Central and South America are called Latin America. I thought Latin was associated with Italy and Rome. How come the descendants of Spain are call Latininos?

Spanish is a Romance language, descended directly from Vulgar Latin. During the Punic Wars (about 260-140BC), Spain was conquered by the Romans who naturally took their language with them. The language acquired characteristics from local languages, such as Basque, and became recognisable as a separate language in the 9th century AD - slightly before Italian became regarded as a separate language from the same Vulgar Latin.

There are strong similarities between Spanish and Italian, it is said that if you know one you can understand the other. Well, I can't speak either of them well but I can read both in a limited fashion (handy for menus!) because I did Latin at school. My teachers said at the time that persisting with Latin would be of value in later life - I'm not sure they meant getting good pizza toppings but it works for me!

So Spanish = Latin = Latino.

Thanks flopsy, I thought it might be something like that.

Well, you can understand some of it. My first language is Spanish. If I put on the Italian channel (RAI), I'll understand a few words or even sentences here and there, but I can't follow a conversation in Italian. Both languages, and also Portuguese, have a lot of similarities, but that doesn't mean that people who speak these languages can understand one another. A month ago I helped two Brazilian tourists and I had a hard time understanding them and it was the same for them with me. We had to speak very slowly and still there were many things we didn't understand.

Minkpenny, I asked a Spanish person if Portuguese was similar to Spanish and they said they are very different. For some reason I see Portugal and Spain to have a strong link. We don't expect neighbours like France, Germany or Holland to understand each other though.

French is a Romance language too, as is Romanian.

One who speaks French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or even Romanian, can probably *read* the other languages quite well, but the spoken language is harder to follow. Add to this that many people speaking a Romance language have a habit of speaking at a high pace, and you'll understand the problem.

German and Dutch are likewise related (Germanic languages). Other Germanic languages are Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish and Danish.

I'd probably call English a Germanic language, too, though it's complicated by the Norman Invasion and the doubling of vocabulary - there tends to be both a Germanic and a Romance version of many words.