelmingly mestizo. The pure Indians constitute only a small minority of the population, and among these Indians, there are comparatively few survivors of the Guarani tribe. Spanish and Guarani blood fused in the production of a new nationality, the Paraguayan. The fact that Guarani is still the language of the masses is explained in part by the fact that during the long period of Jesuit domination, a systematic study of the Indian tongue was made by the Jesuits (1), so that works might be published in Guarani and used for the instruction and conversion of the natives. It is of some significance to note that the most authoritative grammars of the Guarani language have been written by Jesuit fathers. Of course the use of Guarani as a medium of religious instruction did not result in its universal adoption as a written language, but it probably contributed something toward the maintenance of Guarani as the popular spoken language of Paraguay. Another explanation of its persistence may be found in the structure and quality of the language itself. Had it not been a fairly welldeveloped and flexible language it would

Ethnology · First language · Indigenous · Indigenous language · Linguistics · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Political science · Population · Sociology · Demography · History · Indigenous Studies in Latin America · Psychology

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