Why are only Portuguese/Spanish speaking considered Latinos?

Question

How about the Romanians, Italians of course, French, they are all Latins too, and where Latin was first spoken in...Rome.

Answer 1

It is not about the language "Latin". The term means people who comes from Latin American cultures. That includes those who have a Latin American heritage but do not speak Spanish, as is true of many children of immigrants.

Answer 2

Wow, 8 answers saying 8 different things. Here's my vision> 1. You're Hispanic if you speak Spanish, not our case, we're not Spanish. 2. I hate the word "latino" used by English-speaker, it's LATIN AMERICAN, YOU DON'T SPEAK SPANISH OR PORTUGUESE... anyway, yes, we're Latin Americans. Latin Americans are all people born in the countries in the Americas that speak latin language, that's the case of Portuguese. Nothing to do with race. 3. I don't know if Brazil is the most diverse country of Latin America... it's the one with the biggest publicity, that's for sure. People simply don't hear as much about from Countries like Colombia and Peru that are also very racially diverse. 4. Yes there are Amerindian and Asian Brazilians but their percentage on total population is very small. Asian are 0,5% of Brazilian population and Amerindian 0,4%. Brazil is basically BLACK and WHITE and MIXED. 5. As I said in a previous answer, I believe Argentina and Uruguay have more people with non-Iberian (Portugal and Spain) last names than Brazil. It's the publicity again... Now, let's correct some answer above 1. Brazil is not 80% black. FACT. It doesn't matter if you show me statistics brought by the AFRO-wikipedia saying that 83% of Brazilians have 10% of black blood. Even if they have... I refuse to accept that a person with 10% of black blood should be considered black. That's simply... NONSENSE. I can tell you that about 60% of the Brazilian population has no visible black features and 30% of Brazilians population have no difference in terms of physical appearance from an European. 2. Brazilians are not "Portugueses". Portuguese is a language or people born in Portugal. The word for all people that speaks Portuguese is: "lusophone". Hispanic and latin is not the same thing

Answer 3

Portuguese people are White/Mediterranean in terms of race, just like all other Southern Europeans.

The term "Latin" only applies to linguistic origin of romance languages - Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish, and Romanian. Some people mix up linguistic origin with race, BUT they are two different things!

Answer 4

Whether they are of light complexion or metizo, {combo of Spainard and native Ameican , ie Maya, Inca or Aztec} latin Americans are just that Latin American. French and Italian are derivatives of Latin. There are certain words in Portuguese that sounfd like Spanish such as depending on pronouciation, certain words can be either Spanish or Italian. Romanian is more of a Slavic language like Croatian or Ukrainian. Unlike romantic or Germanic {English, Swedish and Dutch} languages which use the Roman Alphabet, Slavic languages utilize the cyrillic alphabet.

Answer 5

I have once answered a question on friends and enemies. One always chooses one own beloved enemies. During the centuries, as France has been just put out of a game and Quebec remained British problem, the only real enemies were Spaniards in their colonies. Spaniards had stoped being Spanish (declaring independence) but remained enemies. To whom? To ANGLO Americans (Scots, Irishman, Englishman...). So AngoAmercans started having Latin American enemies, or simply LATINOS, Brazilians just felt into the category to avoid any further headache about naming nations and people one has no idea about. Proof, no Caribbean nation has ever been considered Latinos(Ricans serve as an exception to prove the rule).

Answer 6

Latino is another word for Latin American. So we don't have to worry about Romanian-speaking Americans, for example. But there are French speakers in the Americas... hm.

Answer 7

Actually, i work with an italian guy and a french girl and they both consider themselves latinos.

Answer 8

Because In this terms you're talking about America Latina,,It refers to Mexico, Central and South America,, you are not talking about the real LATIN language

Answer 9

well 1st of all it's only spanish speaking countries that are called latinos or from hispanic background and that includes most of south american countries + the latin america and pfcorse Spain.

Answer 10

Latinos is no longer seen as the root.... Latin, it is mainly now seen as the continent Latin America.