# Brazil: Hispanic or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 1, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878 "2009-03-01T15:15:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/1 "2009-03-01T15:15:43Z")
Over in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=508500), **brazil84** has managed once again to hijack a discussion (and I’ll admit my culpability as well) and the question has come up as to whether Brazilians are Hispanic. I believe it has been demonstrated quite well that they are not ( **brazil84** ’s equivocation notwithstanding). I’m willing to admit that I’m wrong however and plead for enlightenment from the board. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/2 "2009-03-01T15:32:07Z")
Just so the record is clear, my position in the discussion was that there is more than one definition of “hispanic,” and that Brazillians are included in some subset of those definitions. (And not in others.) ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/3 "2009-03-01T15:36:01Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > Just so the record is clear, my position in the discussion was that there is more than one definition of “hispanic,” and that Brazillians are included in some subset of those definitions. (And not in others.) Correct spelling: **Brazilian**. Correct capitalization: **Hispanic**. Thank you for clarifying your position. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/4 "2009-03-01T15:45:07Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Correct spelling: **Brazilian**. > > Correct capitalization: **Hispanic**. Thank you for correcting me. > [@](#): > > Thank you for clarifying your position. You are welcome. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/5 "2009-03-01T15:51:55Z")
Okay, grade-school geography tells all of us that Brazil’s dominant language is Portuguese, not Spanish. (For the record, Brazilian Portuguese differs significantly more from European Portuguese than does American from British English, though they’re still very much mutually intelligible.) “Hispanic” is nearly always used as an ethnic term, referencing persons from Spanish-speaking America (and sometimes from Spain, etc.). In this usage, it does not include Brazil, the Guianas, the Anglophone, Dutch- and French-speaking, etc. West Indies, Belize, and a few other “odd bits” in the New World. (Papiamentu, the only Indo-European language indigenous to the New World, is of course also not “Hispanic” – the term is nearly a precise synonym for “Spanish-speaking.”) Latin-American, on the other hand, references the people of the New World countries where the dominant language is a Romance language, and does normally include Brazil. (Note that “Latino” may be synonymous with either “Latin American” or “Hispanic”, with the obvious difference in who is included.) If I were called on to give a prescriptivist ethnological answer, I’d say that Brazil84 is wrong, that Brazilians are not considered Hispanic. However, with “Hispanic” occasionally used sloppily as synonymous with “Latin American,” it’s a quite understandable misnomer for people to make when generalizing. So Brazil is right from a descriptivist viewpoint – some people mean all Latin Americans by “Hispanic” and that would include Brazilians. That they’re engaging in sloppy speech from a precisionist standpoint does not mean they’re wrong in that extended usage. Oh, and one bit of useless trivia: The proper prefix for Portuguese, equivalent to Hispano-, is Luso-. The majority of inhabitants of Portugal and Brazil are Lusophones; Brazilians are Luso-Americans; and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/6 "2009-03-01T16:24:57Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Correct spelling: **Brazilian**. > > Correct capitalization: **Hispanic**. > > Thank you for clarifying your position. If you want to be completely accurate, it’s _brasileiro/a_. 😉 Good post **Polycarp.** And you’re right on the mark about the difference between how the language is spoken in the two areas. I had only Brazilian teachers for the six months prior to posting to Lisbon, and could barely understand the Lisboans. To my American ear, they were very dissimilar. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/7 "2009-03-01T18:18:24Z")
I was going to say more or less what Polycarp said. Brazil and Brazilians can legitimately be called “Latin” or “Latin American”, which are often conflated with the Hispanic world (in sloppy usage). Saying Brazil is Hispanic is like saying that a horned toad is a toad. The dictionary will inform you that people refer to them by those names, but not whether those names describe what they really are. ---
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/8 "2009-03-01T19:10:02Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > If I were called on to give a prescriptivist ethnological answer, I’d say that Brazil84 is wrong, that Brazilians are not considered Hispanic. However, with “Hispanic” occasionally used sloppily as synonymous with “Latin American,” it’s a quite understandable misnomer for people to make when generalizing. So Brazil is right from a descriptivist viewpoint – some people mean all Latin Americans by “Hispanic” and that would include Brazilians. That they’re engaging in sloppy speech from a precisionist standpoint does not mean they’re wrong in that extended usage. If it’s wrong from a prescriptivist standpoint, do you know of any hard data on how prevalent referring to Brazilians as Hispanic is from a descriptivist standpoint? For example, is there a significant subset of Brazilians who refer to themselves as Hispanic? Or, is referring to Brazilians as Hispanic common in and of itself (which is how I would have been describing them until yesterday)? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/9 "2009-03-01T19:15:41Z")
> [@Dante](#): > > If it’s wrong from a prescriptivist standpoint, do you know of any hard data on how prevalent referring to Brazilians as Hispanic is from a descriptivist standpoint? For example, is there a significant subset of Brazilians who refer to themselves as Hispanic? Or, is referring to Brazilians as Hispanic common in and of itself (which is how I would have been describing them until yesterday)? In six months of intensive language training with three different native brasileiras from three different regions of Brazil, I never once heard any of them refer to themselves or their people as Hispanic. Luso, certainly. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/10 "2009-03-01T19:34:27Z")
Thank you for the responses. I would note that the line between prescription and description can blur over time. For example, one could look at the phrase “Latin America” and wonder if it applies to Quebec or Haiti. Certainly if one looks at the root words, one could make the argument. Wikipedia has this to say: > [@](#): > > More literally speaking, Latin America can designate all of those countries and territories in the Americas where a Romance language (i.e. languages derived from Latin, and hence the name of the region) is spoken: Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and creole languages based upon these. Indeed, this was the original intent when the term was popularized by Napoleon III as part of his campaign to imply cultural kinship with France and install Maximilian as emperor of Mexico[6]. French-derived areas would include Haiti, Quebec, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, although Quebec is hardly ever considered “Latin America”. One can imagine a semantic debate a couple hundred years ago with one side insisting that “Latin America” should be read to include Quebec. Of course, a couple hundred years later, when the Black Eyed Peas sing about “Latin Girls,” most folks assume they are talking about (bronze-skinned?)senoritas (and senhoritas?). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/11 "2009-03-01T19:40:17Z")
Quoth **Polycarp** : > [@](#): > > (Papiamentu, the only Indo-European language indigenous to the New World, is of course also not “Hispanic” – the term is nearly a precise synonym for “Spanish-speaking.”) How does an Indo-European language come to be indigenous to the New World… Is it a creole? And aren’t there multiple New-World creoles in various places? ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/12 "2009-03-01T19:45:11Z")
Common usage of the term Hispanic includes Brazil. Hispanic and Latin American mean the same thing in common usage. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/13 "2009-03-01T20:29:34Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **Polycarp** :How does an Indo-European language come to be indigenous to the New World… Is it a creole? And aren’t there multiple New-World creoles in various places? There are several semi-creoles – that is, fundamentally French, etc. but with a lot of lexical, and a little grammatical, influence from African languages – but I believe Papiamentu is the only true creole (i.e., a whole new language). But the distinction is, at some level, arbitrary. As John McWhorter says, “it’s _all_ dialects”. Also, could Portuñol – a blend of Spanish and Portuguese spoken along the Paraguay-Brazil border-- be perhaps considered another Romance language indigenous to the Americas? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/14 "2009-03-01T20:32:33Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > Common usage of the term Hispanic includes Brazil. Hispanic and Latin American mean the same thing in common usage. I think you mean “in common usage among those U.S. residents who don’t know the full story” (see many posts above). As previously attested, most Brazilians would disagree, as would those U.S. residents who continue to see the “Latino” (includes Brazil)/ “Hispanic” (doesn’t) distinction worth preserving. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/15 "2009-03-01T20:48:54Z")
Sorry about the triple-post, but I just found out that Papiamentu has less of an African vocabulary than I thought; perhaps Polycarp was referring to the fact that, of the Romance-based American creoles, it is the one whose language of origin is most mixed – lots of Portuguese, lots of Spanish, some French, and some (non-Romance) Dutch (plus a little African Twi) – and is therefore not as clearly “allied with” a major existing Romance language, as most creoles are. Did I get that right, Polycarp? Okay, enough hijacking. I think the OP’s question has been answered. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/16 "2009-03-01T22:11:35Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > Common usage of the term Hispanic includes Brazil. Hispanic and Latin American mean the same thing in common usage. Like \*\*JKellyMap \*\*mentioned, it is not common to include Brazil when one is speaking about Hispanics. As an Hispanic this is the first that I have ever heard of Brazilians being added into the Hispanic group and it is clear that that is happening only in some conditions and by American organizations for bureaucratic reasons. There is also in Spanish the related term “hispanoparlantes” and unless they change the encyclopedia, it only refers to people that speaks «español» o «castellano» not Portuguese. Also when looking at the term “Hispanoamerica” one can clearly see (and I do remember) that it separates Brazil from the Hispanic nations: > **[Hispanoamérica](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanoam%C3%A9rica)** > > Hispanoamérica es el conjunto de países americanos de lengua mayoritariamente española.​​​​​Su gentilicio es «hispanoamericano». La región está integrada por dieciocho países y una dependencia: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, República Dominicana, Uruguay y Venezuela, y Puerto Rico.\[nota 1\]​ > El término «Hispanoamérica» tuvo su origen durante la emancipación y aparece plenamente asentado e... ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/17 "2009-03-01T22:25:45Z")
The US census does not include Brazilians in the category of Hispanic: “Hispanics or Latinos are those people who classified themselves in one of the specific Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino categories listed on the Census 2000 questionnaire -“Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano,” “Puerto Rican”, or “Cuban” -as well as those who indicate that they are “other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.” Persons who indicated that they are “other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino” include those whose origins are from Spain, **the Spanish-speaking countries of Central or South America,** the Dominican Republic or people identifying themselves generally as Spanish, Spanish-American, Hispanic, Hispano, Latino, and so on.” [emphasis added] [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long\_RHI725200.htm](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI725200.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/18 "2009-03-01T22:28:07Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Sorry about the triple-post, but I just found out that Papiamentu has less of an African vocabulary than I thought; perhaps Polycarp was referring to the fact that, of the Romance-based American creoles, it is the one whose language of origin is most mixed – lots of Portuguese, lots of Spanish, some French, and some (non-Romance) Dutch (plus a little African Twi) – and is therefore not as clearly “allied with” a major existing Romance language, as most creoles are. > > Did I get that right, Polycarp? > > Okay, enough hijacking. I think the OP’s question has been answered. Precisely right, and thanks. It’s also worth noting that the other creoles (semi-creoles in your usage) are ‘vulgate’ usages, colloquial variants based loosely on a single European-derived language, with a more formal French, Spanish, etc., known by at least some creole speakers and used in more formalized occasions. In contradistinction, Papiamentu was hammered together from several languages from at least two different families, with its own unique grammar derived in small parts from each of its ancestral tongues, and is used in some rather formalized contexts, such as newspapers. Which is off track for the OP. To respond to Dante’s questions, I don’t know of any studies, and the implication of Brazil84’s OP would make their self-aooellation irrelevant, or nearly so. I’d simply point you to the observations of Brazil84 and Mosier that including Lusophone Brazilians as Latinos, and as Hispanics by synonymy, is evidently quite common. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/19 "2009-03-01T22:39:59Z")
> [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](#): > > The US census does not include Brazilians in the category of Hispanic: “Hispanics or Latinos are those people who classified themselves in one of the specific Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino categories listed on the Census 2000 questionnaire -“Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano,” “Puerto Rican”, or “Cuban” -as well as those who indicate that they are “other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.” Persons who indicated that they are “other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino” include those whose origins are from Spain, **the Spanish-speaking countries of Central or South America,** the Dominican Republic or people identifying themselves generally as Spanish, Spanish-American, Hispanic, Hispano, Latino, and so on.” [emphasis added] > > [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long\_RHI725200.htm](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI725200.htm) Are you sure of this? I did a google search for “hispanic origin definition,” and the first hit was [this page](http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hispanic/ho00def.html) > [@](#): > > Hispanic Origin. Persons of Hispanic origin in this file are determined on the basis of question that asked for self-identification of the person’s origin or descent. Respondents are asked to select their origin (Or the origin of some other household member) from a “flash card” listing ethnic origins. Persons of Hispanic origin, in particular, are those who indicated that their origin was Mexican-American, Chicano, Mexican, Mexicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Hispanic. Is it possible that the Census Bureau doesn’t always use the same definition? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878/20 "2009-03-01T23:24:50Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > Are you sure of this? I did a google search for “hispanic origin definition,” and the first hit was [this page](http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hispanic/ho00def.html) > > Is it possible that the Census Bureau doesn’t always use the same definition? There is no mention of Brazil in that cite. When they use “South America” it is clear to me that they mean to say: “and other Hispanic nations in that region” > **[Brazilian Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_American)** > > Brazilian Americans (Portuguese: brasilo-americanos or americanos de origem brasileira) are Americans who are of full or partial Brazilian ancestry. The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates the Brazilian American population to be 1,775,000, the largest of any Brazilian diaspora. The largest wave of Brazilian migration to the United States occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a response to hyperinflation in Brazil. Even after inflation stabilized in 1994, Brazilian immigrati... > [@](#): > > The official United States Census category of Hispanic or Latino is limited explicitly to people of “Spanish culture or origin”, and therefore does not include Brazilian Americans. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brazil-hispanic-or-not/487878.md?page=2)