South America, the fourth-largest continent, is a region with historical traditions and rich cultural diversity. And it does not end there.
Geographically, the continent has global significance as it has several mountains and highlands, river basins, and coastal plains. It even serves as home to the Amazon Rainforest, which is often tagged “the lungs of the earth”.
South America’s most significant attribute is probably its economic potential, with a nominal GDP of 3.473 trillion USD, while having only 12 countries.
The continent also plays host to emerging giants like Argentina and Brazil, which are strategic markets that businesses and organizations can exploit for commercial expansion.
But foreign success can’t occur with trade and regulatory strategies alone. Perhaps, a most often underlooked criterion involves catering to regional diversities of foreign markets. And in that light, we would be looking at some of the main languages spoken in South America.
Origins of South American languages
We can classify the languages of South America into broad categories based on their origins.
For starters, you have the indigenous languages, which are no lesser than 325 in number, many of which have been around since the pre-colonial era. But you also have the languages brought by immigrants either in the form of colonizers, settlers, or even slaves.
Some of these languages range from a handful of speakers to hundreds of millions, but the combination of both categories has turned the continent of South America into one huge melting pot.
What are the languages spoken in South America?
Today the main languages that are spoken in South America are Spanish and Portuguese. But these were languages that were brought by immigrants.
As we mentioned earlier, South America also has its indigenous languages, some of which may have gone extinct, while others are still waxing strong.
Some of the most spoken languages in South America include;
Spanish
Spanish is the most spoken language in South America by a thin margin. Its 210 million speakers are spread across ten countries, with Columbia, Argentina, and Venezuela making up more than half of its total speaking population.
The earliest records of Spanish in South America dates back to the 1400s. But today, the language has spread to almost the entire continent.
Portuguese
Portuguese is just next to Spanish when it comes to the number of the speaking population, with its 206 million speakers. Although, more than 99 percent of its speakers come from Brazil due to the colonization of the nation by Portugal.
Other countries in South America with trace amounts of Portuguese speakers are Venezuela, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay.
Quechua: is the most spoken indigenous language in South America, with over 8 million native speakers spread across the Andean region ( Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru).
Quechua origin dates back thousands of years ago in Peru but has spread to other nations in South America like Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela.
Today Quechua is the official language of Peru and Bolivia, with 25% of Peruvians speaking the language.
English: With its 5.4 million speakers is the fourth most spoken language in South America. This relatively low number is due to the fact that Britain did not have a strong colonial presence in the region, colonizing only Guyana.
Besides Guyana, English is spoken in parts of Argentina, Colombia, and the Falkland Islands.
Guarani: This is a thriving indigenous South American language native to the people of Paraguay and is the fifth most spoken language in the continent with over 4.6 million speakers that also spreads to parts of Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia.
Although there are a few dialects of Guarani across the region, the Paraguayan form makes the bulk of its total speakers.
Guarani is an agglutinative language with several loanwords from Spanish. The language has also impacted English language subtly, with certain words like; Cashew, Piranha, Jaguar, etc., having their origins from it.
Aymara: This is the third most-spoken indigenous language in South America and is native to the Aymara people of Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.
Although Aymara is quite similar to yet another indigenous language — Quechua — it has managed to garner 2.8 million speakers, a bulk of those who are from Bolivia, making it the only country where it is an official language.
German: This is an immigrant language that is surprisingly spoken in South America to a large extent. The language’s origin in the region dates back to the 1500s but more recently in the twentieth century due to the search for agricultural colonies in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.
Today there are 2 million speakers across these countries, although most of them are settled in Brazil.
Italian: Italian makes the top ten most spoken languages in South America with its 1.5 million speakers. More than 95 percent of these bunch are in Argentina, while the remaining are domiciled in Brazil.
Arabic: It would most likely come as a surprise to many that Arabic, all from the Middle-East, also made its way down to South America. But there are about 1.1 million Arabic speakers in South America, with Argentina accounting for most of them.
It is also possible to find Arabic speakers in Venezuela and Suriname.
Mapudungun: Also known as Mapuche is an indigenous language with many links to its origins. Some that even extend beyond the continent of South America.
Although it contains some loan words from Quechua and Spanish, it still has five dialects (Pehuenche, Huilliche, Moluche, Nguluche, and Ranquenche).
Mapuche is spoken by 260,000 people majorly in Chile and parts of Argentina.
These are just the top ten most spoken languages in South America out of over 400, which of course, we would not be able to cover in this write-up.
But other notable indigenous languages include; Wayuunaiki Embera, Paez, Kuna, etc.
Conclusion
By now, this short post should give you an idea of the cultural diversity of South America.
Your organization’s ability to enter, maintain a decent presence, and eventually succeed in this region requires catering to the cultural and linguistic diversity of this continent. And this is where translation and localization services become very crucial.
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