derivation of Hispanics and Latinos?

[<o_o>]

Hi,

I see you already have a thread explaining why Europeans are termed Caucasion… I have another similar question.

The term Hispanic is derived from Spain and it is used to categorized people who originated from there, whereas Latinos pertain to people in South America which is also known as Latin America, right? I know that if you call a Hispanic a Latino, or vice versa, they get easily offended by it because it doesn’t apply to them. But what I don’t get is why Latin America is called Latin America, and the people calling themselves Latinos when Latin is a (dead) language from Europe. Is this because of their assimilated language in part taken from Latin?

Much appreciated if you could clarify it for me.

Thanks.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Spanish and Portuguese are Romance languages, direct descendants of Latin. Those are the official languages of almost all of the Western Hemisphere south of the Rio Grande. It's just convenient to be able to lump all those people together under one label.

Of course French is a Romance language too so it would be so easy to include the Haitians and the people of Martinique and French Guiana (whatever name that country has now) as "Latin Americans" and for all I know some people do. But then you'd have to include the Quebecoises and the Cajuns.

As for their language being "in part taken from Latin," the Romance languages are far more Latin than, say English is Old High German. Our language has been subject to far more external influences than theirs have. Even with all the Spanish and Portuguese words of Arabic origin, it would be far easier for a modern Spaniard or Brazilian to learn to communicate with Julius Caesar than it would be for us to learn to communicate with Beowulf (assuming for the sake of argument that he was real).

It's possible to write some very simple sentences in Italian that are identical to their Latin counterparts, and Italian college students are fond of doing that as a prank in Latin class. You could never even come close with modern English and Anglo-Saxon.

But I do enjoy the mental image that phrases like "Latin fashion" evoke. They're thinking of thong bikinis or serapes, I'm thinking of togas.

 

[valich]

Fraggle is right, but I've never heard that "I know that if you call a Hispanic a Latino, or vice versa, they get easily offended by it because it doesn’t apply to them." Where have you heard this? In accordance with Fraggle's reply, I think that calling South Americans "Latinos" is a misnomer - an incorrect term - and it probably did just originate from the Spaniards going there and the origin of the language.