Talk:Paraguai

Hooooooo boy does this page need some love. Misterxeight 15:13, 3 May 2017 (PDT)

W/r/t to the spelling of Aragonese *there*--I was rather under the impression that the grafia SLA which is closer to Catalan, medieval Aragonese, Occitan, etc.--even the newly developed standard still has some influence from Castilian Spanish. Juanmartinvelezlinares 14:30, 16 May 2017 (PDT)

I checked the Batavian flag and the Paraguayan flag *there*. Anything that would distinguish them between the two (e.g. tint of blue)?--General tiu 17:50, 16 May 2017 (PDT)

Yeah, that's fair. I assume that if there's nothing about sound changes mentioned on IB Aragonese's page then it's the same as in our world, and according to the orthography of our world, the Aragonese letter "Y" is the same sound as the English "J."

How about we just change the flag? Is QSS so rigid that we can't change something as trivial as a flag? I'm not even in love with the official name of the country to be honest: why would the Guarani Natives revolt and declare their own republic in IB? Everyone there in OTL is mixed.

Misterxeight 19:14, 16 May 2017 (PDT)

Pretty sure there *is* no QSS to speak of w/r/t Paraguay--tabula rasa and all. I figure you could change the flag to something different.

Also, I rather liked the idea of Paraguay as a Native republic. Shame you don't feel the same. Juanmartinvelezlinares 19:59, 16 May 2017 (PDT)

I the racial history dunnit matter to me; I just want more Aragonese speakers and a place to stick weird communes with obscure ethnicities like this (https://www.embassypages.com/missions/embassy19119/), this (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Australia), & this (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenau,_Paraguay) We just need to build a history about how and why the Guaraní took over. Misterxeight 20:08, 16 May 2017 (PDT)

Proposal

Here's the best way that I can think of for this country to be specifically by and for the Guaraní people.

• 1500's-1600's: The Aragonese and Portuguese compete with each other for the area and they use their riverine systems to sail inland to establish forts and both Zaragoza & Lisbon draw up maps showing this huge chunk of inland South America as their own. This will eventually lend itself to more Braziguayos in alt-Paraguay than our world and for the Aragonese spoken here to be more Portuguese-influenced than Castilian or even Catalan influenced. I just want this for fun and because I like both varieties of the Iberian Romance family a lot. The Jesuits and other Catholic orders stop harrassing Orthodox refugees in future Nea Illenicia and flock up north to spread the Good News (that's the Gospel).
• 1600's-1700's-ish: the Jesuit redactions begin to save the natives from both colonial powers. They do roughly what they do OTL but in order to empower the people more and it's best we butterfly away the Jesuit expulsions that undid a lot of their machinations. Perhaps, seeing that their days are potentially numbered, they throw their lot in with Aragon and offer to officially have the Guaraní caciques recognize the king in Zaragoza as their ultimate sovereign above, there's an Aragonese garrison keeping an eye on things in the fort of Asumpción, but otherwise life continues the same for the redactions including a resistance to Hispanicization.
• 1800's: Napoleon disrupts everything in South America just as he did in OTL and the Guaraní stop commemorating the king and instead opt for some kind of confederacy wholly independent from Aragon. In this time of chaos, Aragon doesn't put up a fight and choses to pull out of Asumpción to rush to defend Buen Ayre from the French or English or whoever.
• Post Napoleonic Wars, the caciques start to push back against the power of the Latin Church and run the place with an iron fist. The most pro-western of fhe bunch that do have access to Western notions (perhaps the missions sent the best & brightest to Zaragoza and Rome) plus the many mestizos of Aragonese and Portuguese ancestry that identify with both groups and the smallish population of Aragonese and Portuguese overthrow the cacique system and declare a republic based on Englightenment values that don't go against Catholic social and political teachings. The place need not to be a scary place of dictators perpetually like real Paraguay has been until the end of Stroessner. This would explain why so many immigrant groups came as vaguely-lefty Christian societies later on (I'll explain below). Perhaps there's a second revolution of specifically Guaraní-identifying radical republicans after this, or perhaps the triracial coalition that overthrew the caviques just adopted the name out of respect for the native peoples there.
• Mid-to-late 1800'-GWI: flood of immigrants attracted to the virtually untouched land, alleged abundance of resources, & cheap property prices. I'd rather have more fun shit and less sinister communes than New Australia (founded on the dual tenents of communism and white supremacy) & Nueva Alemania (founded by Nietzsche's sister and also for German supremacy). Iguazú has several Japanese colonies in real life & real world Japan had some Quaker socialists, so I think a couple hundred Japanese Quaker socialists moving to Paraguay to be fruitful and multiply is fun. Likewise, perhaps New World Greeks dissatisfied with now N.E's communist revolution failed moved up north to Paraguay to start a new as well, their numbers perhaps bolstered by some dissatisfied socialists in mainland Greece, the Ottoman Empire, & British-occupied Cyprus. Ukrainian refugees (also Orthodox and pinko) fleeing the SNOR could come over briefly before, during, & after GWII. Arabs were and still are drawn to real life Latin America like iron on a magnet, so I could see them there, as well as economic middlemen. Tons of Germans hopefully too (maybe the Mennonites go straight to Paraguay aftwr leaving Russia instead of stopping over in Canada/the NAL first), and immigrants pulled from all over the Aragonosphere: Aragon-proper, the Baleares, Duesicily, even Carthage for its Muslim community. Hey I can't forget what's probably Australia's only colony. Perhaps the alternate colonists of Nueva Austrália are less into white-supremacy and more of Thoreau type of people.
• Guaraní is a first language to almost all indigenous, mestiço/mestizo, & assimilated Europeans with Aragonese learned to communicate with its neighbors and the rest of the outside world,Portuguese as a distant third language for much the same reason.
• I think doppelgängers in IB is cheesy and kind of annoying, so I'm avoiding parallels for all the country's real life batshit dictators and I avoided the War of the Triple Alliance analogue where freakin' Paraguay lost like 80%-90% of its entire male population.

Misterxeight 15:11, 18 May 2017 (PDT)

Moving Paraguay & Uruguay

I just was looking at Aragonese Wikipedia to see how to phrase "The Republic of Paraguay," and I was pretty surprised to see that in Aragonese, it'd be "A Republica d'o Paraguai, with an "ai," not an "ay." I can't believe no one caught that in like 2005, although I bet back then, Aragonese Wikipedia probably didn't even exist yet. The same would go with Uruguay as Uruaguai. However, in Aragon, the first city named "Good Air," which the capital of Argentina is named after, was "Buen Ayre," not "Bon Aire." So now I don't know what to do. To show off the Aragonese provenance of Paraguay, Uruguay, & Buenos Aires, I want to change them all to "Paraguai," "Uruguai," & "Buen Ayre," but that's not internally consistent. Juan, I know you'll disagree with this action, so before I move page and invalidate all links throughout the wiki, let's talk about it here first. Misterxeight 21:44, 21 May 2017 (PDT)

Disagree? Not really, to be honest. FWIW, the forms for Uruguay, Paraguay and all that in Portuguese, Catalan and Guaraní are Uruguai and Paraguai (the "y" is a different vowel in Guaraní). So yes, I suppose it would be a good idea to move the Paraguay and Uruguay articles, though for the sake of sanity maybe we should include the Spanish spellings as redirects. (After all, editing all those links is going to be a pain in the cul...) The only thing that would really be lost would be the inability for the alternate-universe Simpsons to make a "U R Gay" joke about Riu's little autonomous province. W/r/t Buenos Aires... there isn't actually a page for Buenos Aires (every link is a redlink, because Carlos presumably fell asleep on the job when he was supposed to make that page). Heck, even the links to what would be the Buenos Aires page aren't consistent. I've seen Buenos Aires, Bons Oratges, as a matter of fact Buen Ayre... There is straight up no bloody QSS as to what the dang city's even named. Hell, judging from the disputes about New Illenicia's location, there may not even be a consensus as to whether it's in Riu at all. (And the headaches about everyone else being gone are only half the battle... ...Andrew, Padraic, Jan, when will you all return from the war?) TBH I'm not sure if Bons Oratges fits Catalan *there* (I'm basing IB Catalan off Narbonosc, and since Catalan generally de-affricated Occitan affricates *here* but Narbonosc has no affricates to begin with, it doesn't really make sense for Catalan *there* to have affricates). And technically, Bons Oratges doesn't actually translate to "good air", but rather to "good winds" (the "oratge" is a type of wind). Buenos Aires would probably be the form *there* in modern Aragonese (Buenos Ayres is an old form which may not even be Aragonese at all, but rather instead Castilian Spanish... ...welcome to the world of giving critically endangered non-prestige languages higher status in an alternate universe, please kill me now); that being said, archaic spellings aren't out of the question, and internal consistency isn't really a problem since "Uruguay" and "Paraguay" are technically Guarani loanwords. The corresponding form in Catalan would probably be Bons Aires. If you want to play up the "winds" angle, then you could do "Buenos Vientos" and "Bons Temps/Bons Vents".

On a side note, I was wondering where I could maybe put the (North) Italian immigrants to Paraguay. It seems you're somewhat opposed to sending them to Paraguay, but I don't know--maybe that wasn't your intention. I was kind of wondering if this was sort of your opinion towards North Italian immigrants in other parts of the Aragonosphere. I'm not particularly keen on sending North Italians to the NAL and Louisianne--I want to keep Sicilian Americans the dominant immigrant group in those parts. There was a fairly large immigration of Northern Italians to Brazil, particularly the states that *there* would be in Paraná, Brasil and Uruguay. We could also send them to Peru, Tawantinsuyu, Chile, Mejico or even Nôva Granada. What do you think? Juanmartinvelezlinares 08:53, 22 May 2017 (PDT)

Aw, cheers mate, I'm glad to hear it. You're just about the only one remaining that has any interest in the Hispanosphere. Not even Ronaldo Kyrmse says anything even though he was the mastermind between the different Brazilian republics and Paraguay's, Uruguay's, & Riu's history do affect at the very least the history of Paraná.

Totally on board with the redirect idea. I didn't think of that. It's been quite awhile since I ever really paid attention to the features of posting on a wiki. Ha, I never saw that episode. Ben's a big fan of the Simpsons, I think: he might enjoy that little play on words.

I think we newcomers need to step in here. The Aragonosphere is a mess. I respect the man for coming up with everything, but there's so much more that needs to be done. I looked up what a damn "oratge" was because I forgot the capital got a name & yeah I never realized that "oratge" is a type of wind and not not the word for wind. "Buen Ayre" referred to the clean air because everything was probably shit-stained in the Renaissance on some hilltop in Sardinia, not to its wind. Since there's no canon but a head link and one or two references to "Bon Oratges" on the dictator of RdlA's page, I doubt we'd be violating QSS by changing it to "Buen Ayre" or even just compromising by saying that the official name & the name in Aragonese is "Buen Ayre," but for some reason the Catalan speakers called it "Bons Oratges" as a misconception or something & that's what caught on in the rest of the world, although to be honest I'm a bit bothered by the disconnect between what an "oratge" is in Catalan and what the city was named after. Is the real life region of Buenos Aires even windy? I personally want just change it to Buen Ayre & clarify on the page of either the country or a new article for the city that in Catalan is "Bon Aire" or "Bons Aires" if you personally want to make the Catalan plural & the Aragonese singular just as a unique differentiation between the two languages. Or just to fuck with people's heads around here.

Oh yeah soz mate, I shouldn'tve taken away your edit. I have no opinion. I just thought that as a firm Aragonese colony, it would pull people from the Aragonosphere and it might be easier for southern Italians (and Tunisians later on) to migrate there during colonial times and then with their Aragonese passports later on in the 20th & 21st Century. Riu de's page actually does parse out what different languages of Italy are spoken there which I think is a very nice touch. I'm a firm advocate for the diaspora of Southern Europeans as a son of Greece abroad (or less dramatically, Greek-American, ha) so I'm all for all Italians going everywhere. Now, I have researched Italians in Argentina for an AH challenge on a Facebook group I'm part of (the challenge was that the Camicie-Rosse don't unify Italy and some hardline followers of Garibaldi founding Italy in Argentina instead), and I found out that Argentina's first century of Italian immigration was pulled from the north and then in the early 20th it reversed and the southerners flooded in and subsumed the oldcomer northerners to the point where Arg's unique dialect of Italian is mostly southern-influenced to the point where like "politano" means "paisan"/"countrymen" for them, from the Neapolitan word for Neapolitan, "Nnapulitano." Something like that. I'm totally fine with whatever you want for Italian immigration to the Southern Cone (inc. the new Paraguai). Paraguay, Argentina, & southern Brazil do have a new wave of Muslim Arab (and some Persian believe it or not) in our world, so I figure *there* it'd be a huge influx of Tunisians but I'm like adamant about that. Whatever you think. I consider you more of the Aragonosphere's caretaker than anyone else. Misterxeight 11:49, 22 May 2017 (PDT)

Hey mate! Sorry it's taken me so long to respond, school has more or less clobbered me with a two-by-four to the head and my parents are getting on my case about it, so I haven't had as much free time as of late.

Yeah, I agree, the Aragonosphere is a mess; the redlink to bluelink ratio is something like 6:1, and there is a lót of stuff that still needs to be filled in. As for the name of Buenos Aires, it actually has a quite interesting and convoluted history *here*. The original "Buen Ayre" was indeed a hill in Sardinia which unlike the rest of the island wasn't covered in typhoid and malaria mosquitoes, hence the name, but on the top of the mountain was a statue of the Virgin Mary which supposedly stopped a storm by bringing "fair winds" to sailors. When sailing to the New World after some guy named Christopher Columbus somehow managed not to drown in the vast expanse of ocean between Europe and the Orient, Aragonese sailors would often invoke "La Virgen de Buen Ayre" to give them good winds and ensure they didn't end up getting mired in sargasso and becoming eel food. One such successful expedition landed in the Rio de la Plata decided to name the settlement they started there after the good Virgin. A popular folk etymology states that ol' Petey Mendoza, upon landing in the estuary, exclaimed "Pero que buenos aires!", owing to the fact that the place wasn't covered in typhoid and malaria mosquitoes. I personally just want to go with the Catalan version of "Buenos Aires" (or possibly the singular version to get the vaguely French-ish "Bonaire" for craps and giggles) because "oratges" just seems too weird to me (and also wouldn't fit in with my plan for *there*'s Catalan). I like the idea of the Catalan form being plural and the Aragonese form being singular, that's definitely a fun way to mess with people's heads.

Ah, I didn't know you were fully open to northern Italian immigration to Paraguay! I'm definitely glad you are, though. Yeah, I think we could have both a Sicilian and an Italian community in Paraguay and elsewhere.

Speaking of Garibaldi--what are your plans for him (if any) in IB? I was thinking of maybe dumping him in Bahía since it was the last Luso country to become independent from Portugal, and have him known as Zé Garibaldi, or alternatively we could put him in "O Cono Sur" and have him play a similar role to what he did in the Argentine Federalist-Unionist wars (and perhaps make him among the fathers of the Argentine/U R GayanUruguaian nation). What do you think? I think it could be quite cool if northern Italian nationalists decided to try their luck in good ol' Southern Americanistan and became an important part of the national fabric of all those Iberoamerican nations.

I was wondering of dropping Italians in New Granada because I'm trying to figure out how to increase European immigration to American Castile. *Here* the countries 'round those parts didn't really receive much European immigration outside the Iberian peninsula, except for a pretty respectable amount of Germans and of course the "turcos" from Lebanon, Syria and the like. (Yep, we call the Eastern Catholic Arabs "turcos" back in la madre patría--political correctness isn't exactly a familiar concept in Colombian society.) *There*, though, I don't really think that makes as much sense since those territories are controlled by a European country and, especially in the Central American bit, don't have as quite a tumultuous history. It seems like there were a fair amount of Northern Italians in places like Costa Rica, so maybe we could be sending largish amounts of North Italians, including those who moved to Libya *here* (although I could swear that most Italian migration to Libya was from the South) to New Granada and the Central American Community. If my memory of the Panama Canal Zone serves me correctly, there are actually communities of people of French and Greek (!) communities in those parts (including Colón), so we could get to dropping some people there.

Yeah, Tunisians immigrating to Paraguay sounds good to me. Also, I didn't know that Persians/Iranians were immigrating to South America! Must not have gotten that notification from the official app for all Hispanics. I suppose that means that I could still send Persian immigrants to Alta California, though that would also depend on how crappy the situation in Persia is (no Islamic revolution, but let's be real, the Shah wasn't great either (even if he was a feminist...). Juanmartinvelezlinares 08:09, 26 May 2017 (PDT)

Ha, I understand that completely. I only just graduated last year, so I still remember all the hassle of finals and parents and whatnot. Lot of good stuff here to unpack.

Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph: that's a scary ratio. That means there's so much work to be done. I almost think the first creators either forgot or didn't realize just how influential Aragon really was when they gave it all this land. What with still having 1.5 dominions in the new world (plus another half if you consider N.I. to be Aragonese), another dominion in Italy with Tunisia along for the ride, and two port cities along the Maghreb; it probably has more international clout than even our real world's Spain. If we retroactively add stuff about Aragon proper having a good, solid economy, then it could certainly still be a real power in its own right. Hell, I even got to add Aragonese speakers in the Eastern Med with no one noticing, based on my own experiences with Latin Rite Catholic Greeks in Crete (long story short I stumbled upon the Catholic church of Chania and I just knocked on the rectory door and the priest and I had a good chat until my very nonreligious peers barged into the courtyard to loudly exclaim in English that they wanted to leave and they mortified me).

I bet we could work that backstory in. I never read that when I skimmed B.A.'s section on its etymology, but that's really a fun story. I like it. I wonder if we could parse it out that Aragonese sailors wanted to name it after their town in Sardinia, whereas Catalan sailors wanted to specifically commemorate the divinely-providential winds that blew them off course. That might explain the disconnect between the two tongues. Could be a running joke and a source of a rivalry between Aragonese-speakers and Catalan-speakers in the present day. If you, or you and I, or you and I and someone else ever sit down to sketch out what the city looks like, I'd love to name the city's Catholic cathedral after La Virgen de Buen Ayre as a reference to the Old World and as a nod to the weather that got them there.

Twould be interesting to have a rivalry between southern Italians from Sicily*2 and the northerners. Perhaps instead of one pan-dialect evolving, the communities are separate enough to warrant the creation of two dialects instead: one being a compromise between Neapolitan and Sicilian with probably heavier influences from Aragonese than in the Old World (and maybe some Greek/Costanice influences too from 15th-19th Century Greek coming from the Costanicos), the other being the different dialects of the north of Italy without Tuscan as the template like back home after the Risorgimento and also with heavy Aragonese influences that northern Italy in the Old World would never have. Perhaps in a more native state like Paraguay, there aren't enough of both sides of the divide to warrant them keeping to themselves, but in Riu, a place flooded with Italians in this world and the world of IB, there might be healthy enough communities to keep any and all forms of Italian alive. I'm sure what's her name the dictator either tried or is still actively trying to put a stop to that with a "citizen, speak Aragonese [or Catalan]!" campaign. Dictators don't seem to like linguistic diversity much.

I think that's a great idea for Garibaldi and his crew and a good way of doing the good kind of doppelgangers that Marc outlined on Facebook. Technically, Ronaldo Kyrmse still has dominion over the Brazils, so I'm sure you'd have to ask his permission as a formality, but as far as I've seen, he's never once commented on the Facebook group despite being a frequent peruser of it, so I doubt he'd say "no no, this is my territory, leave it alone!" The Old Guard really strikes me as wanting to stay retired. I'm all for it. I like putting pockets of European speakers everywhere without destroying the native peoples' cultures and livelihoods, so more Italian settlements all over Parana and perhaps Brasil as well is alright in my book.

Ha you know I think you'll have your work cut out for you. I'm a pretty big cynic in real life so my dream is to run away from the world at large and found a town for Greeks that are normal or at least equally as jaded (I feel let down by my people in the old country and I don't feel like I fit in very much in my native country of the US, either). I was inspired for this crackpot dream that'll probably never be when a friend showed me this town in Venezuela: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Tovar (by the way: do you know why Venezola broke off from Castilian Colombia but the rest of the country stayed together? I haven't read the articles for either country in many, many years). Perhaps it might be of some inspiration to you as well. I have a friend who's a Dominican Studies major at CUNY and he told me that Spain was never really that big on letting non-Castilians into the colonies: even Aragonese people were banned for the first few centuries because they were technically citizens of their own crown in union with Castile. I myself can't figure out how to get Castile to lighten up on that unspoken prohibition, but I can ask around for you. Best I can think of is the crown wants some extra dough and lets colonization schemes take off where foreign investors and adventurers make a plea to the crown and agree to take on Castilian citizenship for themselves and their colonists. Perhaps you could adopt Venezola as well and get actual Venetian-speaking settlements there as well just like our world has in southern Brazil. Castile never owned the Netherlands (I guess in IB, it was the Aragonese to get a Hapsburg on the throne and they were the ones to own the Netherlands), so they never really seemed to have more continental subjects that they could integrate into their own crown. Perhaps this also could give you some inspiration: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_Italian_colonization_of_America

Ha, I had to read a book El coronel no tiene quien le escriba for my intro to anthropology class in college, which features a couple that owns a general store that speaks half in Arabic and half in Castilian and I think it was either my professor to explain they were called "turcos" because they immigrated to the New World on Ottoman passports, although it might've been my friend, the Dominican Studies major, to explain that to me, because he loves talking about immigration to LatAm and I love listening. Actually, come to think of it, this might be right up your alley. IB is huge on Catholicism, but I purposely shrunk the number of adherents of the Melkite Church in the Levant. In our world, they're small in Syria, almost neck and neck with the E. Orthodox in Lebanon (8% us, 5% them), and they outnumber Orthodox Christians in Israel. In my stats I reversed that: making them nonexistent in Judea, tiny in Lebanon to the point where they might even have gotten absorbed into Latin Rite Catholicism, and a the lion's share of Catholics in Syria. In case anyone called me out on vastly shrinking Catholicism's influence in the Arab world (which I defend because the Uniates had their own apartheid-esque state in Antioch for awhile so when the Ottomans armed native Jews, Druze, and Orthodox, who else are they all gonna be gunnin' for? Catholics.), I would compromise with my hypothetical opponent by saying "okay okay, we can make E. Catholics a tiny entity in the Old World and bump up their numbers in the New." Perhaps a lot of Melkites fled to a sympathetic Castile who sent them on to the New World in drives even before Catholic Arabs (and much smaller numbers of E. and Oriental Orthodox and now Muslims) started migrating en-masse in real life. I was shocked, like absolutely shocked to read a Time Magazine article about the newest wave of Arabs moving to LatAm is Muslim. One interviewee was from Western Sahara of all places, which I didn't even think was large enough to have a diaspora. It barely has half a million people in the present day. Perhaps Castilian Western Saharans also moved to the Spain Main in the 1900's. Roma forced migrations to your native land's fake-life parallel is also another option to consider. No European power has ever been nice to the Roma: perhaps some malcontent king takes out his frustration on them and moves as many Andalusian Roma people that he can round up and just ships them all to Barranquilla one day in the 1850's or 1870's or something. To continue the trend of Muslim migration to Latin America, Ciudad del Este has so many Shia Arabs that it has a Hezbollah base there now. Likewise, there are something like 50k Iranians in Venezuela, which is a lot more than I would've ever imagined. Of course, with Persia being literally unrecognizable to our world's Iran, I'm sure there's a diaspora and I'm sure Colombia could take them in. I have some vague ideas for Iran but that's way down in the queue. Either way, you and I have our work cut out for us. I'm fine with taking a break from the Eastern Med. It's a headache, to be sure, whereas the Aragonosphere and the Brazils and basically all of LatAm is a tabula rasa. The latter I find more fun, the former can sometimes be too much of a challenge and it almost takes the fun away sometimes. Plus, I finally found some acceptable borders for Nea Illenicia I want to share with the Facebook group and I'd really want to see them liberated this year. Their communist economy has probably been wrecked by the militantly conservative whatshername in power, and I bet that the Catholics shipped in haven't been too nice to the local Greeks. I even had this idea of her conspiring with the Catholic Church in Riu de l'Argent to found an E. Catholic eparchy to pacify the local, pissed-off Orthodox, only for the new Eastern Catholic church to be made up of Aragonese transfers from Latin rITE Catholicism to the Byzantine Rite and maybe some Orthodox spouses that attend this Church with the Latin signficant-others. That would just be as a bit of a middle finger to the establishment and only really funny to me. I doubt anyone else would say "ha, humorous!" Misterxeight 15:15, 26 May 2017 (PDT)

Whoo, I'm finally back with something even vaguely resembling free time and the stamina to write something longish. Sorry I've been gone so long, last weeks of school are hell on earth and to make matters worse I decided in my infinite wisdom to take an online class. RIP my summer.

Yeah, no kidding. With Carlos at least partially back on board for the time being, maybe things will change, but still, there ain't no guarantees. Not that I'm not up to it, though. Most of those links don't seem like a terribly hard task to IBify, and I already do have a few ideas or two or three thousand up my sleeve. Whenever it's a slow day in class, I always start thinking about stuff that isn't my schoolwork.

I dunno if I'd consider N.I. to be Aragonese--it seems to be its own state independent from the Aragonese league, at least up until La Gran Puta Rios invaded and sent everything to hell. But yeah, I get what you're saying. (Though, in all fairness, I don't think Melilla and Oran are exactly Alpha+ global cities, but nevertheless.) And Aragon proper definitely has a strong economy. The Catalan countries are traditionally one of the most heavily industrial in Spain, IIRC (though I think the Basque Country still beats them out by a bit), plus Aragon never had to go through Francoism (well, I guess Tascónism *there*) or all those pesky revolutions, so its development is more uninterrupted than Castile's or Italy's or even France's. Plus high-tech industry in Europe *here* is increasingly carving a space out for itself on Spain's eastern coast (or at least was before austerity and the financial crisis...), and with Hispano-Helvetica *there* never having been clobbered by the Civil War, Aragon probably has a decently long-lasting aerospace industry. So yeah, definitely Aragon is an economic power, if not on the scale of France, then at least on the scale of Northern Italy. Time for us to get crackin'!

I think your idea for the origin of Buenos Aires' name *there* sounds great! Definitely no complaints with that idea.

Even *here*, IIRC, though the Neapolitan dialect dominates in South America, there are still plenty of other Italian dialects that have done pretty alright in South America--Genoese has a decent presence in the La Boca area of Buenos Aires, the local argot of Italian-influenced Argentine Spanish is known as Lunfardo after the Lombards, and one of the most spoken Italian dialects in Brazil is actually of Venetian origin. (The single largest group of Italians to try and stake it out in Brazil were the Venetians--one wonders why there aren't more canals in Brazil.) So yeah, there could totally be a bunch of competing dialects and koinés throughout South America, especially in the LUA, Riu, etc. And yeah, Rios probably isn't too happy about the continued existence of all those dialects--it wouldn't surprise me if she would be pushing linguistic assimilation. She's probably epically failing at it, though--I just think it's hard to get linguistic communities to assimilate in states where multiple languages are co-official and there aren't necessarily hard linguistic boundaries. (e.g. the NAL, Riu, etc.)

Alright, I'll get right to work on South American Garibaldi ASAP! Although, I think he and his valiant soldiers would have ended up in the north, since that was the last part to successfully secede from the mother country... Alternatively, we could just push his birthdate back or give him a role in an Argentine civil war, but I dunno if the Federalist-Unitarian war happened *there*. Options aren't exactly lacking when you're working with more blank space.

I like your idea of a Greek colony in New Granada akin to Colonia Továr a lot--mind if I use it for what I have planned with the place? Also, from what I understand, the Bolivarian Revolution both *there* and *here* started in Venezuela--at least at first, there wasn't too much of an incentive for New Granadians to split off from the motherland. *There*, possibly having something to do with Camacho being the minister in the viceroyalties, New Granada remained loyalist and never seceded from the motherland. So, even while the rest of South America was splitting off left and right, New Granada managed to hang on 'till the better end. Might have had something to do with the fact that the centre of colonial administration was over there too. As for Castile not letting citizens of other crowns into its colonies, I think they did let people from other countries live and work in the colonies, but these were mostly administrators, soldiers--in essence, people who worked for the Crown. Obviously that's not going to be a lot of people, so for at least the first few centuries or so most--if not all--the settlement in the Americas is going to have to be accomplished with Castilian settlers. Doesn't help that A: Aragon isn't a part of the Spanish crown *there* and B: the Basque Country is part of France. I unfortunately can't think of any way to get more colonists in before the 19th century, but I have a good idea of how to get in some settlers around the time of all the Wars of Independence, which I'll post to your talk page as soon as I can. I'll also look at immigration to Spain *here* before the 20th century to see if immigration laws got relaxed in time for European settlement. And yeah, definitely ask around. Thanks so much for offering; it would really help a bunch!!

Funny you should mention the attempted Italian colony in the Americas, I was actually looking that up when I was researching Zé and his redshirts. I think I might move it south a bit into the area of... Equador, I think?... and make the colonisation efforts successful even if ties to the mother country break up. One issue though might be what the Portuguese would do to the colony, but perhaps they let the Italians stay. The language I imagine would probably be an archaic variety of Tuscan, which funnily enough would probably make it pretty close to modern-day Italian. (Which is more or less Florentine Tuscan as it was spoken by some guy who went to Hell named Dante.) Of course, though, it wouldn't be exactly the same, but also include Portuguese, Native, Castilian influences, etc. I imagine that the population would be fairly mixed due to intermarriage with the natives--it could be pretty funny to imagine a modern-day Italian tourist coming to the northern LUA and finding mestizos speaking what sounds like perfect Italian! (Of course, once one were to get more in-depth with the vocabulary, one would probably realise that it really isn't that perfect Italian, but nevertheless.)

Hmm. I really like your idea about the Melkite Catholics. I definitely think I'll get the Castilian crown to invite at the very least the bulk of Lebanese Melkites to New Granada and the CAC. W/r/t the Melkites in Judea, though, I'm not sure if that might just be explained away by "would-be Melkites are Judean Jews *there*". I'll have to ask M. Belsky (if he responds...) about the number of Arabs in the Holy Land, but if he says it's close to the Arab demographics of *here* then I'd definitely resettle Judean Melkites in NG as well. As for the Syrian Melkites, did you make them much bigger than *here*? Or did you just decrease the number of other Catholics? If you decreased the number of other Catholics, then that's another group I could cram into American Castile. (Or alternatively just settle them throughout Iberian America, so as to not leave Castile overloaded with Arabs to the detriment of the other lands.)

I know that there have been Muslim Arabs for a while in Latin America and they're still coming, but I didn't know they were still immigrating in such large amounts! I thought immigration declined when the US turned Hispanic America into a capitalist-fascist shithole. (Thanks, Tricky Dick...) W/r/t the Western Sahara, I think that *there* it was part of Royalist Castile, so links would definitely be retained throughout the Republican and Falangist period. I say let's go for it! And funny you should mention the Roma: even *here* there are a bunch of Roma in Latin America, and I think some of them have even maintained their nomadic lifestyle. It's entirely possible that Castile, wanting some way to get them off their oh-so-pristine mainland, deports a bunch of them to the Caribbean Coast (not all of them, though--still gotta have Roma in Andalucia).

As for the Iranians... ...Hoo boy, that's a tricky one. The problem is that *here* Iranian immigration was only really jumpstarted by Iranians escaping the Islamic Revolution, although there was some immigration before that, mostly of educated professionals who got scholarships to American universities. Another problem is that one big reason that Iranians *here* were drawn to California was because of similar climate and lifestyle between the LA area and the Shah's Iran. *There*, though, Montrei has draconian immigration laws since a certain period of time, and Alta California doesn't exactly seem like the nicest place to live, what with the unruliness of Deseret and the perpetual border conflict with Texas--that would be like Iranians moving from Iran to Pakistan. (Although...) Granted, there are some areas that make our job easier, such as the fact that the Iran-Iraq War still happened *there*, which means a bunch of Iranians almost certainly left Iran to escape the draft and that Hussayn went after the Persians just as hard as he did *here*. Probably we could settle Persian asylum seekers in Montrei, and maybe also the more professionally skilled draft-dodgers as well. I would definitely settle Persians in American Castile (as long as the number of immigrants allows for it), but the problem is if my memory of Colombia serves me correctly we have like two places where the climate even vaguely resembles that of most of Iran, and one is a dinky backwater peninsula way up in the far north mostly populated by natives and the other is a somewhat sparsely populated altiplano. There are some areas of cloud forest in Iran, which is pretty much the single most common biome in Colombia (or at least the one where most people live), but I dunno how populated those parts are. Alternatively, we could do the el cheapo option and settle Persian immigrants in either mainland Castile or in Aragon. Pretty similar climates, they're both pretty well developed, and Aragon especially is perfectly suited to the type of industries that a lot of educated Iranians work in. Again, though, this all depends on Just How Many Bloody Iranians Wanted To Emigrate.

You want Nea Illenicia liberated this year, you say? Then let's get crackin'! I actually have some fun ideas for the fall of Rios--it would definitely be fun to work them in. Also, not gonna lie, I actually find your idea of a forced Greek Catholic Church in Nea Illenicia, and especially the idea of settlers converting to it, pretty funny too. Cosmic irony never fails to get me. Juanmartinvelezlinares 13:17, 28 June 2017 (PDT)

By the way, what's your email? I want to see if there's a way we can collaborate and exchange ideas more directly without having to go through the wiki, the Facebook group, or even conculture. Mine is juanmartinvelez@icloud.com, or alternatively you can also reach me at sarcastichispaniccanadian@gmail.com. (I'm not even Canadian, lol, but hopefully I will be soon enough.) Juanmartinvelezlinares 13:21, 28 June 2017 (PDT)

I'll drop you a line. You're right, this is an outdated way of communicating. I use a Gmail so I'll email the latter. Talk to you soon. Misterxeight 19:32, 28 June 2017 (PDT)

Flag of Paraguai

Could someone design a unique flag for Paraguai? I was thinking of using the flag of Aragon as a background (well, just a rectangular flag with alternating yellow and red stripes), and then combining both sides of Paraguay's flag (in real life it has two sides, which is just confusing and would require the vexillographer to do twice the amount of work) as a center symbol. Paraguay's first side is rather simple: it's just a circular crest with the words "Republica de Paraguay" (which would be "Republica d'o Paraguai" in Aragonese) and a crown made out of an olive branch and a palm branch (which I totally feel like we should reinterpret as a yerba mate branch because it's like the livelihood of the Guarani people practically, my friend tells me). The other side has a sitting lion holding a pole that has a Phrygian cap on it with the words "Paz y Justicia" ("Paz e Chusticia" in Aragonese although on second glance, it might be "Paz y Chusticia").

My idea for combining the two would be to have "Republica d'o Paraguai" above in the outer ring of the crest, and then "Paz y Chusticia" in the outer ring below. Then, we can put in the crown and then inside the crown, we put a heraldic leopard (a real kind, with spots, like in the coats of arms of Benin, Gabon, Somalia, or most realistically in Malawi's) and interpret the leopard as a jaguar (itself a word from the Guarani language), scrap the pole with the Phrygian cap because it seems to crowded, and have it all in a nice, clean set of white circles like can be found on just about every flag here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Paraguay.

Well, I shouldn't say we: I have no software capabilities for vexillology. If there's anyone that can help me, I'd be eternally grateful and the least I can do is sneak in a doppelgänger as a homage. Cheers. Misterxeight 18:22, 23 May 2017 (PDT)

This is my proposal for the flag of Paraguai. At least, this is its obverse side. I basically just changed *here* tricolor background to the Aragonese red and yellow. What do you guys think? Gwaell 09:47, 27 May 2017

For me that's ok, but the words in Spannish in the coat of arms should be changed to Aragonese.--Pedromoderno 18:31, 27 May 2017 (PDT)

Ok, I'll try and change it. What is the text in Aragonese? Gwaell 10:08, 28 May 2017

According to Biquipedia (the Wikipedia in Aragonese) it should be Republica d'o Paraguai. See [[1]].--Pedromoderno 11:06, 28 May 2017 (PDT)

That would be it, aye, but Marc Pasquin pointed out in the facebook group that if Aragonese is just a second language to the people for trade and diplomatic purposes and the country is legally "the Guarani Republic of Paraguay," then it's best to keep the language off the flag altogether. He did make a version sans any language, we're just waiting for him to upload, but thank you kindly for taking time out to make this flag. Yours looks almost identical to his: excellent work to both of you! Misterxeight 22:11, 29 May 2017 (PDT)

The Communes

So these are the ideas I had to plunk into Paraguay, just like they got German colonies and an Australian socialist/white-power colony. A lot of Enlightenment figures used Paraguay as an example of a utopia during its Jesuit redaction phase (I mean, colonialism by any other name would smell as sweet but that's just me), so while on second thought I considered that only planning socialist utopias in the country is unimaginative, socialists might remember the Enlightenment tales of the Guarani in their alternative societies and people the only people crazy enough to move there in IB.

• New Australia: I can't resist. It's just a cool idea and a bit of a joke to say that Australia has a "colony". I just really, really, really want to remove the white supremacy bit. Consider it a personal preference. Without the eternal cycle of batshit insane dictators running the place, the land the colony was founded might not have been expropriated. We might have a cool, English-speaking settlement in PA and a Hispanicized (or even Guarani-icized) minority of Australo-Paraguayans that might have moved from the commune to urban areas.

to be honest, there's is not much reason for New Australia (or more than likely either "New English Australia" or "New Australasia") to be a white supremacist colony in IB. There never was an equivalent to the White Australia policy *there* so the reason for an english australian settlement in south america could be anything from "promoting english interest in south america" (English-Australia was after all created to prevent Napoleon establishing a foothold on the continent) to "trying to find gold" or even "not big fans of English Australia joining Australasia".--Marc pasquin 10:13, 29 July 2018 (PDT)

Fair, but... Just wondering, why wasn't there a White Australia policy? Didn't the Europeans and Chinese end up feuding in the gold fields *there* as well? I'm all for political correctness, but I'm afraid that we need to keep *some* darkness in IB. Otherwise, everything seems unrealistically peaceful.Juanmartinvelezlinares 09:51, 30 July 2018 (PDT)

It has nothing to do with political correctness, Australasia is just a lot more multicultural than Australia *here* and natives had a very different destiny. Maori never were subservient to white settlers, quite the contrary, and because the mainland was settled by more then one country, the majority of colonial governors found that making allies of the aboriginals and torres strait islanders and learning their traditional knowledge of the land might give them an edge or at the very least, would ensure they were not disadvantaged compared to the other colonies.

Obviously, this is not to say that there never was racism (or isn't any of it now) but it never turned into de jure discrimination and the various nations, who in most case control their territories in a similar way that first nations do in canada *here*, have a much higher standard of living and experience much less overt racism.--Marc pasquin 00:06, 31 July 2018 (PDT)

From what I understand, Aotearoa isn’t formally part of Australasia but instead entered in free association with the “country” in the 1950s. (Is Australasia even a country...) Obviously Aotearoa is different (though depending on how Auckland, Wellington, and the South Island pan out it might also be white-majority *there*), but I honestly just can’t see things like the Frontier Wars and the forcing off of land by gold squatters *wouldn’t* have happened. Not to mention the fact that Canadian First Nations groups don’t exactly have a great standard of living, as I’m sure you’re aware.

But no matter. From what I understand, the whole “White Australia” thing didn’t even concern the Aboriginal Australians that much. My question is, why wouldn’t there have been any measures put in place to try and exclude Chinese and Pacific Islander workers? I seriously doubt that white workers wouldn’t have perceived them as a threat.

Look Marc, I’m sorry to keep coming into conflict with your ideas. But I just don’t find many of them that realistic. I’m afraid that, since you haven’t really indicated the Aboriginal situation anywhere on the pages relevant to Australasia beyond the GCT, I won’t consider it QSS for anywhere that isn’t Aotearoa or the Great Corridor Territory, at least not until you convert me over to your side.Juanmartinvelezlinares 02:44, 31 July 2018 (PDT)

The reason we have caretakers, such as I am for New Francy and Australasia, is that as they are the creator of an IB country or had a large part in its development, they often have a "big picture" perspective of a given place whether all of the details have been spelled out in so many words in the Wiki. There's plenty of things over the years I wrote on the yahoo group or other sites which I never copied to here and there are also a fair bunch of half written text files on my computers on a variety of subjects. So while you may not agree with the absence of a white australia policy, this is the way I've thought of it and developed various elements and while I could write "THERE WAS NO WHITE AUSTRALIA POLICY *THERE*" on the wiki page, I've always tried to avoid writting articles from *our* point of view so that it would feel kinda weird. Consider this then the QSSification of it.

As for the political status of Australasia, it is a condominium, a form of country which was rare *here* and usually unstable but much more common *there* and stable. Another example would be the NAL. Ironically, one of the few current country *here* which has some aspect of being a condominium, Andorra, is a fully independent country *there*. Areas of responsibilities are divided between the provincial governments, their "mother countries" and the commonwealth government.

About the canadian first nations *here*, the only comparison I was making between them and aboriginal groups in australasia *there* was in regard to the control of their tribal land and legal situation, nothing more. First Nations in Canada have treaties signed with the French and british authorities dating back to colonial times recognising certain rights which have been repeatedly upheld over the years, usually after tribal groups went to court to stop the government doing something that went against said rights. Aboriginals *here* on the other hand were not even considered part of the population until the 1967 referendum and the concept of terra nullius was only abandoned in 1992 as part of the Mabo Case.

This also relate to the white australia policy which, from an australian perspective, involves much more than just migrant workers right. For one thing, it lead to the ridiculous situation of aboriginal soldiers serving oversea being hassled by overzealous custom agents as they came back to australia on permission, for medical treatement or some other reason. In the aftermath of the war, in a similar way to what happened in the US, non-white who had served oversea demanded equality and this, coupled with the arrival of non anglo-celtic refugees gradually changed policies over the following 30 years. While racism obviously exist *there*, the more varied composition of the population meant that it simply never reached the critical mass to turn it into a full fledged ban on non-whites entering the country.--Marc pasquin 23:54, 31 July 2018 (PDT)

If you send me the relevant posts on Conculture and other sites, I’ll stop pestering you about it being QSS. I don’t consider an arbitrary declaration by you in response to me law, but I will consider Conculture posts or Ill Bethisad-related websites as such.

Fine, I’ll accept it. But you can’t expect me to believe that Aboriginal Australians would have been treated essentially equally in the eyes of the law. I’d have to imagine that there’d at least be things like attempts to force them to assimilate, at least in the provinces directly owned by the European powers. (Again, not counting Aotearoa. Aotearoa seems quite different for a variety of reasons. And possibly not the GCT, since European claims in the area seem dubious at best.) And you can’t possibly expect me to believe that, if not an outright “White Australia” policy, there would at least be heavy-handed restrictions on Chinese and Pacific Islander immigrating. In my experience, if white people think some foreign ethnic group is stealing their jobs they’ll do their darnedest to try and keep them out. Trust me, there is such a thing as case-by-case racism. Something that applies to Aboriginal Australians won’t necessarily apply to Chinese immigrants or even “Kanaka” workers. All I’m asking for is that you don’t just assume institutionalised racism would magically go away entirely because treaties were signed with some Aboriginal groups. Juanmartinvelezlinares 01:27, 2 August 2018 (PDT)

Juan, I have no power of veto or make unilateral decisions for IB at large but when it comes to New Francy and Australasia, I can and do. I am their caretaker just like Jan is the caretaker of the RTC & Russia, Dan is the caretaker of Lousiana and so on. Just like them, I'm perfectly willing to hear suggestions and answer questions but ultimately, it is up to me to decide what makes sense for the 2 countries under my care.

Now, you made it clear you disagree with some aspects of these countries but just because you disagree with something doesn't mean you're right and I'm wrong. It also doesn't means I have to keep justifying myself at great length after I've already explain my rationale just because said explanation doesn't fit with what is, ultimately, your opinion.

Lastly, and this is mainly a personal thing, while I am not an aboriginal and would never pretend to understand what's its like to be one, being a middle age working class non-anglo-celtic immigrant living in australia means that, yes, I *do* understand what institutionalised racism and assorted bigotry means so please don't presume to tell me how the world works.--Marc pasquin 04:21, 2 August 2018 (PDT)

Fine then, Marc. I’ll leave you to your own devices. I don’t think I’ll ever interact with your side of the project again for the rest of the time I’m here, but just know that while I’m still around to finish Srivijaya and the Southern Cone with Kostas, I’m always open to suggestions. Sole authorship of my part of a collaborative project has never been my style. Juanmartinvelezlinares 15:12, 2 August 2018 (PDT)

Well, I have a resume to finish, so I'll just place my ideas and then fill them in later

• Nove Bordèu: based on the real life Ciudad con Cinco Nombres, in the 1840's, French vintners from Bordeaux were brought in to found vineyards out in the Chaco near the capital, christened "Nueva Burdeos," and it failed miserably, to be refounded thrice over and renamed after President Rutherford B. Hayes who mediated a conflict and found in Paraguay's favor in the 19th Century. Something like that. I'd move this New Bordeaux to the part of the country that can actually grow vine. Paraguay has a wine industry in real life.
• La Paz, or "Heiwa" (へいわ), a settlement (or two or three) of Japanese Christian socialists (I'm leaning towards Quakers, but Mennonites would also be kind of weird)
• A Gaeltacht, patches of Irish-speaking settlements. I was going to put Irish-speaking towns and settlements in Riu de L'Argent or Araucania-Patagonia, but alas, Brithenig-speakers already took the spot of real-life Welsh colonists brought in to settle Patagonia, so I figured why the Hell not: just stick 'em in Paraguay. The Mennonites brought in from the Russian Empire by way of a stopover in Canada have made the Chaco bloom by piping in water from down south, and they have a massive dairy conglomerate; perhaps the Irish could fill that void in IB.
• If not in Riu, then in Paraguay, put bitter Boers that fled from South Africa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Argentines). They'd at least finally be a not socialist group that came to the country to found a new homeland.
• Dissatisfied Costanice-speakers leaving Riu (either because their socialist rhetoric goes against the country or because they fled the hostile takeover by Esperanza Rios), definitely socialists.
• Ukrainian Christians socialists fleeing SNOR'ism
• Germans everywhere
• A Jewish colony might be nice. There's probably no Zionism, so there's probably a lot of pent up feelings of angst and wanderlust that would make Jews consider founding a new home in the middle of nowhere.

Right, so after some digging, Paraguay's wine region is in Guairá, so that's where I'd put New Bordeaux instead of in the damn Chaco where it was put in real life. I'm sure that Narbonosc and Aragonese are pretty damn similar, so I'm not sure if that makes the Narbonosc colonists brought in more likely to switch to Aragonese or less. They might either switch to Aragonese, switch to Guarani for communicating with their neighbors and speak Narbonosc at home, or some combination of the above. I'd say let's found it in the 1840's, which is the same time as OTL. That gives Paraguay enough time to work out the bugs after its republican revolution. Misterxeight 22:33, 29 May 2017 (PDT)

Languages

Guaraní is one of the few indigenous languages of the Americas whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. The other two noteworthy examples are on the island of Chiloé (part of the Republic of Chile) where the first Castilian colonists adopted the Huilliche variant of the Mapuche/Mapudungun language and Mejico, where the Castilian colonial administration utilized Nahuatl and Castilians in service of the viceroyalty of New Leon had to learn it. Guaraní is spoken by approximately 95% of the country. The next biggest language is Aragonese, which only began to be stressed as a necessary language for all Paraguaians to learn in the mid-20th Century when its leaders wanted to better connect the country to the outside world (Aragonese is spoken by people in Aragon, Sicily, Carthage, Riu de L'Argent, & Uruguai). About 87% of Paraguai speaks some amount of Aragonese; L1 speakers are much lower. Guaraní and Aragonese have formed a mixed language called Yopará as well, spoken by about 90% of the population. It was 'El Supremo,' President Gaspar do Françia who enshrined Guaraní as the national language in his new constitution after rallying the power of the caciques against the Aragonese-elite and promising them a space at the table in his new, liberal government that would do away with the corrupt oligarchy of chiefs who cared more about their own wealth than the good of the nation and the Aragonese and Brazilian advisors that manipulated them and the foreign Jesuits who used them for their own gains back in Rome. In fact, Paraguai's constitution was written in Guaraní first, *then* Aragonese, and *then* Latin. Speeches in parliament may be made in either language and every government document is issued in both languages.

The next biggest languages after Guaraní & Aragonese are immigrant tongues. A little over 120,000 people speak a from of German known as Plautdietsch. This German, a form of Low German, however is not intelligible with the kind spoken in the modern Holy Roman Empire. It was brought to Paraguai by the Mennonites & their more radical subset the Hutterites. About 600,000 Paraguaians claim non-Mennonite German ancestry, brought by such communes as Nôva Germania founded in 1888, but other forms of German have mostly started to die out as assimilation into Aragonese and Guaraní became more and more commonplace after the Second Great War. The Catholic Germans were much more likely to assimilate into the mixed Aragonese-Guarani strata in Paraguayan society, but cultural diffusion is a two-way street and the Germans have permanently altered Paraguayan culture and society forever.

Italian is still spoken by a couple hundred thousand people out of the nearly two million people that claim Italian ancestry (256,000-320,000). The sole surviving dialect of Italian left in Paraguay is a breakaway dialect of Ligurian that evolved from Genoese known as "Zeneizape," which is from the Genoese word for the dialect, "Zeneize," which the Guarani suffix for languages tacked on. Zeneizape has a great deal of loanwords from Guaraní for daily objects not found back in Europe, but Aragonese has had more effects in different areas, like pronunciation, spelling, & syntax. Zeneizape is spoken in small villages to the southeast on the border with Paraná, a country with an enormous amount of Italians as well. This dialect subsumed all the dialects that came from Italy for the most part, including the loyalist Sicilians that came from the Crown of Aragon umbrella franchise.

Costanice is one of the next largest languages. Most of Paraguay's Orthodox Christians (3.3% of the population) are Costanicos. Since the latter half of the 19th Century, New World Greeks not satisfied with the political trajectory of their country have moved to form communes in Paraguai, as Nea Illenicia was under Aragonese and then Argentine domination since the exile colony's foundation. The first people from the Old World to reach Paraguai were a mixed team of Aragonese, Portuguese, & Byzantine refugees along with native allies and mercenaries acting as guides, so the Costanicos have always known about the Guaraní & vice versa. Indeed, the first converts to Christianity from the Guarani people were to the Orthodox Church of the refugees, the so-called 'Greek Rite', and not to the Catholic Church of the more aggressive Aragonese, the 'Latin Rite.' The first implementation of the ecotopic Christian-communism now so ubiquitous to Nea Illenicia got its start in Paraguai. Theodoros Efseyos, the movement's founder, formed several communes in exile to his homeland's north to get his budding ideology just right. The 2007 forced reannexation of Nea Illenicia to Riu de L'Argent has brought another wave of refugees fleeing rightwing persecution. This newest wave is almost all urban and highly concentrated in Asumpción, but some have spread out to the remaining communes in the country's south and smaller cities like the twin cities of Encarnación & Posadas.

The Irish, Ukrainians (not including Russians), Japanese, and Australians are the last groups mostly tied to the many communes of the country. The Irish's primary commune was

The Ukrainians are some of the most prolific commune-types in Paraguai. About 164,000 Orthodox Christians in the country are Ukrainians (the number is larger if one counts Catholics or the non-religious of Ukrainian ancestry), the vast, vast majority of which are farmworkers still to this day, although the twin-cities of Encarnación and Posadas each have a Ukrainian community and Asumpción has a small parish for Ukrainians separate from the Russians in the country, both of which are under the Costanico hierarch and exist separately from the Koine Greek language communities. Their ancestors came as proud socialists and Orthodox Christians who wanted to be neither a part of Veneda, Lithuania, nor Russia, and they felt that the aftermath of GWI and the redrawing of the map of Europe did not give their people what they truly wanted—an absolutely free and independent Ukrainian homeland safe from both eastern & western aggression. The Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party (Украї́нська соціа́л-демократи́чна робітни́ча па́ртія/Partit Obrer Socialdemòcrata Ucraïnès) scoured the globe for a new place to keep Ukrainian culture safe, and the countries of Paraguai, Paraná, & Riu de L'Argent were chosen. Each had colonies planted in them based on an agrarian socialist model in the year 1922 (arriving in 1923). Fellow travelers in socialist circles across Europe and North America, from Paris to Valladolid to Chicago to Ontario helped fund these endeavors. They were immediately aided by the nascent Christian communist movement amongst the Greeks of the continent, who took them into the fold the moment they got there. Now, while up to a million people in Riu de L'Argent, Paraná, & Paraguai claim Ukrainian ancestry, the culture is not kept perfectly frozen in time as the socialist party might have hoped. For one, the Greeks were almost *too* chummy and assimilated the Ukrainians of Riu de L'Argent almost immediately. Nea Illenicia was also too densely packed for the Ukrainian colonists to live in a parallel society, so they were hooked into the wider world and began learning Costanico, marrying locals, and most detrimentally of all, moving to the cities. The communities in Paraná and Paraguai fared much better. The communities in Paraná are the most rural of them all, so they've retained the Ukrainian language and culture best. Paraguai is in the middle of the two extremes. While not everyone speaks Ukrainian (although about 82%-85% do), almost all are aware of their heritage and retain at least some cultural tidbits. That being said, literacy in Ukrainian and the Cyrillic is moribund. Only about 45%-50% of Ukrainians are literate in the alphabet and can read and write it without problems. Like in Paraná, there are Ukrainian-language radio stations, TV channels, dance troupes, churches, and schools which use the Ukrainian language as the language of instruction with Aragonese and Guarani merely as second languages that only get taught in years three and four on up respectively. The first communal colony in Paraguai was named "Nuebo Volyn" after the region where the colonists came from (Volhynia), and while they maintained growing wheat as they did in Ukraine, they adopted many New World crops like yucca/cassava, corn, rice & yerba mate. In the 1930's, people fleeing the advent of the Second Great War and seeking to maintain their agrarian way of life moved on their own, mostly from the regions of the Polesia, Galicia and Transcarpathia. Their Orthodox Christianity helped them stay separate from local Catholics (unlike the Veneds) to an extent. As with any immigrant group, urban immigrants tend to adopt the more commonly-spoken languages almost immediately. Any urban Paraguaians of Ukrainian are more likely to speak Aragonese primarily if not only.

Paraguai's most famous

Some people in Nuebo Bordeus the Guairá department, Paraguay's winemaking region, still speak a highly mixed form of Narbonosc. While it mostly been subsumed into the local form of Aragonese and children must learn Guarani in school, Narbonosc is now being taught alongside the other languages and several clubs of locals keep it alive with routine events and celebrations. The Narbonosc community moved to Paraguai in 1862 at the behest of the government in Asumpcion which sought to resurrect the country's wine-industry which was founded by Jesuits only as a source of sacramental wine. In 1908, a Paraguaian of German heritage, Carlos Voigt, brought another wave of winemakers from Bordeaux to supplant the incredibly poor and unsuccessful town of Nuebo Bordeus. This second wave was able to kickstart the wine industry and get the harvest bottled and in taverns and groceries across not only Paraguai but Paraná and Tawantinsuyu as well. The feast-days of St. Andrew the Apostle (Sant Andreu/Andrieu; patron saint of Bordeaux) and St. Vincent (Sant Vicent/Vincenç; patron saint of winemaking) are two of the biggest days of the year in the wine region and especially for Narbonosc-speakers, along with Holy Week (Semana Santa) culminating in Easter (Pascua), midsummer's day (Sant Chuan/Joans Baptista, also known as St. John's Day), and Christmas (Navidat).

The Weneds also came in the tens of thousands during the period of 1893-1933, although they did not form communes, they tended to come as contracted labor and work mainly for the Brasiguaios (Brazilian-Paraguayans), forming replica towns that they left behind in Europe once their contracts were up. About 66,992 claim ancestry from the Republic of the Two Crowns, but about 16,748 are actually of Belarusian ancestry. They spoke the Slavic language Belarusian instead of the Romance language of the Wends which lent them a bit more sticking power since it was all too easy for the Romance-speakers to learn shift to Aragonese. Now, Nuebo Belarús has a population of 20,980 of which 13,260 claim Belarusian ancestry and maybe 5,200 still speak the language. Their ancestors might have come as Eastern Catholics, but there was no Eastern Catholic hierarchy for them set up and the Weneds pressured them into joining their Latin Rite Catholic community almost right away. The remaining 3,488 people who claim Belarusian ancestry are Orthodox Ukrainians in nearby communities since there was a high rate of intermarriage between the two groups and some Belarusians reconverted to Orthodox Christianity to keep their religious ethos alive in the New World. A Catholic parish in Encarnación, Sant Venceslao, offers a liturgy in Belarusian three Sundays a month for the final, aging speakers of the language.

The final four big immigrant groups in the city are Jews, Arabs, Russians, and Koreans. The Jews and Arabs came first and are the most numerous. Neither Lebanon's nor Judea's populations were content after 1844 under Ottoman rule. This is when Judean Jewish & Arab immigration around the world begins. Now, Jews had a refuge in the New World ready and waiting to take them in, Nova Sefarad, but as with all immigrants, not all go to the same country. Some moved to the Southern Cone, and after Riu de L'Argent got too crowded, Jews continued northward in Paraguai. They encountered a nearly-extinct community of Sephardic Jews who had been in the country since they were exposed as Jews by the Inquisition in Portuguese Brazil & the country's first president not only gave them residence, but banned the Inquisition from operating within the country. The Judeans and Arab Jews were just the injection of life that the community needed. Many were too poor to bring their own liturgical objects, so they used what the Sephardim already had, but they put their own spin on the liturgy, adding their own prayers learned by memory and inserting or subtracting bits to the Paraguayan Jews' minhag. In the 1920's, some fifty years later, Ashkenazi Jews moving from Romania, Russia, & Ukraine would do the same and bring their own traditions to the Jewish melange of Paraguai. They needed each other in the New World, and although their rites, rituals, customs, & tongues were different, their communities were small enough that they needed to band together to survive. Judean, Judæo-Arabic, & Yiddish are mostly gone now, replaced by Aragonese written within the confines of the synagogue using the Hebrew script. There are about 78,000 Jews in Paraguay today. The Russians came as a result of the aftermath of the Great War. Refugees fled the onslaught of the Red Army, which appeared to be winning for the remainder of the 1910's and into the 1920's. Although eventually many non-communists would return after the White victory, not all did, and when the Whites turned out to be just as murderous and repressive as the Reds, many fled again back to if not their original places of exile then even greener pastures. Paraguai was no exception. Six White Russian families, whose heads were all in the Imperial Army, came to Paraguai in 1919 and were not only given citizenship outright, but those six were given the rank of general in the Paraguaian Army. Paraguai realized it needed to update its military and outpace its neighbors or be loss. Tawantinsuyu to its north was entering a new period of revanchism and the Sapa Inti made speeches strongly hinting that the empire wanted *all* of the Chaco and Riu de L'Argent's Chuchuy province back. These six new generals got to work teaching an elite corp of soldiers tactics that worked in the Great War. The first were chosen by their former commanding officers for their skillsets. Since they were deployed in the Chaco, it was much to hot to wear Russian-style uniforms, but they were still called "Cosacos" by the general populace. Hearing of the success and influence of these six families, Russians who had moved to Paraná and Riu de L'Argent flocked to rally around the generals in Asumpción. One, Pyotr Shostakovich, died by friendly fire in 1928 by his own men and not by the Incans as originally reported in the presses. It was his death that necessitated a space for the Russians in the Orthodox cemetery managed by the Costanicos. Some urban Ukrainians did want Russians buried there for they felt chased out of their homeland by the country these generals never stopped swearing fealty to, and the Costanicos distrusted Russians because they were a bastion of rightwing imperialism in the world and fellow communists were winning the civil war, but the bishop of Asumpción did grant them a space within the cemetery and the right to build a chapel in the Russian style. The White Victory would bring some of those Russians back, including two of the first generals, but by 1956, a few dozen Russians would flee again and request asylum in Paraguai, which the government always generously granted. In the year 2017, the patriarch of Moscow visited Asumpción and opened a metochion, a diplomatic church from one jurisdiction of Orthodoxy to another, in the city center.