Chiripá Guarani (Tsiripá, Txiripá), also known as Ava Guarani and ''Nhandéva'' (''Ñandeva''), is a
Guaraní language spoken in
Paraguay,
Brazil, and also
Argentina. Nhandéva is closely connected to
Mbyá Guaraní, as intermarriage between speakers of the two languages is common. Speakers of Nhandéva and Mbyá generally live in mountainous areas of the
Atlantic Forest
The Atlantic Forest ( pt, Mata Atlântica) is a South American forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the northeast to Rio Grande do Sul state in the south and inland as far as Paraguay and th ...
, from eastern
Paraguay through
Misiones Province of
Argentina to the southern Brazilian states of
Paraná,
Santa Catarina, and
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
.
There are approximately 4,900 speakers in Brazil and 7,000 in Paraguay.
Nhandéva is also known as Chiripá. The Spanish spelling, Ñandeva, is used in the Paraguayan Chaco to refer to the local variety of
Eastern Bolivian, a subdialect of Avá.
Phonology
Vowels
* Vowel sounds /ɛ, a, ɨ, ɔ/ may also have realizations of
, ɐ, ɯ, o
The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
Consonants
* Prenasal sounds /ᵐb, ⁿd/ may also be realized as nasal sonorants
, n
The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
in front of nasal vowels.
* /j/ can be heard as
within nasal syllables, and as a prenasal affricate
dʒwhen /j/ precedes nasal syllables in coda position.
* /j/ can be heard as
ʒwithin syllable onset before oral vowels.
* /k, kʷ/ can be heard as
ɡ, ᵑɡʷbetween or after nasal vowels.
* /ts/ can also be heard as
word-medially in free variation.
* /w/ can be heard in free variation between labiodental sounds
or
among speakers of different areas.
* Sonorant sounds /w, ɾ, j/ within nasal syllables are realized as nasalized
̃, ɾ̃, j̃
References
Languages of Paraguay
Languages of Argentina
Guarani languages
{{tupian-lang-stub