Latin American Culture - Language

Language

Spanish is the predominant language in the majority of the countries (See Spanish language in the Americas). Portuguese is spoken primarily in Brazil (See Brazilian Portuguese), where it is both the official and the national language. French is also spoken in smaller countries, in the Caribbean, and French Guiana.

See also: Amerindian languages

Several nations, especially in the Caribbean, have their own Creole languages, derived from European languages and various African tongues. Native American languages are spoken in many Latin American nations, mainly Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Mexico. Nahuatl is one of the most spoken indigenous languages with more than a million speakers in Mexico, which is officially confirmed by a government's census. Although Mexico has almost 80 native languages across the country, the government nor the constitution specify an official language (not even Spanish), also, some regions of the nation do not speak any modern way of language and still preserve their ancient dialect without knowing any other language. Guaraní is, along with Spanish, the official language of Paraguay, and is spoken by a majority of the population.

Other European languages spoken include Italian in Brazil and Argentina, German in southern Brazil, southern Chile and Argentina, and Welsh in southern Argentina.

Read more about this topic:  Latin American Culture

Famous quotes containing the word language:

    “Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”
    —William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

    “Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.”
    —Frederico Fellini (1920–1993)

    “I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
    —Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)