Spanish is a Romance language and the world's third most widely spoken tongue. Spanish is spoken as a first language by about 352 million people, or by 417 million when non-native speaks are included. The majority of the world's Spanish speakers live in Latin America. While every Latin American country is somewhat distinctive in retaining its own accent and some unique linguistic features, residents of countries such as Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico are generally considered to speak the purest Latin American Spanish. Another variety is that spoken in the Caribbean and Latin America's costal regions. Caribbean Spanish is characterized by its informality, its fast pace, and the habitual dropping of the "s" at the end of words. Another form has developed around Buenos Aires and in parts of Uruguay. It is recognizable by some grammatical features that would be considered out-of-date elsewhere and a vocabulary and pronunciation that has been heavily influenced by the large number of Italian settlers who migrated to the area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Latin American Spanish is spoken in Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Latin American Spanish is also used by large populations residing in Belize, the United States and throughout the Caribbean.