Talk:Guaraní people

Blatant plagiarism
This page is pulled almost directly from the Catholic Encyclopedia on-line. I'm doing research on the guarani (using actual books instead of religiously charged websites) so I can contribute something a little more accurate later on, but in the meantime, is blatant copy-pasting permitable for a wiki entry?


 * The Catholic Encyclopedia is in the Public domain, so it's ok. (It's not ok to copy & paste copyrighted material into Wikipedia articles.) However, the Catholic Encyclopedia is biased and out of date, so it would be great if you could help contribute to this article. Thanks. --Hottentot 22:09, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Guaranís today
How comes an article on the Guaraní fails to mention the Guaranís today?

Inaccuracies
While I´m not enough of an expert to replace this with more accurate info myself, it is clear that the following isn´t true: "All Paraguayan children are required to learn to speak, read and write in Guarani. Once, the language was looked down upon by the upper and middle classes, but now it is regarded with pride, and serves as a symbol of national distinctiveness." I know plenty of Paraguayans who were not taught to speak, read, or write Guarani. Furthermore, they do not necessarily look on Guarani with pride, as they use the terms "indigena" and "indio" with more than a hint of disdain for the guarani people. Unfortunately, at least certain sections of the Paraguayan population do not identify positively with their Guarani heritage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.184.116.71 (talk) 19:13, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The above information about Paraguayan children is correct. Laws/regulations require that children learn to speak, read and write in (modified/modern) Guarani at school in Paraguay, but few become proficient in it. Lack of interest is mostly due to the language limitations in its original form and complexity in its modified/modern form.

Regarding the Slavery section: QUOTE "The centre and depot of the slave trade was the town of São Paulo. Originally a rendezvous place for Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish pirates" UNQUOTE The quoted statement requires dates for proper assessment but, estimating dhe date by the context, it is inaccurate. Pirates would have prefered anchorages like Sao Sebastiao, Santos and others along the coast instead of Sao Paulo, that is inland, uphill and difficult to reach from the sea, especially before a railroad and good roads were built (19th century). Sao Paulo was the northernmost jesuit mission and eventually became a commodity trade center, including slaves: natives at first and africans later - but probably not under the jesuits. Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife were main trade (including slaves) centers and, for practical and economical reasons, were more active than Sao Paulo, that became more economically relevant later on, when coffee agriculture prevailed in Brazil's economy.Sysfx (talk) 01:27, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm curious as to what is meant by "language limitations in its original form and complexity in its modified/modern form". I am asking, as a linguist, what a language "limitation" is and how the original Guarani is "limited" and why the modified form is "complex". One of the first things you learn in linguistics is that no language is more "simple" or more "complex" than any other. However, if your intention was to quote others, then you can ignore the question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ourdearbenefactor (talk • contribs) 01:48, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Comments
overall, I enjoyed this article. informative on many points, but it reads like a novel; screaming savages, noble warrior priests saving the peaceful converts from the evil invaders. Simply put, good info, but too heavy on the melodrama for an encyclopedia article. That said, I don't know enough to clean it up, so I kind of feel weak just moaning about it. Oh well. Nice job though

A little biased?
I too found this article to be a little biased. While quite informative it uses inaccurate words like "Indians" and subjective word choices like "souls" as opposed to more neutral choices like "lives". It reads like a journal entry by a colonial era missionary, or perhaps a novel, like previously suggested.

I'm really new to wiki type things in general though so I don't feel comfortable making changes, but perhaps someone who is more familiar with such things will come along and see these concerns.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by KrisWood (talk • contribs)

A little Biased? The phrase: "It is estimated that two million Native Americans were slain or enslaved by these Brazilian slave-hunters during 130 years" is biased, as Brazilians weren't the only slave-hunters, being that thousands upon thousands of slaves were coming from Africa to Brazil. There was probably more Amerindian enslavement in the Spanish colonies then in Brazil as the Spanish Empire spanned all throughout the Americas, while Portugal only occupied what was a small section of Brazil, and sections of Africa. Maybe the phrase might seem a little less offensive to us Brazilians if it was rewritten replacing "Brazilian" slave hunters to "Pirates" or "outlaws", as Sao Paulo and Rio were major Pirate locations.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.29.133.232 (talk • contribs)


 * I rephrased a bit the 'problematic' sentence. Please, add a comment on the Edit summary if you leave a message on the talk page regarding your edits. I reverted your edits because I didn't know about your message. Mariano (t/c) 06:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * As a Native American historian I can say that "Indian" is an accepted, and used, term. User:Skooternb —Preceding undated comment added 17:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC).

I think the language related to murdering the Jesuits in the Uruguay seems a bit biased, as well. It's a point of view that has only one side to it. We can't presume that it was murder or that the tribes were "wild" because the ability to study these tribes first hand has long since passed and their motives were probably never considered by the Jesuits, much less the Catholic Church. Lucid green 22:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

--

I found the image of the Guarani family as one which portrays them as homeless. The Guarani are a proud people of forest dwellers who have maintained, and thrived within the forest since before the Spanish invaded their territory in the 16th century. While maintaining their culture they have participated in the world market by supplying products such as timber, oils, and tea. Now that the world has decided to swallow the forest they are marginalizing and destroying this great people. This image is more a condemnation of what the world is doing to these people than it is about the Guarani themselves. If the Guarani have gotten this way it is because of what humankind is doing to them.

Why are they sitting on a park bench, among garbage, with clothes not indigenous to their culture - an emptied liquor bottle caught in frame? Sure, the world needs entrepreneurs, but not at the expense of a people's existence... or are we nothing more than animals on a feeding frenzy ready to consume all who are slated as "get in the way"? If this image represents anything it represents the continued callousness of humankind toward people.

An image which is accurate - one which illustrates the Guarani as the indigenous people, native to the forest, happy to live and grow in a culture, alongside the modern world, but maintaining their autonomy - should be posted.

Bakajoe (talk) 11:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Compare these two pictures and you decide which one represents the real Guarani and what the other one represents:

Bakajoe (talk) 10:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * All of the people in those pictures are Guarani. Blah2 (talk) 23:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Spelling
The article on the language is Guaraní language. Should this article be moved to Guaraní? Gdr 08:36:27, 2005-08-23 (UTC)
 * Acording to the Name Convetion, both should be without the accent, but in practice this is often not true. As long as there's a REDIRECT, I don't really care much. -Mariano 10:49, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Also, shouldn't Guarani be spelled without the accent? According to portuguese spelling rules, oxytones ending with 'i' should not be accentuated. - airstrike 02:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The spelling with an accent is Spanish. Most Guarani speakers live in Spanish-speaking countries.
 * I would still support losing the accent, though, but only because this is the English Wikipedia, and accents are avoided in English. FilipeS (talk) 21:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, as you can see here and here, guarani is spelled without the accent in English. The article should be moved, leaving guaraní, the Spanish spelling, as a redirect. I tried moving it, but unfortunately guarani has a history. An admin could easily fix that, so I'm tagging it with a move request. By the way, people were talking about bias, and one thing that's biased, by omission, is that this is marked only as part of the Brazil portal. The guarani live in various South American countries, not just Brazil. Who is like God? (talk) 13:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Bias
This article requires extensive re-writing to remove author's bias, common statements of "fact" without citation, frequent hyperbole, and extensive use of quotations from similar work in place of original writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.80.14 (talk • contribs) {brought from article by Mariano (t/c) 11:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)}

Cleanup
I'm working on cleaning this article up by sourcing it where appropriate and making an attempt to clean up the bias and hyperbole mentioned previously. There's a lot of good information here but it looks like the article is largely a cut-and-paste from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Working on finding more sources to provide a better balance to the article, too. It's taking some time though, so bear with me if I make mistakes in the process :) Arkyan 18:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I've also noticed the Jesuit Missions section is HUGE, and far larger than the main article. It's going to need a lot of pruning ... Arkyan 18:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Make sure to move/merge important parts to Jesuit Reductions or perhaps Mission (Christian). --Mariano (t/c) 20:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Most of it will go to Jesuit Reductions, at least insofar as there is no overlap. Arkyan 20:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Cleaned up some text vandalism boobs. Why do people persist in putting childish scatalogical references in the text? GoatGuy 14:13, 29 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by GoatGuy (talk • contribs)

Grammar Cleanup
Although I do not currently have the time to help with sourcing... which still seems to need a bit of work, I am currently working through the article to fix the grammar and the many sentences that just dont sound right. --- Halfslice1126 (talk) 03:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 06:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Guaraní → Guarani — Current title is in Spanish; move is noncontroversial but target (redirect) has a history. Who is like God? (talk) 13:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:UE 76.66.203.178 (talk) 05:11, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Given the use of the accented title in the English-language Lancet, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encarta, the New York Times and the Times, the claim that this is only Spanish use and never English use is clearly incorrect. Knepflerle (talk) 12:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is sometimes used with the accent (that is, in Spanish) in English text, but why be opposed to adopting the usage according to the Wikipedia's norms (not some other encyclopedias') and (the more fundamental) dictionaries? See the BBC, the New York Times and CNN for other uses without the Spanish accent. I would move it simply because it's more proper with only English characters and there would be no loss, confusion or controversy in the process. Who is like God? (talk) 11:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "More proper" is pretty subjective. Especially with accented letters, it is quite common in English to omit the accents. That doesn't make it correct, though. As for lack of confusion: that also holds for keeping it where it is, thanks to redirects. — Kusma talk 11:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

--Atemperman (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Knepflerle's research: accent seems to be widely used in English, so we shouldn't mis-spell the name. — Kusma talk 17:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose, also per Knepflerle's research. Moreover, there are two additional problems with Who is like God's argument:
 * 1) He or she is mistaken when writing, "Yes, it is sometimes used with the accent (that is, in Spanish) in English text".  This presumes that English text does not use accents (or other modifications to Latin letters), which is clearly false, consider for example café, résumé, façade, etc.
 * 2) The three sources Who is like God cites also need to be examined for whether they have a policy of simply stripping diacritics generally, in which case their use of Guarani rather than Guaraní simply tells us that they don't include diacritics rather than the spelling that particular word in English is diacriticless.  For instance, the BBC reference also writes Laranjeira Naderu rather than the native spelling Laranjeira Ñanderu, which is rather common in other sources (such as this one).
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Guarani article title
I'm not satisfied with the request being closed, so I'll state my reasons below. I won't however open it again, because I don't like insisting alone. I do think I should provide additional information, in case anyone else thinks about moving the page:

(Quotes in italics are from Atemperman, see above.)

''He or she is mistaken when writing, "Yes, it is sometimes used with the accent (that is, in Spanish) in English text". This presumes that English text does not use accents (or other modifications to Latin letters), which is clearly false, consider for example café, résumé, façade, etc.''


 * What I said is that when that is done, a term in a foreign language is inserted in the English text. You can even insert a foreign language sentence in an English paragraph, or include a whole quoted paragraph or even a series of them. You yourself have mentioned "native spelling" later. This may all sound kind of "semantic" but there's a focus in it that affects editing. If it's native spelling as opposed to English spelling, why is it used as the title for an article in English?

''The three sources Who is like God cites also need to be examined for whether they have a policy of simply stripping diacritics generally, in which case their use of Guarani rather than Guaraní simply tells us that they don't include diacritics rather than the spelling that particular word in English is diacriticless. For instance, the BBC reference also writes Laranjeira Naderu rather than the native spelling Laranjeira Ñanderu, which is rather common in other sources (such as this one).''


 * You'd want to argue that if you were trying to say the spelling guarani only happened due to the pruning of diacritics, which is not demonstrable, as shown by various dictionaries providing guarani. Most established terms that are carry their original foreign spelling also have a plain Anglicized spelling (such as the mentioned cafe, facade and resume) because the unusual characters and marks can produce typeset complications or are simply more unfamiliar to English readers. It is also common to spell words from other languages "as is" to avoid ambiguity, when a proper translation is not known, and texts that are translated from an original language often retain untranslated names for consistency, especially when they include various less familiar foreign names that don't have established translations. The article with a Spanish title you linked to, on the Amnesty International site, is a good example. If you're going to include a bunch of names normally only written in Spanish or Portuguese texts, you're not going to make sui generis translations for them, and will likely leave them as they are. The more common a foreign term, the more it becomes Anglicized. Guarani has become common enough for Merriam-Webster to mention guaraní only as the etymological origin of the term, in its online version.


 * I didn't mean to imply guaraní can't or won't be used in English. Who's to stop anyone? I even linked to the Heritage dictionary, which says "also guaraní" at the bottom. My whole argument, aware that both Spanish and Anglicized forms are in usage online, was to suggest using the latter here simply because it's "more English" and encouraged by the editing guidelines, neither of which is very subjective. I guess I could have been clearer from the onset and perhaps I wasn't because I wasn't really expecting defensive replies. Incidentally, as I type, the Firefox spell-checker is underlining guaraní in red and accepting guarani as a valid word... Who is like God? (talk) 23:38, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your not reopening the RM, and your earnestness in the discussion.


 * W/r/t your first point, sometimes the "native spelling" is the English spelling, such as with words such as café. English has nativized some uses of diacritics.  "Café" is by now an English word; it is not a foreign word, which would require italicization in text.


 * As for the second point, it may be that one day, "Guarani" becomes like "Mexico", which is written with an accent in Spanish but not in English. The M-W evidence you cite is relevant, but it seems, at the moment, to be outweighed by the other sources cited during the RM discussion.  Since Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, we must stick with what is currently the predominant spelling in reliable English-language sources that don't have a blanket policy of removing all diacritics or including all diacritics from the source languages, which is Guaraní.
 * Firefox's spellchecker is unreliable, especially with words with diacritics. It doesn't like my use of "nativized" in the previous paragraph, and it also doesn't like *any* of café, résumé, and façade, even though M-W has café and résumé as main entries (but not façade).  Best, Atemperman (talk) 20:07, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

map
a map would be really good —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.23.154.233 (talk) 08:06, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Number of Guaraní
According to ethnologue, there are almost 5 million speakers of Guaraní, and yet this page's infobox says that there are 257,400 Guaranís. Where did this figure come from? Liam987  talk  18:50, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Traditional range
" The traditional range of the Guaraní people is in present-day Paraguay between the Uruguay River and lower Paraguay River, the Misiones Province of Argentina, southern Brazil once as far as north as Rio de Janeiro, and parts of Uruguay and Bolivia. " Surely this is incomplete? It omits the existence of Guaraní people in more southerly parts of Argentina. The province of Corrientes was traditionally Guaraní, indeed Guaraní is an official language at this day. If my memory serves me it is still spoken in parts of Entre Rios and even Santa Fé. And that's just today: in the past there were Guaraní settlements in Buenos Aires province. In several places Felix Azara (who carefully surveyed the area towards the end of the 18th century) says that the Guaraní settled as far south as the modern town of San Isidro in Buenos Aires province.

Could someone of a scholarly turn of mind improve this? Ttocserp 10:50, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

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Two largely unsourced sections
The sections Language and Legacy are largely unsourced and seem to contain a certain amount of editorial opinion. The first is unnecessary, since there is already a well sourced article Guarani language. The second seems to be based on the opinion that the Guaraní people inhabited countries as far away as Venezuela. Maybe that is true of Tupi speakers but, so far as I know, no reputable scholarly source supports the ethnic theory. Unless reliable sources can be found, these sections should be deleted, and soon.Ttocserp 11:15, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It is now nearly a year later. This is an encyclopedia, not a repository for fringe theories.  If no rational opposition is raised on this talk page, I shall soon delete these sections.Ttocserp
 * And now another four months with no opposition. I intend to remove them by 1 May 2023.Ttocserp 21:45, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I finally removed these in May 2023 as advised. After some time, they were restored, without discussion on the talk page, by a non-autoconfirmed user.  I removed this material again, whereupon it was restored with an edit summary consisting of abuse (including racist abuse) in a mixture of English, Spanish and Guaraní.  A warning has been sent.Ttocserp 21:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

the language vs. a language
Where the article reads (Aug 24, 2023) that it is the official language of certain Spanish-speaking nations, it is obviously meant to read that it is an official language in those nations, not the only official language, especially not to the exclusion of Spanish. As I am not in a position to confirm if it is even an official language in those places, of several official languages, I am not doing an edit to the article. But this is something that someone else may want to look in to and edit accordingly. - Anonymous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.232.73.234 (talk) 18:39, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

12th century source of the name?
The "Name" section refers to the word "Guarinĩ" as attested in 12th century Old Tupi by Jesuit priests, which can't be right since there was no writing before European arrival, and obviously no Jesuit priests. It has a reference to a dictionary which I have no access to, so I can't verify the actual date. UnRwsiaidd (talk) 19:27, 10 February 2024 (UTC)