Guarani alphabet

The Guaraní alphabet ( achegety ) is a largely phonetic alphabet, which is used to write the mainly spoken in Paraguay and neighboring countries Guaraní language.

Letters

The Guaraní alphabet consists of 33 letters:

Their names are:

The six letters " A", " E", " I", " O", " U", " Y" represent vowels represents the variants with tilde are the corresponding nasals. The apostrophe "'" ( Puso called ) is a laryngeal glottal corner shows remaining letters (including " Ñ ", "G " and the digraphs ) are consonants.

The Latin letters B, C and D are used only as part of a digraph, while F, Q, W, X and Z are not used. The letter " L" and the digraph " RR " are normally used only in words borrowed from Spanish, were influenced by the Spanish phonetics, or constitute non- vocal onomatopoeia. The Spanish "LL " digraph is not used in Guaraní.

The letters with tilde "E ", " I", " U", " Y" and " G" are not available in the ISO Latin- 1 fonts. The letter " G " with a tilde is not even included as a pre- letter combination in the Unicode character set. In digital environments in which these glyphs are not available, the tilde ("Y ~" "E ~ " " I ~ ", "U ~", , "G ~" ) is often the main characters recreated or it will be the version circumflex used ( " Ê ", " Î ", " Û ", " Ŷ ", " Ĝ ").

The acute accent "'" as a diacritical mark used to indicate emphasis ( muanduhe ). If no accent is set, the last syllable is stressed. Examples: Syva [ sy'va ] (" forehead " ), áva [' ava ] (" hair " ), tata [ ta'ta ] (" Fire" ), Tai [ taj ] (" pepper ").

History

Until the Spanish conquest of South America in the 15th century, the Guaraní had no writing. The first guaraníschen texts were written by Jesuit missionaries using the Latin alphabet. The priest Antonio Ruiz de Montoya documented the language among other things in his books Tesoro de la lengua guaraní ( a Guaraní -Spanish Dictionary, printed in 1639 ) and Arte y de la lengua bocabvlario guaraní ( a grammar and dictionary compendium, printed in 1722).

The alphabet and spelling, which were used in these early books was inconsistent and differed significantly from the modern alphabet and the modern spelling. In 1867 Mariscal Francisco Solano López continued, the then President of Paraguay, a committee for the regulation of written language. But the committee was not successful.

The font was set by the Guaraní language Congress in Montevideo, at the initiative of Reinaldo Decoud Larrosa in its present form in 1950. This standard was influenced by the notation of the International Phonetic Alphabet and is now used everywhere in Paraguay.

Despite all this, there is still disagreement between literati to view details of this standard. Some experts believe that the digraph " CH " should be changed to " X" and that the letter "G " is replaced with a tilde by a simple "G" and the tilde should be transferred to an adjacent vowel.

The Guarani name for the alphabet, achegety, is a neologism, which was composed of a- che - ge ( the name of the first three letters ) and ty what " grouping ", " ensemble " means formed.