Guarani Alphabet

The official Paraguayan alphabet of Guarani, its achegety, runs 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 and ʼ. Nasal vowels count as letters of their own, so ã follows a and ẽ follows e, and the digraphs ch, mb, nd, ng, nt and rr are single letters even though they are typed with two keys. That is why C, B and D appear in the grid: in native words c is found only in ch, b only in mb and d only in nd. Letters such as f, q, w, x and z are not part of the alphabet; they turn up only in Spanish names and loanwords.

Guarani has six vowels, and the sixth is y. It is a vowel, not a consonant: a high central sound made with the tongue in the middle of the mouth, somewhere between i and u, as in y, water, and yvy, earth. The consonant sound of English "yes" is written with j instead, which in Paraguay sounds between the j of "jam" and the y of "yes". ch sounds like English sh, h is pronounced as in English (unlike the silent Spanish h), r is a single tap as in Spanish pero, and ñ is the "ny" of canyon, as in ñe'ẽ, word or language. The prenasalised mb, nd and ng begin with a short hum through the nose, as in mba'e, thing.

The puso ʼ is the last letter of the alphabet. It stands for a glottal stop, the tiny catch in the throat heard in English "uh-oh", and it separates vowels that would otherwise run together: ka'a is the yerba mate plant 🌿, mba'e means thing and avañe'ẽ, "the people's word", is the Guarani name of the language itself.

Nasal vowels ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ ỹ, g̃ and the acute accent

The tilde ˜ marks a nasal vowel, said with air flowing through the nose: porã (good, beautiful), tetã (country), ñe'ẽ, kuñataĩ (young woman). Guarani nasality spreads through a word, so one marked vowel can make the syllables around it nasal too; that is why a long word often carries only a single tilde. ã and õ also exist in Portuguese and ñ in Spanish, but ẽ, ĩ, ũ and especially ỹ are rare letters that most keyboards do not offer.

g̃ is the nasal partner of g. Unicode has no ready-made letter for it, so it is always written as an ordinary g followed by the combining tilde (U+0303): copy the g and then the combining tilde from the grid, and they join into g̃. The capital is G̃. Some fonts place the tilde slightly off-centre over g, but the text is correct.

Most Guarani words are stressed on the last syllable, which takes no acute accent. A tilde can show a stressed nasal vowel; an acute marks non-final stress on an oral vowel: ára (day, time), Mba'éichapa? (how are you?). That is why the grid has á é í ó ú and ý next to the plain vowels, and they are also needed for the many Spanish words and names Paraguayans mix into everyday Guarani.

Which apostrophe to use for the puso

Three characters are used for the puso. The plain keyboard apostrophe ' (U+0027) is what many people type, and you will often see it in newspapers, websites and chats: mba'e, ka'a. Phones and word processors often turn it into the curly ’ (U+2019), which looks the same in print. Unicode's CLDR lists ʼ (U+02BC, modifier letter apostrophe) as the Guarani letter, and software generally treats it as part of the word, so double-clicking ñeʼẽ usually selects the whole word instead of stopping at the mark.

For messages any of the three is fine. For dictionaries, spreadsheets and search, pick one and use it everywhere, because to a computer mba'e, mba’e and mbaʼe are three different words. All three are in the grid so you can copy the one your text already uses.

How to type Guarani letters: ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ ỹ, g̃ and ₲

On a phone, Gboard offers a Guarani keyboard, and copying from this page works everywhere. Spanish keyboards, the usual ones in Paraguay, have an Ñ key and an accent key for á é í ó ú; ý is typed the same way on most of them.

On Windows with a numeric keypad, hold Alt and type 0227 for ã, 0245 for õ, 0241 for ñ and 0253 for ý (0195 Ã, 0213 Õ, 0209 Ñ, 0221 Ý). ẽ, ĩ, ũ and ỹ have no Alt code because they are outside the old Windows character set; in Word or WordPad type their code and press Alt+X: 1EBD ẽ, 0129 ĩ, 0169 ũ, 1EF9 ỹ (capitals 1EBC, 0128, 0168, 1EF8), and 0303 right after a g for g̃. On a Mac, Option+N and then a, o or n gives ã, õ and ñ; switching the input source to ABC – Extended makes the same Option+N tilde work on e, i, u and y.

In HTML, write ã, õ and ñ, ẽ for ẽ, ĩ for ĩ, ũ for ũ, ỹ for ỹ, g̃ for g̃ and ʼ for ʼ. The currency sign ₲ of the Paraguayan guaraní is U+20B2 (₲); prices are written with a dot between thousands, as in ₲ 50.000.

Where Guarani is spoken

Guarani is the language of Paraguay. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 6 million speakers, nearly all of them in Paraguay, where most of the population speaks it, including many people with no indigenous ancestry; that makes it one of the very few indigenous languages of the Americas spoken by a national majority. It became Paraguay's national language in 1967 and has been official alongside Spanish since the 1992 constitution, and it is taught in Paraguayan schools. Everyday speech often mixes the two languages, a blend Paraguayans call jopara, and that is also how many people text.

Outside Paraguay, CLDR estimates roughly 55,000 speakers in Bolivia, where Guarani communities live in the Chaco of the south-east and Guarani is one of the official languages of the 2009 constitution, and about 22,000 in Argentina, where the province of Corrientes made it an official language in 2004 and it is also heard in Misiones and among Paraguayans in Buenos Aires. These are estimates; the varieties spoken in Bolivia and Argentina differ in places from Paraguayan Guarani. Guarani has been recognized as one of Mercosur's languages since 2006.

Guarani belongs to the Tupi-Guarani family, whose best-known other member is the Old Tupi of colonial Brazil, the source of many Portuguese place names and animal names. Spanish, with its ¡ ¿ and accented vowels, is the language nearly every Guarani speaker also writes; see the Spanish and Portuguese collections for their letters, and the Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina collections for their flags, food and emoji.