Central America has many unique features that go from the north-western borders of Belize and Guatemala to the Isthmus of Panama. There it connects to the Colombian Pacific Lowlands in South America.
Central America is an area of some 524,000 square kilometres. The Pacific Ocean is on the southwest, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, and the Gulf of Mexico to the north. Most of Central America rests on the Caribbean Plate.
The region is geologically active. It has volcanic eruptions and earthquakes from time to time.
The 1976 Guatemala earthquake killed 23,001 people. Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, was devastated by earthquakes in 1931 and 1972. The last one killed about 5,001 people. Three earthquakes hit El Salvador. The first one in 1986 and two in 2001. An earthquake devastated northern and central Costa Rica in 2009. It killed at least 35 people. In Honduras a powerful earthquake happened in 2009.
Volcanic eruptions are common. In 1968 the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica erupted. This killed at least 87 people. The 3 villages of Tabacon, Pueblo Nuevo, and San Luis were buried under ash.
Central America has many mountain ranges; the longest are the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the Cordillera Isabelia and the Cordillera de Talamanca. Most of the population of Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala live in valleys, between mountains. Valleys are also suitable for the production of coffee, beans and other crops.
Central America is part of the Mesoamerican Biodiversity hotspot, boasting 7% of the world's biodiversity. As a bridge between North and South America, Central America has many species from the Nearctic and the Neotropic ecozones. However the southern countries (Costa Rica and Panama) of the region have more biodiversity than the northern countries (Guatemala and Belize), meanwhile the central countries (Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador) have least biodiversity. The table shows current statistics for the seven countries:
French language
French (French: "", pronounced "Fronce-eh") is a Romance language that was first spoken in France. It is also spoken in Belgium (Wallonia), Luxembourg, Quebec (Canada), Switzerland (Romandy) and many different countries in Africa (Francophone Africa). About 220 million people speak French as a native or a second language. It has also been one of the roots of other languages such as the Haitian Creole language. Like the other Romance languages, its nouns have genders that are divided into masculine ("masculin") and feminine ("féminin") words.
In ancient times, the Celts lived in what is now France. In those days, the land was called Gaul (Latin: Gallia). The Romans conquered Gallia and divided it into provinces. Because the Romans spoke Latin, the local people learned Latin and began to speak it. Their own language, Gaulish, tended to be spoken less often, although Breton is a language still spoken today in the part of France called Brittany, that came from the old Celtic language.
French pronunciation, more so than other Romance languages, became radically different from Latin. After the Roman Empire fell and Germanic peoples swarmed the countryside, Vulgar Latin was changing quickly. In medieval France it changed into two dialects or languages: "langue d'oc" and "langue d'oïl". They both mean "language of yes", because "oc" was the word for "yes" in the south, and "oïl" meant "yes" in the north. Today, the word for yes in French is "oui", pronounced like "we".
In 1635, France established the French Academy in order to standardize the French language. To this day, the academy establishes the rules for Standard French.
"Langue d'oc" is now called Occitan, and it is still spoken by many people in Southern France.
French uses the Roman alphabet, just like English. There are a few differences because vowels can have three types of diacritics added on to them. They are the acute accent é; grave accent è and circumflex accent î. A cedilla can also be added onto a c to make ç.
If a word ends with a consonant, this will usually not be pronounced unless the next word starts with a vowel. However, if the word is very short or the last consonant is a c, r, l or f, this is still pronounced.
Here are some examples of French words and sentences :
Many French words are like English words, because English took many words from the Norman language, a dialect of French influenced by Old Norse. This is true even though scholars consider English to be a Germanic language, like German. For example, many English words ending with "tion", "sion", "ible", or "able" came from the French language.
French and English have many cognates, which are words that look and sound similar because they come from the same . Here are some examples:
Prime minister
A prime minister manages the politics of a country and is the head of government. With countries that have kings and queens (known as monarchs), they are very important because they are in charge of most of the politics (they are "head of the government"). In countries with a president, they might be in charge of most of the politics (as in the Republic of Ireland), or they may be in day-to day charge, but taking orders from the president as in France. The opposite of a prime minister is a composite minister.
Countries with a Prime Minister:
Greenland
Greenland is the world's largest island.
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark. This large Arctic island is near Iceland to the east and Canada to the west. It has a population of only 50,000 people, limited by its cold climate. Most of the civilian population lives in the southern part of the island, on the coasts. The capital of Greenland is Nuuk.
The island is democratic, with its own elections and a representative seat of government in Nuuk. It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a constitutional monarchy with Queen Margrethe II as head of state.
The island's Thule Air Base is under Danish control, but is administered by the United States Air Force.
The island is the least densely populated country in the world, with a density of 0.026 people per square kilometer. Antarctica is not counted because it is not an independent country and has no permanent inhabitants.
The ice sheet that covers Greenland may hide three separate islands, which have been joined by glaciers since the last geologic ice age.
In Greenland, there are no forests. In the south, at the coastal area, only some dwarf trees are found.
Greenland has been inhabited at intervals over at least the last 4,500 years by Arctic peoples. They came from what is now Canada. Norsemen settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century, having previously settled Iceland.
Norsemen would later set sail from Greenland and Iceland with Leif Erikson. They were the first known Europeans to reach North America. They did so nearly 500 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean islands. Inuit peoples arrived in Greenland in the 13th century. Though under continuous influence of Norway and Norwegians, Greenland was not formally under the Norwegian crown until 1261. Their colonies declined after the Black Death in the late 1400s. Denmark–Norway, joined in alliance at the time, reclaimed sovereignty over the island in the 17th century. Greenland became Danish in 1814.
The island is populated mostly by Inuit and Scandinavians who speak Greenlandic, an Eskimo-Aleut language. Danish is also spoken by most people. The national anthem of Greenland is Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit. Greenlandic became the sole official language in June 2009. However, it is the dialect of western Greenland, leaving other dialects to become less used and endangered. Danish is used in practice by professional people and by many of the Inuit population. English is taught in schools from the first year onwards.
Until 2009, there were 20 communes in Greenland. Unless stated otherwise, they are in the district Kitaa: