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Spanish and Portuguese?
Which is the bigger language of South America? Many reports say Portuguese has more speakers, others have Spanish with the bigger amount of speakers. I look and look online and no one seems to have definitive answers. I think they have around the same amount of speakers in my opinion. Spanish Wikipedia has Spanish with 13 million more speakers than Portuguese whereas Portuguese Wikipedia has Portuguese with the larger amount of speakers. I think that depending on the language they both seem to give the advantage to their respective languages as far as numbers go.
Brazil seems to have just as many inhabitants as the 9 other Spanish-speaking countries that share the continent with it, so their numbers being close to equal would make sense. I want to hear your opinion on this.
6 Answers
- LaurenceLv 77 years agoFavorite Answer
Almost all the countries of the Americas have numbers of aborigines ("Native Americans" is the current US euphemism) with varying degrees of competence in the official language of their respective countries. Most Latin American national censi include them nevertheless as speakers of such languages. The actual numbers who speak "Native American" languages varies from a few thousands in Brazil to almost 100% of the total population in Paraguay. Brazil occupies roughly half of South America- The other half is largely Spanish speaking, apart from the Falklands, the Guianas, Trinidad & Tobago and the former Dutch territories, but in the entire world there are rather more Spanish than Portuguese speakers.
Source(s): Native English, fluent Portuguese, very good Spanish and French, a little Dutch, plus four years' residence in Brazil, and visits to and brief residence in Spain, Portugual, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Trinidad, Barbados and Antigua, and fifty years working as a Latin American bibliographer. - LMatt88Lv 67 years ago
Portuguese is spoken by about 51% of South America but Brazil is the only country where it's official so as regards usefulness Spanish is way more useful here. Aparte from that Spanish is mandatory in Brazil and Portuguese isn't in the rest of South America so brazilians have a better command of Spanish.
Source(s): Argentine - ?Lv 56 years ago
Hi friend..
Well, as you pointed out, there are 10 nations in south America(though some people include French Guiana and Suriname)
Either way...
South America's countries' population is as follows:
Chile = 18 million
Ecuador 16 million
Colombia = 48 million
Paraguay = 7 million
Bolivia = 10 million
Argentina = 43 million
Venezuela = 30 million
Uruguay = 3 million
Peru = 32 million
if we add those populations we get : 207 million inhabitants
vs
Brazil's population = 204 millions...
I approximated all those countries' populations, but i rounded them down... so if anything, the 207 should be higher.
God bless you
- Erik Van ThienenLv 77 years ago
Portuguese has marginally more speakers if you take "South-America" in its strictest sense. Spanish has more speakers if you include Mexico and Central-America.
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- 7 years ago
Both of them are their own languages, and both of them are big enough in their own way(s).
Easy and simple!
That's it!
Goodbye!
