What about Portuguese?

[Koga]

Those damn French!

[lexylit]

 <swoon> casino is so smart   

[cali444]

I was always taught that the only true "Hispanics" were people from the island once known as Hispaniola (now Haiti/Dominican Republic), which is why the term is a misnomer for most Latinos.  Casino, would you agree with that?  It makes sense to me. 

[casino]

well, the term hispanic refers specifically to a spanish speaker or that which derives from spain.  certainly dominicans would fall under this category, but haitians would not.  haitians could be categorized as latinos from the francophone line. 

the use of the term hispanic to describe latin americans is being phased out for a number of reasons.  the preferred term now, latino, is derived from latinoamerica, which is already a step up from the term hispanic.  also, a spaniard is hispanic; it is hard to lump him in the same category with a quechua speaker from the peruvian andes.  third, i think hispanic is a phonetically more anglo term than latino is, which also has come into play.

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[MarkGrace]

Thanks for the replies!  It was more of a curiosity question than anything. My mom is from Hawai'i and like many people from there she has a mixed background.  It's kind of a long and confusing story. My Grandma's (who is mostly Portuguese) first husband was Hawaiian.  When she was pregnant with my mom she got a divorce and ended up marrying her second husband (who was Mexican) before she had my mother.  They decided to put her second husband's name on the birth certificate and tell my mom that he was her real dad.  Well, the state of Hawai'i requires ethnicity on the birth certificate so they put that she was Mexican/Portuguese. 
When my mom was in her teens her mother told her about her real dad (mostly because she suspected something as she looks Polynesian and not Mexican). Now fast forward several years and my mom has a particular under acheiveing son (me) who is in high school. My parents wanted to send me to a private school in Hawai'i that is exclusively for kids of Hawaiian ancestry.  So my mother went to court to have her birth certificate amended and it now says Hawaiian/Portuguese.  She's about half hawaiian and half portuguese but was born and raised in Hawai'i so our family definitely adheres more to Hawaiian culture and that is more the ethnicity that I claim. Which is sometimes the topic of heated arguements between my mother and father. He's pure whiteboy and the racial tension in our home has at times been evident.
With such a mixed background you can imagine what their kids look like.  We basically range from pasty white (me) to very Hawaiian looking (my brother Kimo). So my father thinks it's misleading for me to claim Hawaiian on my applications because I look white and my mother responds by asking him what he would think if Kimo did it.  He always goes silent becuase Kimo looks Hawaiian, at which point my mother says "they are the same!"
See told you that was a long story. Anyway, for the pupose of applications I check Hawaiian and Caucasian if the application allows you to choose two.  If it just allows one then I check "other" and write in Hawaiian/Caucasian. On a side note my wife if 1/4 spanish, 1/4 mexican and 1/2 white, so our kids are going to be really messed up.     

[cmedici]

I am Brazilian and I always put down Latina as my ethnicity.  My parents are Brazilian but my grandparents are from Portugal and Italy.  I was born in Brazil and moved to the US at age 13, so I guess I am Americanized now...haha.  Anyways, back to your question, Portuguese speaking people from Latin America are latinos, but Portuguese people of course are not - they are white from the Iberian Penninsula.  I am sure you already got plenty of replies, but thought this might help as well.  Good luck!