Cuban Spanish is the most popular and widely spoken language in the South American nation of Cuba, spoken by close to 11 million people. Both Cuban Spanish and Haitian Creole are the most dominant languages in the country.
Cuban Spanish belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and the West Iberian language group, and is known to be one of the most difficult forms of Spanish spoken in the world. In comparison to the Castellan Spanish spoken in mainland Spain, Cuban Spanish is quite different in terms of grammar and pronunciation in particular.
90% of the citizens of Cuba speak Spanish as their first language. Aside from Spanish, Creole is spoken by about 400,000 people, with classes being conducted in Creole in regions such as Havana, Guantanamo, and Matanzas.
Some of the minority languages in Cuba include the Galician, Corsican, Lucumí, and Haitian Creole. Haitian Creole is a major language in Cuba and the second most widely spoken language, spoken by about 4% of the population or 300,000 individuals.
Lucumí is a West African language influenced by the West Yoruba language which has a rather minor presence in Cuba. It has no native speakers in Cuba as it mainly defined as a liturgical language and used as a second language to practitioners of Santeria, an Afro-American religion that developed in Cuba between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Galician, Corsican, Catalan and English are all foreign languages which are represented inside the country to varying degrees. The Galician language is spoken by inhabitants of Galicia, an estimated number of about 4.8 million people. Galician is closely related to Portuguese, as the two languages are derived from the same language group, the West-Iberian language group. The Galician language in Cuba is used by Galician expatriates who are most often found in the country’s major cities. Corsican is spoken by a significant portion of Italian expatriates in Cuba, and represents another major foreign language spoken in Cuba. The Corsican language has its origins from the Corsica and Sardinia regions of France and Italy. Corsican shares the same Tuscan language group with Italian, and is thus closely related to the Italian language.