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 languagesSeveral 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:
“Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation.... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The “sayings” of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech—it is a gift from heart to heart.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)