Learning Guarani Online

There don't seem to be a whole lot of good resources online to learn Guarani. Recently a colleague sent me a link to LearnGuarani.com, a site that's under development by Stephen. So far so good. I'm hoping this will develop into a useful resource for beginning Guarani learners.

If you want to learn Guarani not just as a linguistic exercise--that is, if you're interested in actually communicating with mother-tongue Paraguayan Guarani speakers--you need to keep a couple of issues in mind:

First, there's a movement to "purify" Guarani by removing as much Spanish vocabulary from it as possible. There is a sense in this movement that Guarani is somehow weakened, corrupted, or made less beautiful by the inclusion of loanwords. Whether that is true or not is a subject for another posting, but suffice it to say that if you want to use a Guarani that actually communicates, you should focus on "Guarani-Jopara," (mixed Guarani,) or Paraguayan Popular Guarani, which does include a lot of Spanish loanwords. The words that academics have either created to reference new concepts or revived from archaic sources will leave most Paraguayan speakers perplexed and instead of promoting relationship will tend to increase distance between you and your listener.

Second, if you are learning Guarani with a Paraguayan Guarani-speaker as a resource, generally speaking he or she will not be confident about writing in Guarani. Paraguayan children now learn to write in Guarani in school but this wasn't always the case. I do not mean to suggest that Paraguayans are illiterate but most adult Paraguayans feel much more confident reading and writing in Spanish than in Guarani, even if Guarani is their first language. Unless your Guarani resource person has studied Guarani, either he/she will be reluctant to tell you how to spell things in Guarani or he/she will spell it in a way that diverges from the accepted orthography.

For this reason you are likely to come across a number of different spellings for the same word, such as: jaé, jhaé, jha'e, or ha'e, (meaning he/she/it,) only the last of which is written in the currently accepted way. (Just look at any map of Paraguay and you'll see a dozen Guarani place names spelled in an orthography based on Spanish that is diferent from the current official orthography!) This can be confusing to the beginner but it's by no means insurmountable. You have to learn to hear the sounds and transcribe what you hear. With practice you'll do this with little difficulty.

If anyone comes across any good online resources for learning Guarani-Jopara, I'd be happy to know about them.

Foreigners Don't Learn Guarani!

"We were talking with some people who were visiting our neighbor Norma. They kept trying to talk to us in Spanish, and Norma had to tell them, 'They don't understand Spanish. Speak to them in Guarani!' We suddenly realized that Paraguayans are going to expect us to talk to them in Spanish, and we're going to have to convince them to speak Guarani with us."

In fact, I had told my students on several different occasions that it's unusual for outsiders in Paraguay to learn Guarani. But there's a difference, isn't there, from being told something and experiencing it for yourself.

Guarani is uniquely Paraguayan, and Paraguayans identify with it as theirs in a way they don't do with Spanish. But it's also considered a non-prestige language and it's unusual everywhere for people to voluntarily learn a language that's less prestigious when a more prestigious one is available.

Consider, for example, Latinos in the U.S. They are expected to learn English because in the U.S. that is the more prestigious language. It's far less common for an English speaker in the U.S. to accommodate to them by speaking Spanish.

Rural Paraguayans are generally much more comfortable with and competent in Guarani, although they may feel that they ought to speak Spanish. They feel this even more strongly when they're speaking to foreigners, instinctively assuming that the foreigner will expect this.

But Guarani is the language of relationship. "Igústo nendive, porque ikatu roñe'ê nendive guaraníme," said a friend of mine; "I feel good with you, because we can talk to you in Guarani."

By learning Guarani, my students send a strong message to rural Paraguayans: your world, your culture, your identity are important to me. I don't expect you to accommodate to me. I'll make an effort, I'll even look foolish, in order to have a relationship with you in your world, in your context. I'll identify with you so that I can be your friend.

Many here expect that their country, their values will be scorned by outsiders. Some consider themselves to be residents of a backwards country. Their relationship with Guarani reflects that--they think outsiders won't value it and will consider it a primitive language. An outsider who learns Guarani surprises Paraguayans by being interested in ore ñe'ê; our language. Instinctively the Paraguayan feels, "if he's interested in my language, perhaps he's interested in me."

So my students struggle through and feel ignorant some days and perplex people because they don't do what they're expected to. And on the way, they get into their neighbors' hearts, and their neighbors get into theirs.