Mbyá Guaraní language

"ISO 639:gun" redirects here and is not to be confused with Gun language.

Mbyá Guaraní is a Tupi–Guarani Indigenous language of the southern cone. It is 75% lexically similar to Paraguayan Guarani.^[1]

Mbyá
ayvu, nhandeayvu
Native to	Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay
Ethnicity	Guarani
Native speakers	15,050 (2007–2008)[1]
Language family	Tupian Tupi–Guarani Guarani (I) Guarani Mbyá
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gun
Glottolog	mbya1239
ELP	Mbyá

Mbyá Guaraní is one of a number of "Guarani dialects" now generally classified as distinct languages.^{[citation needed]} Mbyá is closely connected to Ava Guarani, also known as Ñandeva, and intermarriage between speakers of the two languages is common. Speakers of Mbyá and Ñandeva generally live in mountainous areas of the Atlantic Forest, from eastern Paraguay through Misiones Province of Argentina, Uruguay to the southern Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul.^[2]

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ĩ	ɨ ɨ̃	u ũ
Mid	ɛ ɛ̃		o õ
Open	a ã

• Vowel sounds /ɛ, o/ can also be heard as [e, ɔ] in free variation.
• /i, u/ when preceding vowels can be heard as non-syllabic [i̯, u̯]

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
					plain	lab.
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k	kʷ	ʔ
	prenasal/vd.	m ~ ᵐb	n ~ ⁿd	ɲ ~ dʒ	ŋ ~ ᵑɡ	ŋʷ ~ ɡʷ
Nasal
Fricative		β̞ ~ v					h
Approximant				(i̯)	(u̯)
Tap			ɾ

• /β̞/ can also be realized as [v] or [u̯] in free variation.
• Nasal sounds /m, n, ŋ/ can also be heard as prenasalized stops [ᵐb, ⁿd, ᵑɡ] in free variation.
• /ɲ, ŋʷ/ can be heard as [i̯~dʒ, ɡʷ] before oral vowels, and as [ɲ, ŋʷ] before nasal vowels.^[3]