Have you ever wondered what is the difference between the terms Latino and Hispanic? Most people use these words interchangeably, but there is actually a difference. There is a huge overlap I hear where most people who say they are Latinos also say they are Hispanic, but not everyone is both. But what exactly does these words means? The word origins come from the Latin word “Hispanicus” meaning from, Hispania, which was a former province of the Roman empire, if you translate the word “Hispania” from Latin into English you get the word Spain, this is because this is where the name of the country came from, and the Spanish name for the country Spain is “España” (Dictionary.com, 2016). So the term Hispanic generally means things related to Spain, …show more content…
While the term Hispanic includes people from Spain and exclude people from Brazil. Latino is basically the opposite, people from Brazil are Latinos while people from Spain are not. The definition of the word is actually incredibly simple, it just means someone from Latin America. Now the problem comes from identifying where exactly Latin America is. Latin America is everywhere on the American continent that speak a language that comes from Latin (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian) or Romance Languages. The term Latino from English comes from a short version of Spanish word Latino Americano meaning “Latin American” although this could cause some confusion because although Latino is an English word, it is also a Spanish word, meaning “Latin” so for example “el alfabeto latino” would be the, Latin alphabet, or “paises latinos” would be Latin countries. Which could potentially refer to any country that speaks Romance Language, but people from Italy are no Latinos because the word Latino in English means Latin American and Italy is in Europe not in the Americas. So where exactly is Latin America? Latin America is