Language

The Republic of Paraguay is a mostly bilingual country, where both Spanish, an Indo-European language, and Guaraní, an indigenous language of the Tupian family, have official status.

Spanish is spoken by about 87 percent of the population, while Guaraní is spoken by more than 90 percent, with about 4,650,000 speakers. 52% of rural Paraguayans are monolingual in Guaraní.

Guaraní is the only indigenous language of the Americas whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This is an anomaly in the Americas where language shift towards European colonial languages (in this case, the other official language of Spanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker of mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry) and also of culturally assimilated, upwardly-mobile Amerindian people.

About 50,000 Paraguayans speak an indigenous language besides Guaraní. Plautdietsch and Standard German are spoken as well. Emok is an extinct language of Paraguay.

Religion

The religious identities of the people of Paraguay, or Religion in Paraguay for short, have since national independence been oriented towards the Christian faith, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church. In the most recent census (2002), Paraguayans of all ages 10 and older had their religious identities enumerated, and 89.6% were classified as Catholics.

This dominant identity was marked, however, by slight declines from previous census enumerations. An increasing minority of the people of Paraguay are identifying themselves as evangelical Christians, members of faith groups that share an identity with other churches of Protestant Christianity.

Self-identification of Paraguayans with no established religion is quite low by worldwide standards, with only 1.14% of respondents enumerated as possessing no religious identity.

After centuries of Christian missionary activity, identification with the traditional indigenous faiths of the Paraguay region is even less, with 0.61% of respondents enumerated as possessing an indigenous religious identity.

As compared with other nations of the Western Hemisphere, immigration to Paraguay has been very low in recent decades and very few Paraguayans identify with the non-Christian faiths founded in the Eastern Hemiphere. For example, in the 2002 enumeration only 0.02% of the Paraguayans counted called themselves Muslims.

According to article 24 of the Paraguayan Constitution of 1992, freedom of religion is recognised and there is no official religion. Relations between the State and the Catholic Church are to be based on independence, co-operation and autonomy. The independence of religious organisations is guaranteed.