Languages
Native
Spanish
97%
Language Samples
Hola, ¿cómo estás?
Hello, how are you?
Estoy muy bien, gracias.
I am very well, thanks.
Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Honduran Spanish is a Central American variety, broadly intelligible across the isthmus and characterised by the use of 'vos' in informal speech alongside 'tú'. Spanish was established after the conquest of the 1520s and effectively replaced the pre-existing languages of the densely populated lowland regions. Small indigenous communities still speak Lenca, Ch'orti' Maya, Garifuna (on the Caribbean coast), and Miskito (in the eastern rainforests), though none exceeds 2% of the population. The Bay Islands off the northern coast retain an English-speaking community descended from British settlers and formerly enslaved people.
Similar Languages
Spanish (El Salvador)
97%
Spanish (Guatemala)
96%
Spanish (Nicaragua)
96%
Portuguese
89%
Media
Altar Q at Copán — a Classic Maya site where an early form of Ch'orti' was spoken
Photo: Adalberto Hernandez Vega from Copan Ruinas, Honduras · CC BY 2.0
Did You Know
01
The Bay Islands of Honduras are home to an English-speaking community whose dialect preserves archaic features of 18th-century English brought by British and Caribbean settlers.
02
Garifuna — spoken by around 100,000 people on Honduras's Caribbean coast — is a unique blend of Arawakan, Carib, English, and French, and is a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage.
03
Honduras was home to the southernmost major Maya city, Copán, where one of the longest continuous hieroglyphic inscriptions in the Maya world was carved on the Hieroglyphic Stairway.