So, in French, another language where nouns are masculine or feminine, has a convention that a mixed group of people are defined as masculine unless they're completely female. Take a group of blonds, for example (one of the few remaining words in English that can be easily gender defined - blond and blonde). A group of blonde women, en francais, would be blonde. A mixed group of blonde men and blonde women, would be blond. Now, to the topic at hand: A gender nuetral term for Latinos. That in of itself isn't a wholly bad idea, but if Latinos themselves never use it, I question the point of it; I digress, however. As a general rule, the masculine Latino describes the entire group, females included. Females themselves are still Latinas. I myself would argue that the gender of the group shouldn't be described whether or not there's a male in the group (thus making a group of 50 Latinas and one Latino collectively Latino, by the rules of French, and though I don't know Spanish grammatical rules nearly as I well, I suspect it's the same for Spanish; I'd argue that that's a group of Latinas). Perhaps instances like this makes a gender nuetral term desirable. Okay, I can see the logic there. Every other group appears to have a gender neutral adjective in English. French. English. Spaniard. Indian. Malay. Aussie. Et cetera. However, Latinx feels like a lazy copout. I think a better term can be coined.
The problem is that we're lumping people together based upon a large geographical region that (sorta) has a dominant language. We don't tend to do this with other groups. For example, there's 29 countries where French is the official language. We don't lump those groups into being "French," but it basically doesn't matter where you come from, if you're from south of the US border, you're "Latino." Nevermind that there are huge variations in culture, ethnicity, and the like (not to mention that Spanish isn't even the dominant language when you're talking population numbers), you're all considered the same. We really need to fix all that shit.
But in French, we do. The term "francophone" is very widely used. It means "French-speaking peoples", no matter where they come from -- Africa, Europe, Quebec, or whatever. We also use the terms "anglophone" (English-speaking), "hispanophone" (Spanish-speaking), and "germanophone" (German-speaking) very widely. However, we don't have a particular term for people from Latin America other than "people from Latin America" (which, oddly enough, does not include Quebec, even though they are also from the American continent and also speak a Latin language -- in fact, they aren't even the only French-speaking country over there).
No, because this is where the concept of Latino breaks down -- they don't speak Latin. They speak Spanish. Latino works for the lack of a better term, but only just. Calling them Latin makes no sense because they're not Roman or Italian (which is Latin's direct successor). Hispanic would be a better term, but iirc, that speaks to a specific group of people, I think in the Caribbean and not the mainland.
There are historical accounts from 19th and 20th century Tampa of Jim Crow type discrimination against "Latins", which included Cubans, Italians, Mexicans, Spaniards....
Although Romans were the original Latins, existing in the territory of Latium, the name Latin has become expansive, referring to speakers of Romance (i.e., derived from Roman Latin) languages. The word Latin in English has the same connotation as Latino in Spanish. Is it senseless to refer to people the same way they refer to themselves? So we don't need a new word. The old one works fine.
This is not accurate. Italian isn't Latin's "direct successor" for many reasons. The two chief are: 1. There are further linguistic steps between Latin and modern Italian which preclude the use of the word "direct". 2. There's nothing special about Italian as a descendant from Latin compared to Spanish or Romanian. In fact, Romanian and Spanish are both closer to Latin than Italian is in many regards.
Italian is certainly a descendent of Roman street ("vulgar") Latin, but you're right: the other Romance languages are also similarly evolved. The transition between Latin and Italian was very gradual, so much so that the great Italian poet Dante considered the Italian he was writing in to be Latin. My understanding is that grammatically Romanian is quite similar to its parent language, but it is in other respects quite different. Sardinian and Italian are said to be closest to Latin, but are nonetheless far from mutually intelligible with it.
If I was Han Solo, I'd be blasting my computer right now and muttering: "Boring conversation anyway..."
I was actually pondering how directly Romanian was to Latin while writing my post, considering how relatively separated Romania was from Rome. I wonder if it were more anchored, if you will, to Constantinople.
Too lazy to Google, but as I recall, when the Romans conquered Dacia, they colonized the shit out of it, and it became very Romanized. Hence Romania. That was before the Greek half of the Empire became ascendent. Edit: okay, looked it up. Yes, Rome under Emperor Trajan conquered Dacia in the early 2nd Century. The Greek part of the empire would remain provincial for another couple of hundred years. After all, there could be no Constantinople before there was a Constantine.
Don't tell my grandfather his family is latin because he hates those people despite the reality his father was a FOB that came over through ellis Island and he is proud of the fact his father had nothing and worked hard and had a huge family that spoke more italian and german than english. That is not to mention his wife was a naturalized citizen and my mother did not come here until he was secure with a house and his citizenship from service. I tried to remind him before he lost his mind that most latin immigrants are just like him and the family he grew up in. It is amazing how some people take an opening and then want to shut the door for people after them. Back in my grandfather's day italian's were the slimy criminal victims of prejudice. My great grandfather had to deal with prejudice from people who did not want him in their neighborhood in westchester. The family spoke mostly in italian at family gatherings. They knew english, but it was more comfortable for them. It is just that some people have empathy and some people have anger.
