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Central American Spanish (Spanish: español centroamericano or castellano centroamericano) is the general name of the Spanish language dialects spoken in Central America. More precisely, the term refers to the Spanish language as spoken in Costa Rica , El Salvador , Guatemala , Honduras , and Nicaragua .
In the Americas, velar -n is prevalent in all Caribbean dialects, Central American dialects, the coastal areas of Colombia, Venezuela, much of Ecuador, Peru, and northern Chile. [18] This velar -n likely originated in the northwest of Spain, and from there spread to Andalusia and then the Americas. [21]
Although both North and Central America are very diverse areas, South America has a linguistic diversity rivalled by only a few other places in the world with approximately 350 languages still spoken and several hundred more spoken at first contact but now extinct. The situation of language documentation and classification into genetic families ...
A notable exception is the Department of Nariño and most Costeño speech (Atlantic coastal dialects) which feature the soft, fricative realizations common to all other Hispanic American and European dialects. Word-final /n/ is velar in much Latin American Spanish speech; this means a word like pan (bread) is often articulated ['paŋ].
The areas of Central America (excluding the Maya areas) that formed part of Mesoamerica during the preclassic were dominated by Lencan speakers. Based on toponymy, it is possible that Xincan languages were originally spoken in western El Salvador, but were replaced by Nawat after postclassic migrations.
Even words of Greek and Latin origin with tl , such as Atlántico and atleta, are pronounced with /tl/: [aˈtlantiko], [aˈtleta] (compare [aðˈlantiko], [aðˈleta] in Spain and other dialects in Hispanic America [5]). Syllable-final /s/ is only infrequently aspirated, or pronounced as an [h], among middle-class speakers in central Costa Rica.
The only indigenous language spoken by more than a million people in Mexico is the Nahuatl language; the other Native American languages with a large population of native speakers (at least 400,000 speakers) include Yucatec Maya, Tzeltal Maya, Tzotzil Maya, Mixtec, and Zapotec.
This category and its subcategories contain articles relating to the various languages of Central America, which by a common geopolitical definition includes the territory encompassed by the countries of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. language portal