Indian tongue thrives in Paraguay

ASUNCION, Paraguay (Reuters) - A ring in the Guarani language translates literally as "a companion of the finger," while an airplane is "a bird with hard wings that flies" and a telephone is "a line that permits one to speak from afar."


Every phrase evokes the beauty of South America's jungles and plains and the ways of the indigenous peoples that populated them. Some say it is a language stuck in time warp, from an era when Guarani women wooed Spanish colonisers with their sing-song tongue.


But Guarani is alive and kicking, changing and evolving. And that is because it is the only Indian language in the Americas designated as an official language.


In 1992, Paraguay reformed its Constitution to make Spanish and Guarani the two official languages of the landlocked nation of 5.6 million mostly mixed race people.


Now there is a new champion for the bilingual cause -- President Nicanor Duarte Frutos, an avid Guarani speaker who is called "tendota" or supreme chief in Guarani. He used it on the campaign trail in last year's election to charm voters, appealing to their love of the "teta" or fatherland.


But this newfound hope for Guarani has also fuelled the debate over the role of an indigenous language in a rapidly modernising Latin America, where English and other foreign languages are making inroads with students anxious to participate in the world.


"Since it was officially recognised, the language has certainly prospered," said Marta Lafuente, Paraguay's vice minister of education.


"But there has also been resistance. Some say the consolidation of Guarani means we will end up just talking among ourselves."


The language survived a 35-year dictatorship under Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, who banned Guarani and reinforced its reputation as the tongue of country bumpkins. Parents would speak Guarani to each other, but scolded their children when they tried to do the same.


Today nearly everyone in Paraguay speaks some Guarani, no matter the social class or education level. It is the dominant language in rural Paraguay, but its also can be heard on most every street corner in the capital, Asuncion.


No indigenous language in the Americas can boast such a broad following. Quechua in Peru or Mayan in Central America and Mexico are rarely spoken by non-Indians, while languages of the Indian tribes in the United States are increasingly limited to the elders.


TO LOVE AND TO SCOLD


Duarte Frutos was education minister in 1994 when Paraguay began its reform to provide bilingual education. Ten years on, educators and linguists express a certain frustration with the results.


They say the debate has centred too much around vocabulary, like what to call objects of the modern age. The so-called purists insist on creating words while the other school is more in favour of "borrowing" words from Spanish.


Television is a case in point. Almost every language in the world has a word that is like television, but in Guarani it is "the object that moves."


"They want to invent Guarani all over again," said linguist and diplomat Ruben Bareiro Saguier, a pioneer of bilingual Paraguay. "We need a Guarani that is useful."


Educators also have to overcome a history of discrimination against Guarani speakers. Many parents in Guarani-speaking homes oppose schooling for their children in their mother tongue and want only Spanish, the language they think will take their offspring out of poverty and illiteracy.


The backers of bilingualism also say Paraguay has yet to put Guarani in all instances of public service, for example on street signs, court rooms or documents. Guarani-speakers need to know they can always have a trial or receive advanced medical care in their first language.


But professionals from the middle and upper classes are increasingly aware of the need to be fluent in Guarani and even foreigners working in Paraguay feel compelled to learn.


"Guarani is the soul or spirit of Paraguay. If we don't understand Guarani, we don't understand Paraguay or its people," said Yoshikazu Furukawa, consul at the Japanese Embassy in Asuncion.


Indeed, Guarani is the basis of Paraguay's rich oral culture and is best suited for romance, relationships, family life and community integration.


"It is a language for loving and for scolding," said Lafuente.


It was love that allowed Guarani to survive after the Spanish conquistadores came to this isolated and distant heart of South America without women from home.


Unlike many mestizos in colonial times, the offspring of the Spanish with the Guarani women earned special rights to hold public office. And for these love children, it was the mother tongue that mattered.