f the non-native languages present in Palau, English and Japanese ar official while Philippine languages, Carolinian, and Chinese are used extensively.|
|The CIA World Factbook is in the public domain. Accordingly, it may be copied freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).|
- Main article: Music of Spain
Folk and popular dance and music also varies greatly among Hispanics. For instance, the music from Spain is a lot different from the Hispanic American, although there is a high grade of exchange between both continents. In addition, due to the high national development of the diverse identities of Spain, there is a lot of music in the different languages the Peninsula (Catalan and Basque, mainly). See, for instance, Music of Catalonia or Rock català.
On the other side, Latin America is home to a wide variety of music, instead it's usual to speak about "Latin" music as a single genre. Hispanic Caribbean music tends to favor complex polyrhythms of African origin. Mexican music shows combined influences of mostly Spanish and Native American origin, while traditional Northern Mexican music — norteño and banda — is more influenced by country-and-western music and the polka, brought by Central European settlers to Mexico. The music of Hispanic Americans — such as tejano music — has influences in rock, jazz, R&B, pop, and country music as well as traditional Mexican music such as Mariachi. Meanwhile, native Andean sounds and melodies are the backbone of Peruvian and Bolivian music, but also play a significant role in the popular music of most South American countries and are heavily incorporated into the folk music of Ecuador and Chile and the tunes of Colombia, and again in Chile where they play a fundamental role in the form of the greatly followed nueva canción. In US communities of immigrants from these countries it is common to hear these styles. Latin pop, Rock en Español, Latin hip-hop, Salsa, Freestyle/Dance, and Reggaeton styles tend to appeal to the broader Hispanic population, and varieties of Cuban music are popular with many Hispanics of all backgrounds.
- Main article: Hispanic literature
There is a huge variety of literature from US Hispanics and the Hispanic countries. Of the most recognized writers are Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Gabriel García Márquez, Romulo Gallegos, Rubén Darío, Mario Vargas Llosa, Giannina Braschi, Cristina Peri Rossi, Luisa Valenzuela, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and Ernesto Sabato, amongst others.
With regard to religious affiliation among Hispanics, Christianity — specifically Roman Catholicism — is usually the first religious tradition that comes to mind. Indeed, the Spaniards took the Roman Catholic faith to Latin America, and Roman Catholicism continues to be the overwhelmingly predominant, but not the only, religious denomination amongst most Hispanics. A small but growing number of Hispanics belong to a Protestant denomination.
There are also Hispanic Jews, of which most are the descendants of Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from Europe (German Jews, Russian Jews, Polish Jews, etc.) to Latin America, particularly Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Cuba (Argentina is host to the third largest Jewish population in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States and Canada) in the 19th century and during and following World War II. Some Hispanic Jews may also originate from the small communities of reconverted descendants of anusim — those whose Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Jewish ancestors long ago hid their Jewish ancestry and beliefs in fear of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition in the Iberian peninsula and Latin America. There are also the now Catholic-professing descendants of marranos and the Hispano crypto-Jews believed to exist in the once Spanish-held Southwestern United States and scattered through Latin America. Additionally, there are Sephardic Jews who are descendants of those Jews who fled Spain to Turkey, Syria, and North Africa, some of who have now migrated to Latin America, holding on to some Sp