Guaraní, the Other Language of Paraguay — Epoche A2
Before Asunción, I studied Spanish for three years. Nobody told me about the other language. It began at the bus stop on my first morning here in Paraguay. The driver called something down to an old man, the old man laughed and called something back, and I understood nothing — not one word. At dinner, Señora Mirta explained: that was Guaraní. Guaraní was spoken in this land long before Spanish came. In most countries the old American languages are now spoken by small groups. In Paraguay the opposite happened: most of the country speaks Guaraní, and not only indigenous families — people whose grandparents came from Italy or Germany speak it too. It is an official language, next to Spanish. Children study it at school, in its own lessons, with its own exams. Even the money is called the guaraní. And at the table the two languages are not kept apart. A sentence starts in Spanish and finishes in Guaraní, or the other way round. That everyday mix has its own name, jopara, which means "mixture". Yesterday Señora Mirta taught me my first word: mba'éichapa — hello, how are you. So my three years of Spanish were not wrong. They were only half.