The word "negro" was used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not, prior to the shift in the lexicon of American and worldwide classification of race and ethnicity in the late 1960s. The word "negro" means "black" in Spanish and Portuguese, from the Latin "niger". In Italian "negro" was used as a neutral term until the end of the '60s, nowadays the word is considered offensive in some contexts. The usage was accepted as normal, even by people classified as Negroes, until the Civil Rights movement.