With Spanish, Guaraní lives: a sociolinguistic analysis of bilingual education in Paraguay

The sociopolitical linguistic landscape in Paraguay is unique, complex, and even contradictory. Unlike many languages indigenous to Latin America, the bulk of which have disappeared since European colonization, the Guaraní language has survived for centuries across various contexts and became an official language of Paraguay in 1992.^a While other indigenous languages in the region have also gained legitimate status, most notably Quechua and Aymara in Peru and Bolivia, their use is largely limited to indigenous populations ([Gynan 2007]). By contrast, Guaraní is spoken by the majority (over 80%) of Paraguayans,^b most of whom are mestizos, with a mixture of European and Amerindian ancestry. Despite Guaraní’s widespread use and official status, Spanish is dominant in official domains such as public administration, schooling, mass media, business, and commerce. In the context of education, although the majority of Paraguayan children, especially in rural areas, speak Guaraní natively, the language of instruction is predominantly Spanish. With Spanish being the dominant language in official domains, it is essential for Paraguayan children to learn Spanish. Yet, without Guaraní in the classroom, it is difficult for Guaraní-speaking children to learn Spanish and other academic content taught in Spanish as well as for the teachers to teach. Indeed, among language experts, it is generally agreed that education should be received in learners’ mother tongues to best enhance overall academic performance as well as second language acquisition ([Benson 2002]; [Brisk 2006]; Bühmann and [Trudell 2008]; [Cummins 2009]; [He 2012]; [Trudell 2012]). Several attempts have been made to implement Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education at the policy level, but these attempts have largely failed—Paraguayans are not bilingually educated yet for a variety of reasons.

Through interviews with 39 Paraguayan adults (16 parents, 16 teachers, 3 intellectuals, and 4 policy makers), this paper examines issues undermining the implementation of Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education in Paraguayan classrooms. With these issues in mind, a context is theorized wherein we might imagine an adequate implementation of Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education. To contextualize interviews, I provide a historical background, explain language ideologies and diglossia, discuss instrumental and integrative values of language, and review previous relevant studies in the following sections preceding my own analysis.

With respect to language spoken at home, Spanish is favored, as it is positioned as instrumental in improving children’s education. Even in Caaguazú, where Guaraní is dominant, half of the participants reported that they talk to their children in Spanish at home, 21.4% reported using Guaraní and the rest reported using both languages. A parent in Caaguazú reported: “At home, Spanish is intentionally spoken in order for my children to learn and think in Spanish and to better understand the information [presented to them]. If children only speak Guaraní, they will struggle to understand educational content because the majority [of the content] is in Spanish.” This comment suggests that Spanish acquisition is crucial to academic and thus social success and is pursued even at the cost of the native language. A teacher in Caaguazú emphasized the significance of Spanish by stating that Spanish is spoken in the office, in the university, and in other countries. “Dominance of Spanish in national and international domains leaves Guaraní fewer possibilities.”

Benitez confessed a dilemma of this diglossic situation. “The value of Spanish in Paraguayan society is indisputable. In language policy, both [Spanish and Guaraní] are important, but socially, Spanish has the advantage.” She regards one of Spanish’s notable advantages is that all written documents are in Spanish. On the other hand, “Guaraní is disadvantaged because it lacks a writing system. This creates a diglossic situation.”^g Martínez also showed a concern about this diglossia: “There is no equity between Spanish and Guaraní, despite the linguistic reality [that Guaraní is demographically dominant].” Rodríguez explained the diglossic phenomena due to the relationship between language and success. “Today, there are Paraguayans who believe that Guaraní hinders Spanish acquisition, but they never argue that Spanish hinders Guaraní acquisition. It is a question of increasing one’s probability of success. That is to say, good use of Spanish is a requisite for finding a job, but that of Guaraní is not.” These statements were made based on individuals’ recognition of the instrumental value of Spanish for its geographic prevalence (i.e., cities and foreign countries) and its use in important domains (e.g., school and work). As Benitez affirmed, the significance of Guaraní as well as Spanish is recognized at the policy level; however, the bilingual language policy has not been put into practice at the operational level arguably because Spanish surpasses Guaraní in instrumental value.

In regards to the school setting, some interviewees’ answers reflected positive views toward the policy change since the officialization of Guaraní. A parent in Central, for example, commented that Guaraní is given more importance now. “When I entered school, speaking Guaraní was prohibited and all the classes were taught in Spanish. Guaraní speakers were discriminated against in urban areas. Now, all the students from 1^st grade to 12^th grade learn Guaraní.” The policy change also appears beneficial with regard to children’s psychosocial well-being. A teacher in Caaguazú reported that students seem more open and more comfortable in the classroom now. “Students are more participatory and more expressive because their native language is used.”

Some interviewees, however, feel that these changes are superficial. Franco, for example, stated, “If foreign scholars come to Paraguay and read the documents about bilingual education, they will think that bilingual education has been accomplished. Yet, in reality, very little or nothing has been done.” She explained one of the reasons why bilingual education has failed. “No one prepared teachers to be bilingual educators. Teachers do not respect the mother tongue of students and they teach in Spanish as they used to do because they find it easier to continue what they have been doing. That is why bilingual education has not yet been implemented, though it has been almost 20 years since the officialization of Guaraní.”

Concerning rural children’s Spanish acquisition, nearly half of the parents and teachers claimed that children in rural areas should learn Spanish at school. A teacher in Central, for example, claimed that Spanish should be taught only in school because Spanish is not spoken at home in rural areas. Many parents and teachers seemed to believe that the language of instruction should be exclusively Spanish in order for rural students to learn the Spanish language effectively. A teacher in Caaguazú said that teachers should teach all classes only in Spanish. Also, some parents and teachers announced that parents should talk to their children in Spanish at home. A teacher in Caaguazú remarked that parents have to talk to their children in Spanish at home as well because it is not enough to learn Spanish only in school.

All the policy makers and intellectuals emphasized the urgent necessity of an adequate teacher training program for teaching Spanish as a second language as a prerequisite for the implementation of truly bilingual education. Benitez, for example, expressed her concern that teachers lack Spanish proficiency. “Teachers have to teach Spanish, but many do not have Spanish competency.” Galeano also stated that one of the serious problems in Paraguayan education is how to teach Spanish. He said that teachers should learn the methods of teaching Spanish as a second language because the language structures and rules of Spanish and Guaraní are very different. According to Galeano, Guaraní-speaking children naturally attempt to apply the logic of Guaraní when they learn and speak Spanish, but they often have difficulty in doing so due to the linguistic differences between Spanish and Guaraní. For example, “I walk” in Guaraní is a guata and “you walk” is re guata. The prefix of the verb conjugates according to the subject. On the other hand, “I walk” in Spanish is camin o and “you walk” is camin as . The suffix of the verb conjugates according to the subject. Galeano expressed these structural differences between Guaraní and Spanish as “a bomb in the head” and warned that without training teachers in second language acquisition, Guaraní-speaking children will not learn Spanish properly, and Guaraní will be blamed for an inadequate Spanish acquisition. Silvelo told me that teacher training and bilingualism are the two interrelated critical issues that have been problematic in Paraguayan education in the last two hundred years, and the government has to deal with this vicious cycle through training bilingual teachers.

As to the issue of pure Guaraní and Jopará, the majority of participants did not express positive views of pure Guaraní. For instance, one participant in Caaguazú claimed that pure Guaraní should not be taught in school because it is not understood. Another said that pure Guaraní is useless because it is not used in daily life. All the policy makers and intellectuals interviewed, except one, held negative impressions of pure Guaraní. For example, Franco explains, “With Spanish, Guaraní lives. Pure Guaraní does not have a future. Jopará must be used for communication, including writing.” Benitez also denied the use of pure Guaraní and suggested the use of Jopará in school. “We have to standardize Guaraní within pedagogical environments, but this does not refer to [language] purity. Pure Guaraní is not useful and is problematic. Children understand Jopará better.” She showed me a Guaraní phrase A suma kua (I know how to add) in a Mathematics book. “Suma” is a loan word from Spanish sumar (add). As observed in this example, Paraguay’s Ministry of Education uses Jopará (Spanish loan words in Guaraní).

Galeano, while recognizing the inevitability of Spanish loan words, criticized the way the Ministry of Education uses distorted and often unnecessary loan words. “In Guaraní, ‘I will go to school’ is Ahata mbo’ehao pe, but the textbook published by the Ministry of Education reads Ahata es k uelape.” He argued that this phrasing is problematic for at least two reasons. One is that they do not use the Guaraní word for school, mbo’ehao, though the word already exists in Guaraní. Unlike loan words, such as the Internet or TV, the word for school is self-explanatory in Guaraní, meaning mbo’e (teaching) hao (box). The other reasons is that when words are borrowed from Spanish, they are often distorted, therefore distorting both languages. For example, the Spanish word for school, es c uela, when borrowed, become es k uela, instead of es c uela. Thus, he is concerned about what he calls “contamination” of the Spanish language as well as the scapegoating of the Guaraní language in children’s improper acquisition of Spanish. When a form of Jopará uses too many Spanish loanwords, it contributes more to the diglossic situation rather than staying relevant to the contemporary way that people use the Guaraní language.

Even more problematic, however, may be the term Jopará itself, which is interpreted and used in different ways. Galeano seemed to regard the term Jopará as the Guaraní invented by the Ministry of Education. He criticized the Ministry of Education for using Guaraní that is not used by people (e.g., the use of the term eskuela instead of mbo’e hao ). On the other hand, Benitez used the terms Jopará and Spanish loan words interchangeably. For Benitez, the term eskuela is Jopará as well as Spanish loan words. The use of terms that are interpreted in different ways complicates the discussion of language issues in Paraguay.^h

This research helps articulate some of the multilayered issues that may affect an adequate implementation of Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education: 1) ideological and attitudinal gaps towards Guaraní and Spanish that may fragment Paraguay’s language policy between the policy level (i.e., policy makers and intellectuals) and the operational level (i.e., parents and teachers); 2) insufficient and inadequate bilingual teacher training; and 3) different interpretations and uses of pure Guaraní and Jopará between policy makers and intellectuals, and the subsequent issue of standardizing Jopará.

Regarding the ideological and attitudinal gaps between the policy level and the operational level, while policy makers and intellectuals support Guaraní as the language of instruction and the Guaraní-Spanish bilingual policy, parents and teachers tend to favor Spanish over Guaraní in part because the instrumental value of Spanish is considered to surpass that of Guaraní. In practice, even after the introduction of Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education, teachers instruct their students in Spanish at school and parents talk to their children at home in Spanish. Thus, despite the official recognition of Guaraní at the policy level, bilingual education has not been adequately implemented at the operational level as Spanish is preferred to Guaraní by parents and teachers due to the instrumental value of Spanish over Guaraní and Spanish remains the dominant language of instruction.

Many parents and teachers, especially in rural areas, are concerned about their children’s and students’ Spanish acquisition. They seem to believe that the use of Guaraní at home or school may impede children’s acquisition of Spanish and may negatively impact their academic performance, despite the general agreement among language experts that education should be received in learners’ mother tongues to best enhance overall academic performance as well as second language acquisition. Bilingual teacher training which includes the study of second language acquisition and other language learning theories will be key for an adequate implementation of Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education in Paraguay. Bilingually trained teachers with knowledge of second language acquisition theories may help reeducate parents through school meetings and community programs about the benefits of learning first in one’s native language before acquiring proficiency in a second language and of the importance of parental roles in proper language development.

Beyond the operational level, an issue that disturbs the policy transmission between policy makers and intellectuals involves the different interpretations and uses of Jopará, which has been little discussed in previous studies. Both policy makers and intellectuals understand the advantage of Jopará or Spanish loan words and agree upon the use of Jopará as the language of instruction while denying the use or even the present day existence of pure Guaraní, but they seem to understand the term Jopará differently, including negative interpretations of the term. Galeano’s criticism of the use of Jopará in the Ministry’s textbook is a prime example. This discrepancy in opinion between policy makers and intellectuals may cause confusion and disrupt its implementation. It is thus encouraged to engage policy makers and intellectuals in policy dialogue so that they can agree upon the standardization of Jopará and a language-of-instruction-policy for an adequate implementation of Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education.

I have just suggested proper training of bilingual teachers as one way to diminish the ideological and attitudinal gaps between the policy and operational levels of education. What else might be done to bridge the gaps and promote an effective language policy and its application? De [Bres (2008]) has explored this question in similar linguistic circumstances. He suggests what he calls “planning for tolerability,” promoting positive attitudes towards minority languages among non-minority/majority language speakers through language policies, initiatives, programs, projects, and campaigns (e.g., bilingual education, television, signs, websites). He examined New Zealand, Wales, and Catalonia. Paraguay’s case has some similarities to each of them: New Zealand in that both Guaraní and Maori are indigenous languages, Wales in that neither Paraguay nor Wales has ethnicity as the central problem of tolerability because both populations are rather “homogeneous,” and Catalonia in that both Catalan and Guaraní are atypical minority languages spoken by the majority of Catalonians and Paraguayans respectively.

In terms of the increase of minority language speakers, the most successful case seems to be Wales. The number of Welsh speakers increased to 20.8 percent in 2001, compared to 18.7 percent in 1991 ([Welsh Language Board 2010]). The Welsh government, along with other stakeholders, has been making efforts to revive their language through promoting Welsh language rights, developing Welsh-media, and increasing the teaching of Welsh in school. Could the Welsh language policy be applied to Paraguay? In order to do so, there are several issues to be considered. First, it is doubtful whether Paraguay possesses the financial and technical resources available in Wales. The quality of Paraguay’s bilingual education, for example, may be lower than that of Wales, and it may not be reasonably possible to simulate the same system in the near future. Second, the populations targeted for enhancing tolerability are different in these two countries. In Wales, the target population for enhancing tolerability is non-Welsh speakers (non-minority language speakers) who account for close to 80% of the Welsh population. In Paraguay, on the other hand, the target population is Guaraní speakers (minority language speakers), who account for over 80% of the Paraguayan population. What would be the implications of these differences? In that the target is the minority language speakers who are demographically dominant, Paraguay’s case is more similar to Catalonia’s. However, have Catalonia’s policy initiatives been successful? The number of Catalan speakers has not increased. Yet, is the increase (or decrease) of the minority language speakers the only indicator to measure the change of language attitudes? Third, the Welsh language policy in promoting positive attitudes towards Welsh seems to have been implemented through enhancing integrative value of Welsh rather than its instrumental value. Could we promote Guaraní-Spanish bilingual education by further enhancing the integrative value of Guaraní that has already been well recognized as a national symbol and identity?

These arguments illustrate the dilemmas of sociolinguists but also showcase our strengths. We must debate both integrative and instrumental values of languages, balance realistic and idealistic measures, and take specific and comprehensive approaches to address the issues of preservation and/or promotion of minority languages. I argue that Guaraní’s instrumental value, while overshadowed by that of Spanish, is in urgent need of revisiting to truly see Paraguay’s potential for human capital through to its realization. However, as in the case of Wales, promotion of a language’s instrumental value is not the only means to an effective bilingual education. Ultimately, it is the ends, more than the means, which I seek to promote and to see achieved in Paraguay.

^aParaguay’s Constitution, approved in 1992, includes Article 77 that stipulates the mandatory official native language education: “The teaching at the beginning of the schooling process will be in the official mother tongue of the student. Students will be taught to acknowledge and to use both official languages of the Republic.” Also included is Article 140 that recognizes both Guaraní and Spanish as the official languages of Paraguay: “Paraguay is a bilingual and multicultural country. The official languages are Spanish and Guaraní. The law will establish the modalities of the use of one and the other” (Republic of [Paraguay 1992]).

^bAccording to the National Population and Housing Census, approximately 60% of the population primarily speaks Guaraní at home (Dirección General de Estadística, Encuestas y [Censos 2002]).

^cThe concept of diglossia was first introduced by [Ferguson (1959]), who defines it as a type of bilingual situation in which two varieties of dialects coexist: the language of high variety (H), which is usually the primary or standard dialect and the language of low variety (L), which is the secondary or non-standard dialect. Ferguson identifies H and L according to the degree of formality: while L is used by communities for ordinary conversation, H is largely learned through formal education. [Fishman (1967]) extended Ferguson’s definition of diglossia to include bilingual and multilingual situations in which H and L are not genetically related. He also introduced the concept of domains, later called the domain analysis, to systematically explain bilingualism with the state of diglossia.

^dThese schools are located in the city of San Lorenzo, about seven miles away from Asunción, and the city of Capiata, 10–15 miles from Asunción. Central is generally Spanish dominant, though it largely depends on the area. These schools were selected because one of my Paraguayan friends is a Guaraní teacher in two of the three schools, and her son goes to the other.

^eThese schools are located in San Joaquín, a rural town, and a neighboring community called Virgen del Carmen. San Joaquín is located approximately 130 miles away from Asunción. There are no direct buses between San Joaquín and Asunción. The town is connected to the capital via two buses per day to Colonel Oviedo, and four buses from the city of Caaguazú, the nearest cities to San Joaquín. The distance between San Joaquín and these cities is about 45 miles. These schools were selected because I lived in Virgen del Carmen and worked in San Joaquín between 2004 and 2007.

^fDuring this period, I worked as community development officer for the Japan International Cooperation Agency and had approximately 70 colleagues in different parts of Paraguay. With the collaboration of my colleagues, I was able to administer questionnaires to 5,452 individuals, and drew data from the following nine of seventeen Paraguayan departments: Central, Caaguazú, San Pedro, Concepcion, Boqueron, Alto Parana, Itapua, Misiones, and Presidente Hayes.

^gAs described in Section 2, Guaraní has had a system of writing since the late 16^th century but has experienced some complications in actual practice. For instance, in major newspapers in Paraguay such as ABC Color, Ultima Hora, Nación, Populár, and Crónica, Guaraní is hardly ever used except in individual names. Populár and Crónica more closely resemble tabloids and use Guaraní most among these five, but the articles are mostly written in Spanish with some common expressions in Guaraní. Rodríguez told me that Crónica used to use more Guaraní before, but the readers complained that Guaraní was more difficult to read than Spanish.

^hIn this paper, “pure Guaraní” is defined as Guaraní that is used in academic contexts only (but not used daily by average citizens), while Jopará is defined as a language based primarily on Guaraní that utilizes a fair amount of Spanish loan words or phrases.