Indian in spanish?

July 25, 2005 1:40 AM

In common speech, how do people in spanish speaking/ latin-american countries differentiate between an indigenous person (~indio) and a person from India? Is there a separate word for someone from India?
posted by dhruva to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

The word for indigenous in Spanish is indígena.
posted by hazyjane at 2:11 AM on July 25, 2005

4 years ago, an Argentinian referred me to his compatriot, as an
'Indu'. Hope my recall is right.
posted by Gyan at 2:30 AM on July 25, 2005

It tends to be a context thing (like so much of Spanish). Indio/a is acceptable both for a Native American (or Native Central American, etc.) "indian", and for someone from India, though many people dislike indio/a and prefer the more (politically) correct indígeno/a (as hazyjane said).
posted by benzo8 at 2:55 AM on July 25, 2005

My parents sometimes say "indiano" for a person from India.
posted by duck at 3:23 AM on July 25, 2005

Same problem in Romanian, I believe, and likely the other latin languages.
posted by loquax at 4:46 AM on July 25, 2005

Best answer: here in chile, what i've heard is "indio" for indigenous people (often negative, sometimes self-deprecating) and "hindu" (or "indu" - don't know how it is written) for people from india. so the problem then becomes how to distinguish between people from india (of any religion) and people who follow hinduism (of any country), but that's not often necessary in conversation here.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:03 AM on July 25, 2005

Best answer: Just like in english, we have two words: "indio" and "hindú". And for "natives" we also have two: "indio" and "indígena".

Context (and cliches and prejudices) clarifies the meaning, but to avoid confusion people tend to use the more specific word when there is a chance for confusion.

In the end, it looks a lot like english usage. When talking about a person's origin, we use either "hindú" or "indígena", but due to the lack of popularity of native cuisine, "comida india" is just as clear as "comida hindú" and used just as often.
posted by sd at 7:19 AM on July 25, 2005

sd writes "In the end, it looks a lot like english usage."

Huh? In American English at least, it would be very unusual to refer to a person of Indian ancestry or nationality as a "Hindu" (I imagine it would be even more unusual in British English, since the majority of immigrants from the subcontinent in the UK are Muslims). The word "Hindu" is reserved almost exclusively for discussing someone's religion; the nationality or ethnicity is "Indian". This does create confusion, as people of indigenous American descent are also commonly referred to as "Indian", or "American Indian". "Native American" is also somewhat common, but it seems like it's mostly used to disambiguate the term "Indian". This exchange from The Simpsons illustrates the ambiguity:

Apu: Today, I am no longer an Indian living in America. I am an Indian-American.
Lisa: You know, in a way, all Americans are immigrants. Except, of course Native Americans.
Homer: Yeah, Native Americans like us.
Lisa: No, I mean American Indians.
Apu: Like me.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:13 PM on July 25, 2005

Some people have also taken to using “pueblos nativos” to refer to entire indigenuous groups.
Most of the time you say “Indio, hindú, tu sabes, de la India”.
posted by signal at 6:58 PM on July 27, 2005