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.