Paraguay Culture & Language

Tereré is the centre of Paraguayan social life and the first thing to understand. It is yerba mate drunk cold, with iced water poured over it — often infused with medicinal herbs, pohã ñana, crushed fresh in a mortar — from a guampa, a horn or wooden cup, through a metal bombilla. It is shared: one cup, one straw, passed around a circle by whoever holds the thermos. Everyone carries the kit everywhere, and the afternoon tereré circle happens in offices, on building sites and in plazas. UNESCO recognised the practice in 2020.

There is one rule visitors get wrong. Say gracias only when you have had enough — it means you are leaving the circle, not that you are being polite. Hand the cup straight back without thanks and it keeps coming round.

Guaraní is spoken by most Paraguayans, and most conversations happen in jopara, a fluid mixing of Guaraní and Spanish. Spanish is the language of business and Guaraní is the language of jokes, affection and home.

The food is maize and mandioca. Chipa, a dense cheese bread made with mandioca starch, is sold from baskets everywhere and eaten by the kilo at Easter. Sopa paraguaya is not a soup — it is a moist cornbread with cheese and onion, and the name is the country's favourite joke on outsiders. Add mbejú, chipa guasu, and an asado, with boiled mandioca on the side of everything.

The Paraguayan harp is the national instrument, played without pedals and with a bright, fast style of its own. Polca paraguaya and the slower guarania are the two national song forms.

The crafts are town-specific: ñandutí, a radial lace named for a spider's web, from Itauguá; ao po'i embroidery from Yataity; silver filigree and harps from Luque; ceramics from Areguá.

Paraguay has two official languages, Spanish and Guaraní, and the majority of the population speaks both. In practice most speech is jopara, a natural mixing of the two, and in rural areas Guaraní may be the stronger language by some distance.

English is limited outside Asunción hotels and a few tour operations. Spanish will get you everywhere.

A few words of Guaraní go further here than almost any phrasebook effort anywhere. It is the language of home, and a visitor using it is genuinely unexpected.

Mba'éichapa (how are you — the standard greeting), iporã (good, fine), aguyje (thank you), jajotopáta (see you), ha'upyta-style politeness aside, che means "my" and turns up constantly in nicknames.

Paraguayan Spanish uses vos rather than tú, and is peppered with Guaraní: ndaipóri (there isn't any), ñandutí (spiderweb, and the lace), tereré itself. A great many words that travelled into English — jaguar, tapioca, toucan, piranha — came out of this language family.