Paraguay

Paraguay
Official Languages
It is a bilingual country.  The official languages are Spanish and Guarani.  Guarani speakers include a majority of non-indigenous people and this is the only indigenous language that is that way.  There are 50,000 speakers of American Indian languages.  This does not include Paraguayan Guarani.  Immigrant languages include Greek, Hunsrik, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Ukranian.  The most spoken is Portuguese with 636,000 speakers.  The list of languages for Paraguay is 22.  Out of those 22, there are 20 that are still living languages.  One language is without a mother tongue speakers and one has no known speakers.  Guarani is spoken by 90 percent of the population in Paraguay.  This includes the middle class, Presidential candidates and new arrivals to the country.  Antonio Ruiz de Montoya claimed Guarani as a language “so copious and elegant that it can compete with the most famous (of languages).”

History
Europeans arrived in this area where there were nomadic people living called Cayua or Caingua meaning “Men of the forest,” in the early 16^th century.  The Spaniards founded the center of a Spanish colonial province called Asuncion in 1537.  Paraguay declared its independence in 1811 by overthrowing the Spanish rulers.  The first president after Paraguay gained its independence was Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia. Guarani was the language selected by the Jesuits to preach Catholicism to the Indians.  Since this time, the country has protected the local culture and language.  In 1992, the constitution made Guarani equal to Spanish.  Officials have increased Guarani instruction in primary schools.  This constitution also improved the protection of the fundamental rights in the country. 

Interesting Facts
The population of Paraguay is around 6 million people.  The literacy rate is around 85 percent.  The Guarani alphabet includes letters that have the same value as the Spanish alphabet.  Guarani shows a lot of nasal harmony and high pitch sounds.  Paraguay is the only country in the Americas that most of the population speaks on indigenous language.  That language is Guarani.  This is a source of national pride for Paraguay.  Guarani uses the subject, verb, object order.  This language does not have gender and lacks an article.  There is a Spanish influence seen in Guarani.  For singular things la is used and for plural lo is used.  Books such as Don Quijote and the Book of Mormon recently have been translated into Guarani.  Paraguay today remains one of the poorest and least-developed countries in the region.  Although this is true, last year they had the largest economic expansion.  There are only about 54 out of 12,000 schools that teach Portuguese in Paraguay.  This is interesting because the biggest neighbor is Brazil.  Guarani became a written language recently.  The modern Guarani alphabet is basically a subset of the Latin script.