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How come italians aren't considered Latino? In alot of ways I think us italians share tons with hispanic and lusophone cultures. Heavy catholism, tight knit families, relaxed work ethic (admittedly not so good), generally outgoing boistrious personalites. What do you think?
As others have alluded to, Latin is the language spoken by a tribe on a hill around Rome whose descendants conquered the Mediterranean world. Simply put, the provinces of Gaul, Hispania, Lusitania, and Dacia, among some other areas, adopted the language which evolved into the modern languages of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and several minor ones.
"Latino" would be the singular dative or ablative case of the noun in the Latin language, singular masculine or neuter if an adjective, not sure how stupid that is.
"Latin America" is a modern term coined by some French geographer around the 1700s. It refers to those countries/territories in the Americas where Spanish, French and Portuguese are widely spoken; in addition, because of Italian immigration to both the US and Argentina/Uruguay and other countries in the Americas, Italian once was (doubt if it still is) the third most spoken language after English and Spanish.
In US institutionalized racism - including the census questions -, Hispanic/Latino refers to people who speak Spanish. That indeed may be stupid.
The census asks whether one is Hispanic or Latino; it further questions what origin by country of Hispanic/Latino, but also gives the option of generic Latino, without specification.
I put just Latino without further specification, to protest racism and skew the numbers a tiny bit, yet technically correct by the first definition of Latino.
Again, the origin of "Latin" is somewhere on a hill around Rome. By this definition, Italians are among the original Latins.
"Latin America" is a geographical expression coined during the European discoveries/colonization period. At one time, Italian was the third most widely spoken language in the Americas during the first mass European immigration period.
"Hispanic/Latino" is a technical term in US institutionalized racism. By this definition, Italians or Italian Americans are not considered Latino, having been for the most part assimilated in the US by the 1940s/1950s.
"How come italians aren't considered Latino? In alot of ways I think us italians share tons with hispanic and lusophone cultures. Heavy catholism, tight knit families, relaxed work ethic (admittedly not so good), generally outgoing boistrious personalites. What do you think?"
And the POLISH!!! ALSO LATINO????? Not! Italians are White.
"How come italians aren't considered Latino? In alot of ways I think us italians share tons with hispanic and lusophone cultures. Heavy catholism, tight knit families, relaxed work ethic (admittedly not so good), generally outgoing boistrious personalites. What do you think?"
And the POLISH!!! ALSO LATINO????? Not! Italians are White.
"How come italians aren't considered Latino? In alot of ways I think us italians share tons with hispanic and lusophone cultures. Heavy catholism, tight knit families, relaxed work ethic (admittedly not so good), generally outgoing boistrious personalites. What do you think?"
And the POLISH!!! ALSO LATINO????? Not! Italians are White.
It's hard to use the "pars pro toto" when talking about the personality of a certain people. What defines an ethnicity is basically the language, heritage and link to a country. In some cases, also the religion, but only in the case of some muslim countries. The other aspects are peripherical, even because the persons in the world are different from each other.
For instance: I am brazilian, because I am born and live in Brazil, because my parents are both brazilian, and because my native language is portuguese. I also received the baptism in the Roman Catholic Church, although currently I belong to the Rosicrucian Fellowship. But... I don't care about football, I prefer mountains and snow instead of beaches, I don't like samba (actually, I dislike it completely), I don't dance, I never ate feijoada (I'm vegetarian), I never voted for Lula - and, I think, I'm not less brazilian because of this.
So, there are a huge diversity in every part of the world. Poland is regarded as a very religious people, but will some polish atheist be less pole than the others? Or a muslim italian, or an american who loves the "soccer" football or is socialist... or even a 35 years-old german living with their parents... ?
In America, Latino is a term used to refer to Spanish speakers of the Americas.
Latin is used to refer to the culture of Italy and other Mediterranean and southern European countries influenced by Italy from Antiquity with the expansion of the Roman Empire and later by the Catholic church. However, for this purpose, the term Romance is usually preferred to Latin.
I agree 100%. I am of Mediterranean ancestry. I am not Latino.
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