Latin America (Spanish: América Latina or Latinoamérica; Portuguese: América Latina; French: Amérique latine, Dutch: Latijns-Amerika) is a region of the Americas where Romance languages (i.e., those derived from Latin) – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² (7,880,000 sq mi), almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area. As of 2010, its population was estimated at more than 590 million and its combined GDP at 5.16 trillion United States dollars (6.27 trillion at PPP). The Latin American expected economic growth rate is at about 5.7% for 2010 and 4% in 2011. According to Phelan (1968, p. 296), the term "Latin America" was first used in 1861 in La revue des races Latines, a magazine 'dedicated to the cause of Pan-Latinism'.
Read more about Latin America: Etymology and Definitions, History, Demographics, Culture, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words latin america, latin and/or america:
“Not only does the world scarcely know who the Latin American man is, the world has barely cared.”
—Georgie Anne Geyer (b. 1935)
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)