have you ever wondered what's 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.E most people who are Latino are also Hispanic and vice versa most people who are Hispanic or also Latino but not everyone but what exactly do these words mean unfortunately like so many things neither of these words have an official universally accepted meaning but let's start with the word Hispanic the word origin comes 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 the Spanish word for the country Spain is espania so the term Hispanic generally means things relating to Spain people who are from or whose ancestry come from Spain or any other Spanish speaking country so this means that people from Spain are Hispanic while people from bra brail or Portugal or not most Hispanic people speak Spanish as their native tongue but it's not a requirement to speak it as your native language or even at all as long as your family originates from a Spanish speaking country so Hispanic would be people from any of these countries Spain plus the majority of Latin America with a notable exception of Brazil which speaks Portuguese however there is another Spanish speaking country in the world not in Europe or the Americas but in Africa although the majority of Africa was calling onized by the British and the French there were small parts that were colonized by Spain and there is one country in Africa in which Spanish is the primary official language Equatorial Guinea so are people from Equatorial Guinea Hispanic well it may be SP Spanish speaking country but their people would almost universally not be considered Hispanic this is due to huge cultural differences and the fact that Africa was colonized much later than the Americas and in a very different way most Spanish people left after Independence and although Spanish is spoken by about 88% of the population only about 10 to 15% have a high competence in the language and remember how I said people of Portuguese descent were not Hispanic well this is true in that most definitions exclude Portugal and that Hispanic only applies to Spanish speaking countries but an argument could be made that people of Portuguese descent are in fact Hispanic hear me out the Roman province of hispania consisted of the entire Iberian Peninsula and so technically people from Port Portugal and by extension Brazil are originally from hispania in fact in 1985 Tony COO of Portuguese descent applied to join the congregational Hispanic caucus but he was denied entry he then showed them a map of the Roman Empire in which hispania covered the whole Iberian Peninsula so they let him in some dictionary definitions do include Portugal but generally speaking the term Hispanic does not refer to people of Portuguese descent so moving on to Latino well the term Hispanic includes people from Spain and excludes people from Brazil Latino is basically the opposite people from Brazil are Latino while people from Spain or not the definition of the word itself is actually incredibly simple it just means someone from Latin America easy the problem comes from identifying where exactly Latin America is Latin America is everywhere on the American continence that speaks a language derived from Latin a romance language the term Latino in English comes from a shortened version of the Spanish word Latino Americano meaning Latin American however this could cause some confusion because although the word Latino is an English word it's also a Spanish word meaning Latin so for example alphabeto Latino would be the Latin alphabet or P's Latinos would be Latin countries which could potentially refer to any country that speaks a romance language but people from for example Italy are not Latino because the word Latino in English means Latin American and isales in Europe nor on the Americas so where exactly is Latin America obviously here in this general area but where exactly some definitions are as broad as everything south of the United States in the Western Hemisphere but this definition is far too inclusive in Central America there's Biz which speaks English there's plenty of English and Dutch speaking countries and territories in the cariban all of which should be excluded from Latin America in South America there's another english- speaking country Guyana and Guyana is bordered by suranam which was colonized by the Dutch and bordering suranam is French Guyana so should french Guyana be included within Latin America Latin America is generally thought of as the Spanish speaking countries in the Americas plus Portugese speaking Brazil but the other romance language that exists on the continent French is often forgotten about as well as French Guyana there's also Haiti and the French West Indies in the Caribbean in fact the term Latin America actually originated from France so Latin America would be Mexico part of North America all of Central America excluding B the majority of South America excluding Guyana and Surinam and in the Caribbean Cuba Dominican Republic Puerto Rico Haiti and the French West Indies so like I said there is a huge overlap between the terms which is why they're so often used interchangeably but there are so many differing definitions of Latin America most of which are well wrong for example Oxford dictionary says that Latin America is the parts of the American continents where Spanish and Portuguese is the main national language but this definition neglects the French speaking Parts Miran Wester has two definitions Spanish America and Brazil but once again this excludes the French speaking parts and two all of the America South of the United States but like I said earlier this definition is far too inclusive possibly the best definition is from dictionary.com which defines Latin America as the part of the American continents south of the United States States in which Spanish Portuguese and French is officially spoken but there are other factors which further complicate matters just because a country speaks a certain language doesn't mean the whole country does the biggest example of this would be Quebec and Canada the official languages in Canada are English and French with English being the more widely spoken however in Quebec the sole official language is French and is the dominant language in the province so should Quebec be considered part of Latin America possibly although almost universally Quebec is not included within the definition possibly due to the massive cultural and geographical differences but on top of that not all people within a Latin American country are Latin American this is because many Latin American countries have a large indigenous population there are more than 50 million people in Latin America of Amar Indian descent nearly 9% of the total population the largest ethnic group of the indigenous peoples is the cetw people some of which can trace their rots back to the Incan Empire the largest pre-colombian civilization in the Americas most well known for constructing the UNESCO world heritage site Machu Pichu however the majority of people in Latin America are a mix of both European and amarian descent known as myo generally speaking most people who are myo speak Spanish or Portuguese as their native language and would identify more with their European ancestry rather than their indigenous ancestry although one country which is an interesting exception to this is paguay about 95% of Paraguay's population is myo but the addition is language of Guan is actually more widely spoken in Spanish therefore far more the myal population would identify more with their indigenous Roots rather than their European ancestry compared with that of the rest of Latin America so like so many things the definition of exactly where Latin America is often comes down to Convention rather than any strict criteria and not everyone agrees on exactly where that diff definition is the terms Latino and Hispanic are generally only used in the United States so much so that some definitions limit its use to people who are actually living in the USA the US sensus Bureau asks a specific question relating to Latino Hispanic ethnicity but the words are actually used interchangeably by the sense of bual the only reason it includes both words is due to Regional use Latino is more widely used in the Western United States while Hispanic is more common in the East the term Hispanic was introduced by the sensis bureau in 1970 and its definition specifically stated that it referred only to Spanish speakers and background although despite this one sixth of Brazilian immigrants identified as Hispanic and that's just it census data relies solely on self-reporting and ultimately that's exactly what ethnicity is all about self-identification and whether a person identifies with a specific culture which they want to be part of or choose not to identify themselves in any way if they so choose I think it was best summed up in an article by the Pew Research Center who's Hispanic anyone who says they are and nobody who says they aren't thanks for watching