Editing Guarani language (section)

=== Glottal stop ===
The [[glottal stop]], called {{lang|gn|puso}} in Guarani, is only written between vowels, but occurs phonetically before vowel-initial words. Because of this, some words have several glottal stops near each other that consequently undergo a number of different [[dissimilation]] techniques. For example, "I drink water" {{lang|gn|ʼaʼyʼu}} is pronounced {{lang|gn|hayʼu}}. This suggests that irregularity in verb forms derives from regular sound change processes in the history of Guarani. There also seems to be some degree of variation between how much the glottal stop is dropped (for example {{lang|gn|aruʼuka > aruuka > aruka}} for "I bring"). It is possible that word-internal glottal stops may have been retained from fossilized compounds where the second component was a vowel-initial (and therefore glottal stop–initial) root.<ref name=Ayala>{{cite book |last=Ayala |first=José Valentín |year=2000 |title=Gramática Guaraní |location=Asunción |publisher=Centro Editorial Paraguayo S.R.L. |page=19 |oclc=50608420}}</ref>