How to pronounce words in Paraguayan Guarani

“…mba’e guasuete,

born.”

susy slim

“… something unexpected,

the spoken word.” (Translated by Susan Smith Nash)

Modern Guarani is an Amerindian language currently spoken in Paraguay and is the only indigenous language in South America recognized as a national language. Surely it is important to remember that Guarani has no relation to Spanish; the other national language of Paraguay. Guaraní and Spanish are then separate languages ​​used in a diglossic society. Spanish, believed to be the only language of less than seven percent of the population, serves as a tall variety that is used officially as the language of government and a means of education.

The origins of Guarani (or I vanished) the current spelling comes from the transcription adopted by the Jesuit priest Montoya in the 17th century. The Guarani alphabet (headache) consists of 20 letters (you). The letter (you)-to dream(taipu) the correspondence is almost always constant. In Guarani all consonants and vowels are pronounced, which means that Guarani does not have silent letters. Therefore we can say then that the alphabet is phonetic to a large extent, that is, spelling and pronunciation are phonetic. But it should be noted that some grammarians and dictionary authors differ on the use of some letters.

In what follows, comparisons with Spanish and English are given, as a guide only, where there is a close enough approximation to the Guaraní sound. Especially the consonants are pronounced like in English.

The vowel system

There are 6 vowel letters used in Guarani. The vowels (pu’ae) are as follows:

TO, my, Yo, Oh, to, there

TO, my, Yo, Oh, to Like in Spanish. These vowels are represented by exactly the same characters in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).

The letter there in the Guarani alphabet it serves as a symbol of a closed, unrounded central vowel sound. Please note that the IPA system uses lower case Yomodified with dash overlay.

In fact, Guarani shows a vowel system with three high vowels (i, y, u) and three low vowels (e, a, o). The following scheme serves as a representation of this 3 x 2 system:

Yo – there – to

my – TO – Oh

These vowels can be pure or nasalized. So all Guarani vowels have nasalized equivalents. The nasalized vowels (pu’ae tigua) are represented with tilde. That is, the tilde marks the nasalization.

To conclude, the Guarani vowels are all short. So don’t make the vowels too long.

The consonant system

There are 14 consonants in Guarani. As noted above, many of them are similar to the English. the consonants (pundi) are as follows:

what, meter, No, No, p, yes, you, gram, h, Yo, r, v, x, ‘

Notice that the apostrophe symbol [ ‘ ] represents a letter indicating a glottic consonant stop. This letter is called pu’y gold push. A “stop” is a sound in which the air in the vocal tract is completely blocked (Ladefoged:2001).

the consonants No, p, yes, youand r sounds like spanish With loanwords from Spanish, Guarani uses Yo and rr.

Pure nasal consonants (pundie tiguaiteare) are: meter, Noand No. In a sense, gram it can also be considered as nasal.

Additionally, Guarani shows prenasalized stops: megabyte, n/a, New Testamentand ng. These four sounds are called “semi-nasal” consonants (pundie tĩjurugua) in Guarani grammar. In general, double or geminate consonants resemble prenasalized segments and sound like rr are called as pundiekoi. Note that in some spellings, the pundiekoi ch replace the letter x.

Words in which prenasalized stops occur are pronounced as follows: pytumby (twilight/to become night) = py/tu/mby.

Consonants that sound like English

The following consonants are generally pronounced as in English:

what, meter, No, p, gram, Yo, r, yes, you, v

Let’s look at some observations in relation to the previous set of sounds:

yes always pronounced as in demanding;

gram it’s always like in back;

r it’s always like in Ray (like the rolling sound used in Italian);

The three voiceless stops what, p and you they are pronounced WITHOUT aspiration (a strong explosion of air at the end of the sound).

“Special” sounds

Finally, let’s examine other sounds:

No : this is a velar nasal stop sound as in Spanish dream (dream);

x : this letter is pronounced as in English sure; some authors use the “ch” (surely this digraph represents a totally different sound to the same Spanish digraph);

‘ (this symbol is called lenis spirit in Latin): indicates a glottalized consonant sound, which is emitted with the glottis closed. This sound is made with air from the mouth, rather than air from the lungs. Glottal stop occurs only between vowels;

h: is a glottal fricative sound.

Bibliography

Gregores, Emma; Suarez, Jorge A. 1967. A description of colloquial Guarani. The Hague: Mouton.

Guasch, Antonio. 1956. The Guarani Language. Grammar and anthology of prose and verse. Asuncion: Casa America.

Ladefoged, Peter. 2001. Vowels and consonants. Introduction to the sounds of languages. Oxford: Blackwell.

O’Connor, J.D. 1973. Phonetics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. 1996. Phonetic Symbols Guide. 2nd edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.