Talk:Guaraní language

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Contents 1 Guarani Indians 2 Literal Unicode 3 Vowel harmony in Guaraní ? 4 dʒ or ʝ or ɟ? 5 Portuguese spelling 6 The conjugation and negation tables 7 Guaraní as official language: probably in Mercosur, probably not in Bolivia 8 Latin letter G with tilde

[edit] Guarani Indians

And what about the Guarani indians? LtDoc 21:08, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

See Guarani. -- Curps 02:11, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Literal Unicode

Note that e-tilde, i-tilde, u-tilde and y-tilde are part of the Latin extensions for Vietnamese, and are thus fairly widely available in fonts for many operating systems. For this reason these characters were included in this edit. -- Curps 02:11, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vowel harmony in Guaraní ?

Now I see there is some kind of reminiscent vowel harmony.. specially in negated conjugation: nderejapói, ndorojapói, but ndapejapói; so this is just before the "r".

What do you think?

I don't know about harmony, but Guaraní does have forward nasal spreading over vowels (the German version of the article mentions this, but the English one makes a very bad attempt at describing it). Basically, the occurrence of a nasal vowel causes all following vowels in the word to be nasalized. It's apparently a fairly common feature in South American Indian languages.

Perhaps someone should also add a better description of the phonology. Again, the German edition does a decent job of this. Perhaps I should cut-and-paste and translate? pgdudda 03:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Although it seems like it, this isn't related to vowel harmony. These sounds appear to be reminiscents of old forms of the conjugation prefixes, which were probably the same as the Tupi: a- (1ps), ere- (2ps), o- (3p), îa-/ña- (1ppIn), oro- (1ppEx) and pe- (2pp). The a- that appears before the pe- prefix seems to be an epenthetic vowel, there just to avoid a consonantal cluster. For more info about the Old Tupi conjugation, just take a look at this page, by Prof. Eduardo Navarro (in Brazilian Portuguese). But since I don't know much about Guaraní yet, perhaps someone with more knowledge about the subject could explain this better. XVoX 11:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] dʒ or ʝ or ɟ?

--N0thingness 17:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

They're allophones ([ɟ] and [dʒ]), or so is my understanding. Wouldn't be surprised if [ʝ] shows up too though. --Pyry 17:31, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese spelling

According to Portuguese rules on spelling (the same for Portugal and Brazil), words ending with "i" and having the stress on the last syllable have no acute accent ("´"). So, the correct spelling is "Guarani" and not "Guaraní". This rule is violated often, but it is still a rule. Velho 17:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

But the word Guaraní it's took from Spanish here. In which it's necessary tu put the tilde in this case. --N0thingness 01:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The conjugation and negation tables

The tables in the sections Conjugation and Negation don't have much information about the verb forms (different rows are probably for different person/number categories, which should be indicated), so I added tags asking for expert attention. Please edit the tables if you're familiar with Guaraní verb morphology. -Oghmoir 22:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guaraní as official language: probably in Mercosur, probably not in Bolivia

Checking the apparently informed Oficialidad del guaraní part of Guaraní Portal from the University of Mainz, it seems that Guaraní has become an official language of Mercosur, but it is not an official language at Bolivia -though in Bolivia there are intense political developments as to the status of the indigenous populations. But I do not actually speak Spanish (that section's of the portal language) to be 100% sure. Please check the information. --Michkalas 00:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have found something in English about the status of Guarani in Mercosur:

“

Real World Radio (RWR) Guarani to be Declared MERCOSUR’s Official Language 23/11/2006 - News MERCOSUR’s Ministers of Culture approved a request of the Paraguayan government for Guarani language to be declared as the third official language of the regional block, along with Spanish and Portuguese. MERCOSUR’s members are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. The resolution will be presented at the postponed MERCOSUR meeting, which will be held on January 18th and 19th in Brasilia city, Brazil. As was expressed at the ministerial meeting, the initiative aims to “the integration of the region’s traditional communities”. The adoption of the language will require the simultaneous translations of the MERCOSUR’s official documents. Guarani was declared official language in Paraguay in 1992. It is estimated that 7 million people in the region speak this language. Paraguayan organizations have been demanding this for several months, trough a campaign that included thousands of signatures and messages, which were sent to the block’s presidents. Sources: Prensa Indígena

”

[1]

So we have to follow the subject and see what happens.

As to the status of Guarani in Bolivia the only information I found, after a lot of searching, is two interviews of Evo Morales [2] and the vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera [3]. Their position is identical and is related to new costitutional assembly which has begun, on August 6, 2006, writing a new constitution aimed at giving more power to the indigenous majority: "government offices must be able to conduct business in both Spanish and the native language of their region" (Linera). They name "Aymara, Quechua, Guarani, and Bolivia's other Indian groups". But there is nothing more specific as to how this position will be included in the new Costitution. Anyway, this is an ongoing procedure and we do not know the outcome.

In Spanish Wikipedia, where it is also mentioned as an official language, there are poor evidence: a site stating, in fact, that the language is spoken in Bolivia, not that it is official.

So, if there are no opposite opinions or new information, I would remove the part about Guarani being official in Bolivia and wait for the political developments in the country.--Michkalas 15:27, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latin letter G with tilde

Why is the Latin letter G with tilde, used in the Guaraní language, not encoded as a precomposed character in Unicode? --84.61.100.152 12:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)