page_title: Geographical distribution of Italian speakers
section_title: South America
hierarchical_section_title: Geographical distribution of Italian speakers / Americas / South America
caption_attribution_description: Español: Porcentaje de ciudadanos nacidos en Italia (por parroquias), que residen en Venezuela según el XIV Censo Nacional (2011). English: Map of Venezuela, showing percentage of population born in Italy, by parroquias (parishes) according the 2011 Census. Italiano: Mappa del Venezuela, che mostra la percentuale di popolazione nata in Italia, da Parrocchia civile, secondo il Censimento del 2011.
context_page_description: In addition to the Italian-speaking area in Europe, Italian-speaking minorities are present in many countries.
context_section_description: Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. In Argentina about 63% of the population has Italian ancestry, and Italian is the second most spoken language after the official language of Spanish, with over 1 million (mainly of the older generation) speaking it at home. Italian has also influenced the dialect of Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay, mostly in phonology, known as Rioplatense Spanish. Its impact can also be seen in the Portuguese prosody of the Brazilian state of São Paulo, which itself has 15 million Italian descendants.  Italian bilingual speakers can be found in the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela, Italian is the second most spoken language after Spanish, with around 200,000 speakers, same as Colombia. Smaller Italian-speaking minorities on the continent are also found in Paraguay and Ecuador.
  Also, variants of regional languages of Italy are used. Examples include the Talian dialect in Brazil, where is officially a historic patrimony of Rio Grande do Sul; the Chipilo Venetian dialect in Mexico; and Cocoliche and Lunfardo in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires.
caption: Percentage of population born in Italy through Venezuela
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