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Most Widely Spoken Languages
 

___ Official and Spoken Languages of the Countries of the Americas and the Caribbean.

List of official, national and spoken languages of North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

Thanks to the often violent colonization of the Americas, most of the spoken languages are the tongue of the conquerors, about 400 million people in the Americas speak Spanish as their First Language.
247 million people speak English as their mother tongue, 204 million people speak Brazilian Portuguese, about 8 million people speak French or French Creole.

Aztec woman speaking
Aztec woman speaking
Thousands of languages were spoken in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. Today most of the surviving indigenous languages of the Americas are considered to be critically endangered, they are at risk of falling out of use. It happens in our time, that the last speaker of a language dies and with him or her the language vanishes - forever.

Only four of the dominant language families, Quechua (9 million speakers) and Aymara (2.2 million speakers), Guarani (5 million speakers) and Nahuatl (Aztec; 1.5 million), the most widely spoken languages of indigenous peoples of the Americas, are considered to be not endangered.


Languages by Countries

Country

Official and national Languages

Other spoken Languages
 
 
Anguilla English  
Antigua and Barbuda English local dialects, Creole English
Argentina Spanish English, Italian, German, French
Aruba Dutch Papiamento (Creole with Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English roots), English (widely spoken), Spanish
Bahamas English Creole (among Haitian immigrants)
Barbados English  
Belize English Spanish, Mayan, Garifuna (Carib), Creole
Bolivia Spanish, Quechua, Aymara  
Brazil Portuguese Spanish, English, French, American Indian languages
Canada English 59%, French 23%; (Canada's Territory Nunavut wants that Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun become official) 53 native Inuit and American-Indian languages (18%).
Cayman Islands English  
Chile Spanish  
Colombia Spanish American Indian languages
Costa Rica Spanish English
Cuba Spanish  
Dominica English French patois
Dominican Republic Spanish  
Ecuador Spanish Quechua and other Amerindian languages.
El Salvador Spanish Nahua (among some Amerindians)
French Guiana French  
Grenada English French patois
Guadeloupe French 99% Creole patois
Guatemala Spanish 60%, Amerindian languages 40% (23 officially recognized Amerindian languages, including Quiche, Cakchiquel, Kekchi, Mam, Garifuna, and Xinca)
Guyana English Amerindian dialects, Creole, Hindi, Urdu
Haiti French, Creole  
Honduras Spanish Amerindian dialects
Jamaica English most Jamaicans speak an English-based dialect which is known as Patois.
Martinique French Creole patois
Mexico Spanish various Mayan, Nahuatl, and other regional indigenous languages.
Nicaragua Spanish English and indigenous languages on Atlantic coast.
Panama Spanish English 14%
Paraguay Spanish, Guarani  
Peru Spanish, Quechua Aymara, and a large number of minor Amazonian languages.
Puerto Rico Spanish, English  
Saint Kitts and Nevis English  
Saint Lucia English French patois
Suriname Dutch (60%+),it is one of the two non Romance-speaking countries in South America. Sranan Tongo, a Creole language contains elements from English, Portugese, Dutch, and influences from African and Indian languages Sranan Tongo, a local creole language originally spoken by the creole population group, is the most widely used language in the daily communication;
other languages spoken are Hindi, Javanese, Maroon and indigenous people languages.
Trinidad and Tobago English Hindi, French, Spanish, Chinese.
United States English (amazingly its not an official language, because no official language exists at the Federal level) Spanish is the second most common language in the country, spoken by a sizable minority (over 12%).
Uruguay Spanish Portunol, or Brazilero (Portuguese-Spanish mix on the Brazilian frontier).
Venezuela Spanish and languages spoken by Indigenous peoples from Venezuela (Constitution of Venezuela 1999) numerous indigenous dialects, at least 40.
Virgin Islands English Spanish, Creole.
 

Sources: Ethnologue, ISO Country Names (ISO 3166-1), ISO Languages Names (ISO 639-1), CIA World Factbook and others.
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External Links:
Ethnologue
Languages of the World.
Global Language Monitor
GLM documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia encyclopedia entry on Languages.
UniLang Community
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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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More about the Americas:

Cities:
Capital Cities of the Americas

Countries:
Countries of the Americas

Continent:
Map of North America

Map of South America

Flags:
Flags of the Americas and the Caribbean
 
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