>> ^Diogenes:
erm, the term 'latin languages' is synonymous with 'romance languages' (i.e. spanish, portuguese, italian, french and romanian)
following the various conquests and subsequent colonization efforts, the people of european, primarily iberian, extraction referred to themselves by nationality generally, and regionality specifically (e.g. espanol and andaluz, respectively) -- purely indigenous peoples were called 'indios' and those of mixed race were called 'mestizos'
logically, as the numbers of the latter increased over time, they took to referring to themselves as latino-americanos or hispano-americanos, now shortened to latino and hispanic
being one of these, i don't find the terms particularly offensive -- what would you rather we do? would 'mexican-american' suffice? or do we need to be even more pc and culturally specific (i.e. moche, quechua, aymara, nazca, jivaro, mayan, olmec, toltec, mexica, aztec, oaxacan, nahuatlese, etc)?



It's not offensive, I'm just annoyed by the misnomer of applying the "latin" label to only a subset of romance-language speakers across the pond from where latin was spoken. We already have some more accurate labels for region of citizenship (mexican, honduran, central american, etc) and genetic origin (hispanic, native american, mixed)

erm, the term 'latin languages' is synonymous with 'romance languages' (i.e. spanish, portuguese, italian, french and romanian)

following the various conquests and subsequent colonization efforts, the people of european, primarily iberian, extraction referred to themselves by nationality generally, and regionality specifically (e.g. espanol and andaluz, respectively) -- purely indigenous peoples were called 'indios' and those of mixed race were called 'mestizos'

logically, as the numbers of the latter increased over time, they took to referring to themselves as latino-americanos or hispano-americanos, now shortened to latino and hispanic

being one of these, i don't find the terms particularly offensive -- what would you rather we do? would 'mexican-american' suffice? or do we need to be even more pc and culturally specific (i.e. moche, quechua, aymara, nazca, jivaro, mayan, olmec, toltec, mexica, aztec, oaxacan, nahuatlese, etc)?