Wait--he wants me to vanish?
I'm Italian and I'm sick of Hispanics being called Latin, people thinking I'm from Mexico, or talking in Spanish to me in McDonalds. I would probably be obliged to disapear too, sigh.
Don't feel too bad. My brother-in-law (born in Chile) was in Egypt about 10 years ago, and the Egyptians thought he was local and were going up and talking to him in Arabic. I'd rather be Italian and mistaken for a Hispanic than a Hispanic mistaken for an Arab.
I'm Italian and I'm sick of Hispanics being called Latin.... Actually, being "Italian" would not necessarily have made your ancestors any more "Latin" than my ancestors from Hispania.
"Latin" only refers to the inhabitants of Latium.
The Latins (Romans) then went on to conquer the rest of Italia that consisted of the Sabines, the Oscans, the Volscians, the Umbrians, the Etruscans, the Ligurians, the Faliscans, the Messapics, the Venetics, the Raetics, the Celts of Cis-Alpine Gaul and the Greeks of Magna Graecia.
Most of Italia and Hispania was populated by "Latins by conquest" except for the actual Latin conquerors that settled in the conquered regions.
Mexicans later became "Latin by conquest by the Latins by conquest".
The fact remains that the Mexican mestizo speaks a language that was passed on (with evolution) directly from the Roman Legionnaire to the Hispaniensi to the Castillian Conquistadors to the Mexican Indians and is therefore a language that traces it's roots directly back to ancient Latium.
The Italian American who only speaks English has broken that linguistic link.
Bronze Teruncius of Capua, Campania, Italia, circa 216-211 BC, with Oscan legend.
>>I'm Italian and I'm sick of Hispanics being called Latin,
Maybe your Roman ancestors shouldn't have done such a good job kicking Iberian butt. ;-)
I had a Romanian girlfriend for a while in grad school, and she was confused by the whole 'Latino' term as well.
What I find funny is when Mexicans or Peruvians (or most anyone from Latin America) get all bent out of shape because I call myself an American, since "America" can refer to the whole north and south. And yet they see no problem taking the term 'Latino' and effectively ignoring Italians, French, Romanians, and Portugese. For some reason I think they include Brazilians with the term.