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> Latino/a excludes French-speaking Haitians The vast majority of Haitians don’t speak French, but if they did, why would “Latino” exclude them? French is a La

> Latino/a excludes French-speaking Haitians The vast majority of Haitians don’t speak French, but if they did, why would “Latino” exclude them? French is a Latin-derived language as much as Spanish and Portuguese are, and “latino” is a substring of the word for “Latin American” in all three languages (Latinoaméricain, in the case of French).

cout 5y ago
Correct, the majority speak Haitian Creole, though that is a language derived in part from French. I don't want to debate whether Creole-speaking and French-speaking Haitians should be considered Latin, only point out that many people do consider them Latin, since Hispanola is part of Latin America. French typically uses no suffix for masculine words and a -e suffix for feminine words. I am not a fluent French speaker, nor an expert in French etymology, but it is my understanding that Latino and Latina are words borrowed from Spanish (or arguably from American English), and are not originally French words themselves. Latinoaméricain(e) is also derived from Spanish (latinoamericano). I'm love learning new things about language, so feel free to teach me something new if I have misunderstood something.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  Latinoaméricain is not derived from Spanish; it follows native French conventions for demonyms (e.g. New Zealanders are néozélandais). The term Latin America (Amérique latine) was in fact often used with the explicit intent of highlighting the cultural similarity between French people and Latin Americans. From Wikipedia: There is no universal agreement on the origin of the term Latin America. The concept and term came into being in the nineteenth century, following political independence of countries from Spain and Portugal. It was popularized in 1860s France during the reign of Napoleon III. The term Latin America was a part of its attempt to create a French empire in the Americas.[13] Research has shown that the idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic and cultural affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "Latin race", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe", ultimately overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe", "Anglo-Saxon America," and "Slavic Europe."[14]
  - cout 5y ago
    I disagree that Latinoaméricain follows convention. Most other contracted demonyms in French do not use -o- as a connecting vowel; hyphenation seems to be more common. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_demonyms https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_demonyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonymic_forms_for_countries_and_nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonym... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectivals_and_demonyms_for_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectivals_and_demony... In the case of néozélandais, the -o- comes from the Greek neo-. I do not know why neo- is the convention rather than the Latin novo-. Is -o- is the connecting vowel you would expect to see used with the word Latin? There are other french words that use -o- as the connecting vowel (e.g. démocratique), but those words usually have a Greek origin. Since the word Latin does not have a Greek origin, I would expect the connecting vowel to be -i- as in latinisme. The origin of Amérique Latine is not necessarily related to the origin of latinoaméricano.

cout 5y ago

Correct, the majority speak Haitian Creole, though that is a language derived in part from French. I don't want to debate whether Creole-speaking and French-speaking Haitians should be considered Latin, only point out that many people do consider them Latin, since Hispanola is part of Latin America. French typically uses no suffix for masculine words and a -e suffix for feminine words. I am not a fluent French speaker, nor an expert in French etymology, but it is my understanding that Latino and Latina are words borrowed from Spanish (or arguably from American English), and are not originally French words themselves. Latinoaméricain(e) is also derived from Spanish (latinoamericano). I'm love learning new things about language, so feel free to teach me something new if I have misunderstood something.

umanwizard 5y ago
Latinoaméricain is not derived from Spanish; it follows native French conventions for demonyms (e.g. New Zealanders are néozélandais). The term Latin America (Amérique latine) was in fact often used with the explicit intent of highlighting the cultural similarity between French people and Latin Americans. From Wikipedia: There is no universal agreement on the origin of the term Latin America. The concept and term came into being in the nineteenth century, following political independence of countries from Spain and Portugal. It was popularized in 1860s France during the reign of Napoleon III. The term Latin America was a part of its attempt to create a French empire in the Americas.[13] Research has shown that the idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic and cultural affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "Latin race", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe", ultimately overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe", "Anglo-Saxon America," and "Slavic Europe."[14]
- cout 5y ago
  I disagree that Latinoaméricain follows convention. Most other contracted demonyms in French do not use -o- as a connecting vowel; hyphenation seems to be more common. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_demonyms https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_demonyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonymic_forms_for_countries_and_nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonym... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectivals_and_demonyms_for_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectivals_and_demony... In the case of néozélandais, the -o- comes from the Greek neo-. I do not know why neo- is the convention rather than the Latin novo-. Is -o- is the connecting vowel you would expect to see used with the word Latin? There are other french words that use -o- as the connecting vowel (e.g. démocratique), but those words usually have a Greek origin. Since the word Latin does not have a Greek origin, I would expect the connecting vowel to be -i- as in latinisme. The origin of Amérique Latine is not necessarily related to the origin of latinoaméricano.