Languages of Paraguay

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Languages of Paraguay
Sign in Asunción in Guaraní and Spanish
Official	Spanish, Guaraní
Indigenous	Toba Qom, Angaité, Enlhet, Enxet, Kaskihá, Sanapaná, Toba-Maskoy, Iyo'wujwa Chorote, Maka, Nivaclé, Aché, Ava Guarani, Pai Tavytera, Ayoreo, Chamacoco
Vernacular	Paraguayan Spanish, Andean Spanish, Jopara
Minority	Plautdietsch
Immigrant	Portuguese, German
Foreign	French, English
Signed	Paraguayan Sign Language
Keyboard layout	Spanish Latinamerican QWERTY

The Republic of Paraguay is a mostly bilingual country, as the majority of the population uses Spanish and Guaraní. The Constitution of Paraguay of 1992 declares it as a multicultural and bilingual country, establishing Spanish and Guaraní as official languages.^[1] Spanish, an Indo-European language of the Romance branch, is understood by about 90% of the population as a first or second language. Guaraní, an indigenous language of the Tupian family, is understood by 77%, and its use is regulated by the Academy of the Guaraní Language.^[2][3]

According to Instituto Cervantes' 2020 report "El Español: Una lengua viva", 68.2% of the Paraguayan population (4,946,322 inhabitants) has decent mastery of the Spanish language. The remaining 31.8% (2,306,350 inhabitants) has minimal mastery of the language; the majority of them are Guaraní speakers and speak Spanish as a second language.^[4] Only 7.93% are monolingual in Guaraní and do not understand Spanish, a figure that has gone down in the last thirty years.

The most distinct characteristic of Paraguayan culture is the persistence of Spanish alongside Guaraní, these being the official languages of the nation. The pidgin form of these languages is known as Jopara. For this reason, the country is often cited as one of the few countries in the world that is officially bilingual.^[5] Besides Spanish and Guaraní, there are another 19 languages of indigenous origin that are spoken by about 50,000 indigenous Paraguayans. Portuguese is also spoken by some 650,000 "Brasiguayos", the majority of whom are located near the border with Brazil. Other minority languages are German, Italian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc.

According to data in the National Census of Population and Housing of the year 2012, carried out by the Dirección General de Estadísticas, Encuestas y Censos (today Instituto Nacional de Estadística), the most spoken languages in Paraguayan homes are: 46.3% Spanish and Guaraní (or Jopara), 34% only Guaraní, and 15.3% only Spanish; the rest speak other languages.^[6] The departments with the highest rate of domestic Guaraní speakers, according to EPH 2017, are: San Pedro (78.87%), Caazapá (77.39%), and Concepción (71.34%), while the places that Guaraní is spoken the least include: Asunción (8.95%), Central (15.9%), and Alto Paraná (37.75%). Spanish predominates in these last few departments.

Guaraní is the only indigenous language of the Americas whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This is an anomaly in the Americas where language shift towards European colonial languages (in this case, the other official language of Spanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker of mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry), and also of culturally assimilated, upwardly-mobile Amerindian people.