- Guaraní alphabet
The Guaraní alphabet ("achegety") is a
phonetic system used to write theGuaraní language , spoken mostly inParaguay and nearby countries. It consists of 33 letters, given here in collating order::
A ,Ã , CH,E ,Ẽ ,G , G̃,H ,I ,Ĩ ,J ,K ,L ,M , MB,N , ND, NG, NT,Ñ ,O ,Õ ,P ,R , RR,S ,T ,U ,Ũ ,V ,Y ,Ỹ , '.Their respective names are:
:"a", "ã", "che", "e", "ẽ", "ge", "g̃e", "he", "i", "ĩ", "je", "le", "me", "mbe", "ne", "nde", "nte", "nge", "nte", "ñe", "o", "õ", "pe", "re", "rre", "se", "te", "ve", "u", "ũ", "y", "ỹ", "puso"
Description
The six letters "A", "E", "I", "O", "U", "Y" denote vowel sounds; the variants with a
tilde arenasal vowel s. The apostrophe " ' " ("puso") represents aglottal stop . All the other letters (including "Ñ", "G̃", and the digraphs) are consonants.The Latin letters
B ,C ,D are used only as parts of digraphs, whileF ,Q ,W ,X ,Z are not used at all. The letter "L" and the digraph "RR" are only used in words borrowed from Spanish, words with influence of Spanish phonology, or non verbalonomatopoeia s. The Spanish "LL" digraph is not used in Guaraní.The tilded versions of "E", "I", "U", "Y", and "G" are not available in ISO Latin-1 fonts, but can be represented in
Unicode (except that tilded "G" is not available as a single precomposed glyph, and must be encoded as a combining tilde plus a plain "G"). In digital environments where those glyphs are not available, the tilde is often postfixed to the base character ("E~", "I~", "U~", "Y~", "G~") or a circumflex is used instead ("Ê", "Î", "Û", "Ŷ", "Ĝ").The
acute accent "´" is used to indicate the stress ("muanduhe"), as in "áva" IPA| [ˈava] ("hair") and "tái" IPA| [tai] ("peppery"). When omitted, the stress falls on the last syllable, as in "syva" IPA| [syˈva] ("forehead") and "tata" IPA| [taˈta] ("fire").History
Up to the Spanish Conquest of the Americas in the
15th century , theGuaraní people didn't have a writing system. The first written texts in Guaraní were produced by Jesuit missionaries, using theLatin alphabet . The priestAntonio Ruíz de Montoya documented the language in his works "Tesoro de la lengua guaraní" (a Guaraní-Spanishdictionary , printed in 1639) and "Arte y bocabvlario de la lengua guaraní" (agrammar compendium and dictionary, printed in 1722) among others.The alphabet and spelling used in those early books were somewhat inconsistent and substantially different from the modern ones. In
1867 , MariscalFrancisco Solano López , president of Paraguay, convened a Script Council to regulate the writing; but the effort was not successful.The script was finally standardized in its present form in
1950 , at the Guaraní Language Congress inMontevideo , by initiative ofReinaldo Decoud Larrosa . The standards was influenced by theInternational Phonetic Alphabet notation, and it is now universally used in Paraguay.Nonetheless, there is still some disagreement between literates on details of the standard. Some feel that the digraph "CH" should be changed to "
X "; and that "G"-tilde should be replaced by plain "G", with the tilde being placed on one of the adjacent vowels.The Guaraní name "achegety" is a
neologism formed from "a-che-ge" (the names of the first three letters) and "ty" meaning "grouping", "ensemble".Toponyms and proper names
There are many
toponym s and some proper names derived from Guaraní inArgentina ,Uruguay ,Paraguay , andBrazil . These are usually written according to the Spanish and Portuguese systems, and their pronunciation has often changed considerably over the centuries, to the point that they may no longer be understood by modern Guaraní speakers.External links
* [http://www.datamex.com.py/guarani/neetekuaa/el_abecedario.html Comparing old and new script]
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