Languages 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.

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.