Latin America

Latin America consists of those countries south of the United States where the languages are predominantly Romantic: Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Spanish is spoken in the majority of the countries. In fact the number of Spanish-speakers in Latin America outnumbers though of Europe by about 9 to 1.

Brazil is the only countries where Portuguese is spoken, and despite being similar grammatically to the Portuguese spoken in Portugal, it possess it own pronunciation and different expressions. Like with Spanish, the number of Portuguese-speakers in Latin America outnumber those of Europe nearly 20 to 1.

There are also several exceptions to the Romantic rule, as Suriname and Belize speak Dutch and English respectively. And there are a diverse range of mixture languages, called creoles, such as Papiamento spoken in Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire.

The most spoken creole language spoken in Latin America is Haitian Creole, is based on French and one of two official languages of the country. The other French-speaking territories are islands of Guadalupe and Martinique, and the French Guiana, on the south shore of the Caribbean Sea.

There are also hundreds of indigenous languages in the region, which have a heavy influence, and sometimes have co-official status such as Quechua in Peru and Guarani in Paraguay.