Languages of Bolivia

The languages of Bolivia include Spanish; several dozen indigenous languages, most prominently Aymara, Quechua, Chiquitano, and Guaraní; Bolivian Sign Language (closely related to American Sign Language); and languages of immigrants such as Plautdietsch. Indigenous languages and Spanish are official languages of the state according to the 2009 Constitution. The constitution says that all indigenous languages are official, listing 36 specific languages, of which some are extinct. Spanish and Quechua are spoken primarily in the Andes region, Aymara is mainly spoken in the Altiplano around Lake Titicaca, Chiquitano is spoken in the central part of Santa Cruz, and Guaraní is spoken in the southeast on the border with Paraguay.

Languages of Bolivia
Sign in Okinawa Uno (a colonia in Bolivia),
in Spanish and Okinawan
Official
36 languages
MainSpanish
IndigenousArawakan languages, Pano-Tacanan languages, Quechuan languages, Tupian languages, others
VernacularBolivian Spanish, Portuñol
MinorityStandard German, Plautdietsch
ForeignEnglish
SignedBolivian Sign Language
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List of official languages
The distribution of people who primarily speak Spanish by municipalities in Bolivia
Prevalent indigenous language by municipality. Only languages >20% displayed. Based on 2001 census.

The following languages are listed as official languages in the Constitution of Bolivia.[1]

In 2019, the Bolivian government and the Plurinational Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures (Ipelec) announced plans to extend constitutional recognition to three additional indigenous languages.[2]

Demographics
LanguageNumber of speakersPercent
Quechua2,281,19825.08%
Aymara1,525,32116.77%
Guaraní62,5750.69%
Other native49,4320.54%
All native3,918,52643.09%
Only native960,49110.56%
Native and Spanish2,739,40730.12%
Only Spanish4,082,21944.89%
Spanish6,821,62675.01%
Foreign250,7542.76%
Spanish and foreign4,115,75145.25%

Official status

The Bolivian government and the departmental governments are required to use at least two languages in their operation, one being Spanish, and the other being selected according to the circumstances and the needs of the territory in question. These requirements appear in Article 234 of the 2009 Constitution and the General Law of Linguistic Rights and Policies (Law 269 of August 2, 2012); the law provided a three-year deadline to government functionaries, although there was no immediate punishment for officials who failed to comply.[3] Departmental and municipal autonomous governments are required to use the languages of their territory, always including Spanish.[4]

Following the National Education Reform of 1994, all thirty indigenous languages were introduced alongside Spanish in the country's schools.[5] However, many schools did not implement the reforms, especially urban schools.

Bolivia's national anthem has been translated into six indigenous languages: Aymara, Bésiro-Chiquitano, Guaraní, Guarayu, Quechua, and Mojeño-Trinitario.[6]

Bolivia has 12 million inhabitants. Only 5 languages of Bolivia are spoken by more than 30,000 people: Spanish monolingual (5 million speakers), Kichwa (2.4 million speakers), Aymara (1.5 million), Low German (Plattdeutsch) (100,000 speakers) and Guaraní (33,000 speakers). Of these all are official except Plattdeutsch. There are 8 official languages spoken by between 1,000 and 8,000 people each. So of the 37 languages declared official by the constitution of 2009, 23 are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people and 2 are extinct (puquina and machajuyai-kallawaya).

Languages without official status

Standard German is spoken by 160,000 of whom about 70,000 are Mennonites in Santa Cruz Department. These Mennonites speak Plautdietsch, a German dialect, as everyday language but use Standard German for reading and writing and as formal language e.g. in church.[7] Portuguese is also spoken near Bolivia's border with Brazil and around 0.2% of Bolivia speaks it as their mother tongue.[8]

See also

References
  1. Political Constitution of the State - Article 5
  2. "Three new indigenous languages to be officially added to Bolivian Constitution". ConstitutionNet. Retrieved 2022-01-03.
  3. "Funcionarios deben hablar una lengua originaria desde agosto". Página Siete. 2015-07-29. Retrieved 2018-03-21.
  4. Nueva Constitución Política Del Estado, Aprobada en grande, detalle y revisión. December 2007, article 5.
  5. Hornberger, Nancy. 1997. Language policy, language education, language rights: Indigenous, immigrant, and international perspectives Archived 2012-09-15 at the Wayback Machine. Language in Society 27:443. Retrieved on April 28, 2009.
  6. Cuevas, Aleja (August 9, 2017). "6 de 34 pueblos logran traducir el Himno Nacional - La Razón". La Razón (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2018-03-21. Retrieved 2018-03-21.
  7. Ethnologue: Paraguay
  8. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2021-08-01. Retrieved 2019-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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