Languages of North America


The languages of North America reflect not only that continent's indigenous peoples, but the European colonization as well. The most widely spoken languages in North America are English, Spanish, and to a lesser extent French, and, especially in the Caribbean, creole languages lexified by them.

Indigenous languages

North America is home to many language families and some language isolates. In the Arctic north, the Eskimo–Aleut languages are spoken from Alaska to Greenland. This group includes the Aleut language of the Aleutian Islands, the Yupik languages of Alaska and the Russian Far East, and the Inuit languages of Alaska, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Greenland.
The Na-Dené languages, of which the most numerous and widespread are the Athabaskan languages, include the languages of central and eastern Alaska and northwestern Canada, as well as the Apachean languages of the Southwestern United States. The Algic languages, including the large Algonquian branch, are widespread across Canada and the United States; they include Cree, Anishinaabe, Mi'kmaq, and Blackfoot. The Iroquoian languages dominate the area around the Saint Lawrence River and the eastern Great Lakes, but also include Cherokee. The Siouan–Catawban languages, including Crow and Sioux, dominate the Great Plains. Many small language families are spoken in the Pacific Northwest from British Columbia to California.
The Uto-Aztecan languages are found throughout the Western United States, northern and central Mexico, and as far south as El Salvador; they include Hopi, O'odham, and Nahuatl. Other large families in Mexico include the Mayan languages, the Mixe–Zoque languages, and the Oto-Manguean languages. In the Caribbean, the Arawakan languages were formerly widespread, but are now limited to Garifuna on the Central American mainland; the family is still well represented in South America, however. The Chibchan languages are spoken in Costa Rica and Panama as well as South America.

Introduced languages

The most widely spoken language in North America is English, followed in prevalence by Spanish and French. These three languages were brought to North America as a result of colonization of practically the entire continent by settlers from Europe.
English is the predominant language of Canada, the United States, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands, and is spoken alongside English-based creole languages in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Virgin Islands. It is also the official language of Dominica and Saint Lucia, where the French-based Antillean Creole is also widely spoken.
Spanish is the dominant language in Mexico and all of Central America apart from Belize, as well as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico ; it is also widely spoken in the United States.
French is the dominant language in Quebec and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and is spoken in Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Louisiana. It is spoken alongside French-based creole languages in Saint Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Saint Barthélemy, and the French side of Saint Martin. French is one of the two official and national languages of Canada.
Russian was once widely spoken in Alaska as it was the language of administration, commerce, and the settlers there that often intermarried with the locals, creating a sizable biracial population. The language began to decline after the United States purchased the land from the Russian Empire. Nonetheless, the language, called "Old Russian" by its speakers, is still spoken today in parts of Alaska like Ninilchik and Kodiak by descendants of Russian colonists and Russified Alaskan Natives and is known for its archaic Russian vocabulary and indigenous influences, though the vast majority of speakers are elderly, so that this unique Russian dialect is heavily endangered. In addition, a Russian creole/mixed language known as Medny Aleut language was once spoken in some of the Aleutian Islands. Only a few elderly people still speak it. There has also been sizable recent immigration from Russia in the past few decades, leading to a new generation of Russian-speaking Alaskans.
Though no German state played a major role in the European colonization of the Americas, German people did found their own colonies. Pennsylvania German, Hutterite German, Texas German, all of which developed in North America, as well as Plautdietsch are spoken by descendants of these settlers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Other introduced languages include Danish in Greenland, where it is spoken by nearly everyone due to centuries of colonization by Denmark. Danish was once the language of administration of the US Virgin Islands before the purchase by the United States. Dutch in Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, where it is spoken alongside the Portuguese Creole language in Papiamento. In modern times North America has immigrant speakers of many languages from around the world. For details see Languages of Canada, Languages of the United States, and Languages of Mexico. Some historic languages include Gholan Language and Quechua.
Indians were brought to the Caribbean from South Asia during the mid-19th century to the early 20th century to work on the sugar cane, cocoa bean, rice and coffee bean plantations after slavery was abolished. Caribbean Hindustani is spoken by Indo-Caribbeans in islands in the Caribbean like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica where a majority of the Indians are North Indian. Tamil and Telugu was spoken as the lingua franca of Indians in islands like Martinique and Guadeloupe, where the majority of Indians are Dravidians. Recent immigration beginning in the 1960s from India to Canada and the United States has increased the prevalence of Indian languages in those countries, with Punjabi once had the highest ranking in Canada among Indian languages, being the third most-spoken language by the 2011 Canadian census. But now in the most recent 2016 census, Punjabi has been superseded by Mandarin and Cantonese to be the fifth. Today, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Kashmiri, Dogri, Gujarati, Konkani, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Odia, Maithili, Nepali, Balochi, Pashto, Assamese, Meitei, Santali, Kokborok, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Malayalam, Kannada, and other South Asian languages are also spoken throughout North America.