Guarani alphabet
The Guaraní alphabet ( achegety ) is a largely phonetic alphabet used to write the Guaraní language spoken primarily in Paraguay and neighboring countries .
Letters
The Guaraní alphabet consists of 33 letters:
- 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 names are:
- a , ã , che , e , ê , ge , ge , he , i , ĩ , depending , ke , le , me , MBE , ne , walls , length , n th , ne , o , õ , pe , re , rre , se , te , u , ũ , ve , y , ỹ , puso
The six letters "A", "E", "I", "O", "U", "Y" represent vowels . The variants with tilde are the corresponding nasal sounds . The apostrophe "'" ( called puso ) represents a throat- cracking sound . All other letters (including "Ñ", "G̃" and the digraphs ) are consonants .
The Latin letters B , C and D are only used as part of a digraph, while F , Q , W , X and Z are not used at all. The letter "L" and the digraph "RR" are normally used only in words from the Spanish are borrowed from the Spanish phonetics were affected or do not represent vocal onomatopoeia. The Spanish "LL" digraph is not used in Guaraní.
The tilde letters of "E", "I", "U", "Y", and "G" are not available in ISO Latin-1 fonts. The letter "G" with tilde is not even included as a prefabricated letter combination in the Unicode character set. In digital environments where these glyphs are not available, the tilde is often placed after the main letter ("E ~", "I ~", "U ~", "Y ~", "G ~") or becomes the version used with circumflex ("Ê", "Î", "Û", "Ŷ", "Ĝ").
The acute accent "´" as a diacritical mark is used to indicate the accent ( muanduhe ). If there is no accent, the last syllable is stressed. Examples: syva [sy'va] ("forehead"), áva ['ava] ("hair"), tata [ta'ta] ("fire"), tái [taj] ("peppered").
history
Until the Spanish conquest of South America in the 15th century , the Guaraní had no script. The first Guarani texts were written by Jesuit missionaries using the Latin alphabet. The priest Antonio Ruíz de Montoya documented the language in his books Tesoro de la lengua guaraní (a Guaraní-Spanish dictionary, printed in 1639) and Arte y bocabvlario de la lengua guaraní (a grammar compendium and dictionary, printed in 1722).
The alphabet and spelling used in these early books were inconsistent and significantly different from the modern alphabet and spelling. In 1867 , Mariscal Francisco Solano López , then President of Paraguay, set up a committee to regulate the written language. But the committee was unsuccessful.
The font in its current form was determined in 1950 by the Guaraní language congress in Montevideo on the initiative of Reinaldo Decoud Larrosa . This standard was influenced by the notation of the International Phonetic Alphabet and is now used throughout Paraguay.
Despite all this, there is still disagreement among writers about the details of this standard. Some experts suggest that the digraph "CH" should be changed to " X " and that the letter "G" with tilde should be replaced with a simple "G" and the tilde should transition to an adjacent vowel.
The Guaraní name for the alphabet, achegety , is a neologism formed from a-che-ge (the name of the first three letters) and ty , which means "grouping", "ensemble".