Hispanic vs Latino
Right now, people are actually confused on which term is applicable when referring to the person or culture relating to Spanish. And with the Latino stars that are getting popular, they confused the terms Hispanic and Latino even more. So what could be the dissimilarities for Hispanic and Latino terms?
The first difference lies in the kind of figures of speech of these words. Hispanic is an adjective while Latino could be an adjective or a noun. Hispanic was coined from the dwellers of the Iberian Peninsula which includes Portugal and Spain. Latino on the other hand originated from the dwellers of Latin America which includes Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico and other places in South and Central America.
Latino is an abbreviation of the term Latin America. It was commonly being used in the United States to describe people with Hispanics background. But then in the 70’s the US government used the term Hispanic to refer to those who have an association with the Spanish culture or language. It needs to be stressed though that the main focus is the Spanish language and not the country it originated.
In the United States, Latino is known because it actually refers to the big number of immigrants who came from Latin America and are now residing in the USA. And right now, there are so many Latino superstars that are popular in Hollywood, thus the term getting more popular than the term Hispanic.
One important thing that you need to remember when trying to differentiate the Latino and Hispanic is that Latino pertains to the countries or cultures that belonged to the Latin America while Hispanic describes the language or culture that were previously under the Spanish colony. You can be a Latino even if you are not really Spanish-speaking as long as you originated from the nations from Latin America. Hispanic on the other hand simply refers to the Spanish language.