Languages
Indiana University allows students to take courses in five Latin American and Caribbean languages: Portuguese and Spanish are offered through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, while the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies offers courses in Haitian Creole and Maya. In addition, Quechua is available via synchronous distance learning from the University of Michigan, through the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA).
Haitian Creole is spoken by Haiti's entire population of over 8 million and nearly 1 million people in the Haitian-American Diaspora in the U.S. Haitian Creole, the second official language of Haiti, is closely related to other French Creole languages of the area – those spoken in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, St. Lucia, as well as in French Guyana and Louisiana.
Maya is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. To native speakers, it is known only as Maya – "Yucatec" is a tag linguists use to distinguish it from other Mayan languages (such as K'iche' and Itza' Maya). In the Mexican states of Yucatán, some parts of Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Quintana Roo, Maya remains many speakers' first language, with approximately 1 million speakers.
Quechua is the language (or more accurately, a family of languages) of the Inca Empire, currently spoken by more than 13 million people in the Andean republics of South America, an area extending from southern Colombia to northern Argentina and Chile (and including Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador).