Puerto Rican languages

The usual languages of Puerto Rico are Spanish and English; each has its own fields of use and the legal status varies according to that field.

Officiality

The general official language of Puerto Rico is Castilian or Spanish, spoken by the vast majority of the population, coexisting with English. The official languages of the executive branch of Puerto Rico are Spanish and English. However, all official district court business is conducted exclusively in English.

Use

Spanish is the mother tongue of most of the population and is used in primary education. Only a small minority, less than 5%, use English as their main language. Spanish is the main language in business, education, daily life, and is spoken by 95% of the population. Thus, the vernacular language is Puerto Rican Spanish, which has shown a great capacity for survival and is considered by the majority as a significant element of their collective identity. In the cultural syncretism that reflects Puerto Rican history, the Spanish language, adapted to the environment in centuries of creolization, is the natural communicative instrument that island society shares today.

Instruction in public schools in Puerto Rico is carried out entirely in Spanish. There are pilot programs in a dozen of the 1,400 public schools, to carry out education entirely in English. The population conceives English as a second language that is a compulsory subject from elementary levels to high school. The deaf community uses American Sign Language and its local variant, Puerto Rican Sign Language.

Puerto Rican Spanish

Puerto Rican Spanish has evolved, developing many of its own peculiarities in vocabulary and syntax, which differentiate it from Spanish in other regions. Although Puerto Rico received migrants from many Spanish-dominated areas for centuries, it is considered that the Canarian dialect could have been the main source of it. The lexicon of Puerto Rican Spanish includes some words of Taíno origin, especially regarding local flora, natural phenomena, and traditional musical instruments. Similarly, some words attributed to the languages of Africa are in general use in the fields of food, music or dance, especially in coastal towns with higher concentrations of African descent.

Puerto Rican English

According to a study by the University of Puerto Rico, nine out of ten Puerto Ricans residing in Puerto Rico do not speak English at an advanced level. More recently, according to the 2005–2009 Population and Housing Narrative Profile for Puerto Rico, among people over the age of 5 residing in Puerto Rico, 95% speak a language other than English at home, especially Spanish. Of those who do not speak English at home, 100% speak Spanish and less than 0.5% speak a language other than Spanish, 85% of those surveyed consider that they do not speak English "very well".

Disappeared languages

In the XV century when the first contact with Europeans occurred, Puerto Rico was populated by the so-called Taínos classics, a language widespread throughout the eastern Caribbean of the Arawak family. Some words of this language passed as lexical loans to the Spanish of Puerto Rico.