South America's only languages are Portuguese and Spanish.
The Romance languages ( sometimes called the Romanic languages , Latin languages , or Neo-Latin languages ) are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the sixth and ninth centuries and that thus form a branch of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family . The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish ( 410 million ) , Portuguese ( 250 million ) , French ( 80 million ) , Italian ( 60 million ) , and Romanian ( 25 million ) . South America . It may also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas , which is the model used in nations that speak Romance languages . Given a long history of colonialism , the overwhelming majority of South Americans speak Portuguese or Spanish , and societies and states commonly reflect Western traditions .