From gringo to guarango: language shift in a former anglophone community in Paraguay

Abstract

Around the turn of the 20th century, over 600 English-speaking colonizers settled in rural Paraguay with the aim of establishing a socialist society called New Australia. The project failed, and the settlers either left the colony or gained a foothold locally. Today, their descendants mostly speak Guarani. New Australia is thus the only known case of a sizeable group of colonizers shifting from a European language to an indigenous one. This thesis provides a sociolinguistic study of New Australia and contextualizes it Show more