Culture of Mexico - Language

Language

Main article: Languages of Mexico See also: Mexican Spanish and List of endangered languages in Mexico

Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. The overwhelming majority of Mexicans today speak Spanish, however, the government recognizes 62 indigenous Amerindian languages as national languages. Some Spanish vocabulary in Mexico has roots in the country's indigenous languages, which are spoken by approximately 6% of the population. Some indigenous Mexican words have even become common in other languages, such as the English language. For instance, the words tomato, chocolate, coyote, and avocado are Nahuatl in origin.

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Famous quotes containing the word language:

    “We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be “revolutionary” but not transformative.”
    —Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    “The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
    —George Orwell (1903–1950)