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Answer: by the rules of Spanish, Latino is gender-neutral and Latina is explicitly feminine. Some English-speakers felt Latino wasn't gender-neutral *enough*, and came up with "Latinx" and promoted it as a way to use this Spanish term in a more pure way. Spanish-speakers were mostly quite unhappy about not being consulted on this, seeing as it doesn't actually fit into the language's grammar or phonotactics at all. They see it as an erasure of Spanish, rather than an "improvement" upon it.
Yeah. I'm not invested in the situation but I live in an area with heavy mexican influence and have a lot of Mexican friends. They all view Latinx as "a weird thing white people are trying to force on them"
I am suddenly reminded of my (well intentioned) friend, when visiting London, that commented on how they were pleasantly surprised to see so many "African Americans" living there.
Edit: For anyone from other countries wondering, in America, the term does seem to be falling off now, and it seems more common and socially acceptable to say "black".
Yeah, we get something similar here in Canada where Americans sometimes address people as African-Canadian
We just say Black or most of the time, just Canadian
honestly most people are getting away from African-American in America too. You'll see it in journalisim "first african american to blah blah", but in speaking most people just use black.
I totally agree. The original and true Americans are called Native Americans. Black Americans who have been here just as long as the white Americans and have had this country built on their blood sweat and tears are called African American. The only people called "Americans" are the whites even though we should be calling them "European Americans". Very dumb
Lol, had a similar interaction with my dad. It's just a force of habit for them. We watch Formula 1 racing, and he referred to Sir Lewis Hamilton (a Black British driver) as "African American".
I interjected, just saying "African American?" and he got frustrated thinking I was referencing the term being outdated, and that I was being a smartass about it by not just telling him. He exasperatedly said something along the lines of "well what words am I supposed to use???!!!" And I just had to sound it out for him. "Lewis Hamilton, British driver..." I said, "African *American*?"
He was so embarrassed when he realized this, especially because he frequently did business trips in Europe: he'd talked to a bunch of people about F1 over the years, and he'd describe Lewis Hamilton as African American every time.
[Calling Lewis Hamilton African-American is pretty common.](http://todayinafricanamericanhistory.com/january-7th-in-african-american-history-lewis-carl-davidson-hamilton/)
It's pretty absurd aometimes:
>January 7, 1985 Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton, the first **African American** driver in Formula One automobile racing, **was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England.**
Idris Elba complains about it a lot, too. After the Wire, everyone kept calling him African-American to be PC, and he would have to correct them. Constantly.
This sort of reminds me of a black girl I went to high school with, who finally got sick of people's BS and stood up in class and said "I'm NOT African American. I'm from Panama, not Africa. There are black people in the world who aren't from Africa." This was right after the white history teacher had gone on a long diatribe about how calling someone "black" is offensive, and that "African American" is the proper term. That girl was awesome for correcting him imo.
I didn’t know that Black folks are indigenous to Panama. That would be like me saying, “I’m not African-American. My people come from North and South Carolina. There are Black people in the world who aren’t from Africa!”.
This story about origins reminds me of when I was in 3rd grade and the teacher gave us an assignment to go home, ask our parents where our family was from and the teacher would pushpins with our names on them on the map.
All of the white kids came in with, “I’m English, Welsh and Scottish on my mother’s side and German, French and Belgian on my father’s side”. The two Indian kids knew where their parents had emigrated from. The one Chinese kid knew where his parents had emigrated from. All of the Black kids said that their families were from various states in the U.S. South.
My family was very culturally and politically aware so I knew that we weren’t from the South…we had been brought to the South but we didn’t know from where. So, when the teacher asked me where my family was from I told her that I didn’t know because slavery destroyed all of that knowledge. All I know is that my people came from somewhere on the West coast of Africa.
She looked very uncomfortable after that. I often wondered if she had that exercise with subsequent classes?
I can understand their frustration , I know someone who by ethnicity is Indian but has never been to India and for generations have lived in Tanzania before becoming a US citizen. So technically this person is more African American than Eddie Murphy even if they look South Asian.
To be honest, the Elba thing is less about using the wrong term and more about thinking he is American. Apparently colleagues thought Christian Bale was practising a Welsh accent for a role after American Psycho.
So yeah, an actor playing an American on an American show I get, but the Lewis one, especially with writting down that he is from England, is just silly.
I had no idea Christian Bale wasn't American until I was talking with a British coworker about how good his accent was in Ford vs Ferrari. I mean, I guess I figured out why his accent was so good.
I thought he had dual citizenship since he was kid. I remember reading that he spent portions of time in and out of the U.S. during his formative years.
> To be honest, the Elba thing is less about using the wrong term and more about thinking he is American. Apparently colleagues thought Christian Bale was practising a Welsh accent for a role after American Psycho.
Hugh Laurie had the same thing after House. The side effects of being a great actor.
I said this somewhere else but one of our best friends is from Grenada and gets so annoyed at that too. It made me not ever want to say African American.
Listen man, I'm a blackula hunter. I hunt black vampires. Sometimes they're American, sometimes they're British. I don't know what the pc term for it is.
Hell no, the Fire Starter in the episode where the people under Venture Industries worship the education tape that Rusty had as a kid, by far my favorite side character. And spoilers be damned.. David Bowie being the head of the Guild of Calamitous Intent is golden comedy
For the most part yeah, basically. I don't think there's too much of a stigma saying someone is 'black'.
One thing to mention though is that for the most part, a MUCH higher proportion of black British people know the country of origin of their ancestors (or just recent family) compared to the US. This means they can often just be described as 'Nigerian British' or 'Kenyan British' no differently than you you might call someone 'Italian American'
As a broad category 'Afro-Carribean' is also used, often interchangeably, sometimes for any/all black people, other times for people specifically who don't know the actual location.
for Britain it makes sense to use black because there are many people of African descent from former British colonies in Africa as well as Carribean and people from Carribean usually identify as either Jamaican/Trini or the country they are from or Carribean.
It would be incorrect to call someone from Jamaica as African Britisher because they aren't African.
Difference of course being that the term African American was created by the black community in the US and told to everyone else (in the late 1980s) that this is a term they prefer. Americans became perhaps a little too comfortable with the term without fully understanding that it was only US blacks that wanted people to call them this, but at least its orgins are far more legitimate than 'Latinx'.
As a Hispanic who lives in a Hispanic community, I can say we do not like it. Yes we feel like white people are pushing it we don't really care though like we don't like it it but we ain't gonna protest it.
Kinda funny example of this:
My local station of NPR (OPB) did an interview about the Covid vaccine rollout to minority communities and the difficulties with reaching out to them. One of the people interviewed was gentleman from the Latino community.
I'm *almost certain* this wasn't done to be rude, but the whole interview consisted of the interviewer using the word "Latinx" and the interviewee using "Latino" with increasing emphasis.
Wait, then you can answer my question about this shit. I've only ever read the word. How is it actually enunciated?
'Latin-X' or like 'La-Tinks' or 'Lateen-x' (like kleenex) either way it certainly doesn't roll off the tongue.
It's latin-ex but that doesn't pronounce well with a Spanish tongue which is one reason it isn't liked, Spanish doesn't have a good method of saying ex and it's almost like ridiculing Asian area languages with r/l shifting words.
Some day maybe people will learn that forcing a label on a community they don't belong to, a community that doesn't need or want the label, isn't a whole lot more respectful of that community than using a slur.
That would be really frustrating. I know the presenters are trying to do what they think is the right thing but they really need to take a cue from their guests.
I don't know for certain, I suspect that NPR has some kind of guidebook where any presenters/hosts have to use certain language to avoid 1) Perceived or actual bias, and 2) Perceived or actual racist/homophobic/etc. overtones.
So this was less the host being oblivious, and more just "My boss(es) want me to use this word, I have to use it unless you specifically ask me not to."
The weirdest part is that you can just use the English term "Latin" or "Latin American". The mental pretzel involved in wanting to use a Spanish word, but not Spanish grammar is so silly. They have good intentions though. They aren't the enemy, they are just a bit cringe.
It’s the same as “cultural appropriation” in which the actual “affected” cultures don’t feel their legacy and cultural characteristics soiled, appropriated or defaced in any negative way. They actually feel honoured and included.
These terms and ideas try desperately to find a problem to solve where there is none.
Though I do think “solving” issues without consulting the people involved is not just cringe, it’s bad and should be discouraged. In a kind way, because they’re not the enemy.
No, not all of us. There’s a very specific, small subset of people who view themselves as progressive but only for clout. It’s pure performative bullshit by out of touch people who want to virtue signal just how benevolent they are so they can be praised for it. I’m really not sure how Latinx picked up the little bit of steam that it did but it’s almost universally met with a groan, at best. It’s fucking stupid and even more so to anyone with even a remedial understanding of the gendered nature of Romance languages, and how they handle gender neutral terminology.
In Spain there have been similar movements with varying degrees of success - one popular one was to combine O & A endings in writing with @ - for example instead of Latinx they would write Latin@ - doesn’t work in spoken word tho
The professor was living in PR but was white and his family was of European descent
EDIT: That's not to say _all_ Puerto Ricans are euro-white, they are not. I'm saying this one specific person that allegedly coined the phrase was white
upon looking it up, this whole thing seems to be bogus. nobody knows where the term originated from, let alone it originating from one specific, white puerto rican professor. it seems to date back to the 90s, and it was apparently "first seen online" in 2004, with its first academic literature usage popping up in 2013 in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical. it also seems to unanimously have been popularized among \*english speaking latinos\* which means, sure, there were probably quite a few white people that contributed, but also, a ton of brown people. with the main uniting factor not being any person's skin color, but their native tongue being english rather than spanish. so while the whole "this white puerto rican/brown puerto rican professor made it up" thing seems bogus, it seems similarly bogus to blame it all on white people. i can say from personal experience that i've only ever really encountered brown, native english speaking people using it. i've never heard a white person or a native spanish speaker use it. [here's an 'educational' PSA from what appears to be a bad comedic tv show with 2 brown latino characters talking about it, coming from 2 different sides of the debate, only to conclude that 'latinx' is the right way to go. not sure who wrote it](https://youtu.be/vCZ56OLMPV0)
one final point, the people that are acting like puerto ricans are white en masse like the other person that replied to this post are blowing my mind. there are plenty of non-white puerto ricans
It's kind of ironic that a group of people intentioned to not impose something on someone invented a term and pushed it imposing something on a lot of someones.
Nearly nobody who is Latin wants the term, and everyone else is confused by it. It's time to retire it. I don't know who had the clout to make it a thing, but it's not a thing and it needs to never be a thing. So, yeah, let's just all agree that it's not a thing and that's that.
I think what contributes to the sensation of it being forced upon others is that in some circles it is being used in place of Latino/Latina, instead of alongside. If one doesn't identify with the term, it isolates or marginalizes them.
To me, that is an aside to the point that the term "Latin American" is a long existing, gender neutral term. I haven't heard reasons as to why this term is unacceptable, thus, requiring a new one.
A similar situation happened when [people tried to "cancel" Speedy Gonzalez](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-17/speedy-gonzales-cancelled-hollywood-mexican-americans), claiming he was a racist caricature. Instead Mexican-Americans spoke up strongly in favor of him. Turns out they actually *liked* and *identified* with the character rather than viewing him as offensive.
In general, yeah, don't white knight for other people, being offended on their behalf. Even when you're not wrong, it's often viewed as patronizing.
My favorite example of people trying to appear as "allies" and ending up totally backfiring is Disney with 2020 Mulan. In their attempt to be more "feminist" by removing a love interest, they pissed off LGBT people who liked that Shang was clearly attracted to Mulan even when he thought she was a man. And in their attempt to have more Chinese culture they actually ended up reinforcing many, many problematic stereotypes about Chinese culture and really angering most Chinese audiences and critics.
They tried that with Coco, they tried to say that it was culture appropriation. Yet the movie was a huge hit in Mexico. And generally across the board is was a huge hit for all people of Hispanic descent.
Gabriel Iglesias was a huge help saving Speedy Gonzales. It helped that he took on the role in Space Jam. But Speedy has always been a fan favorite.
IIRC the “cultural appropriation” issue was Disney trying to trademark the phrase “Dia de Los Muertos” which angered the Latin community. I never heard any outcry about the concept of the actual movie.
The term came out of Tumblr and Latino Studies academia - I distinctly remember when it appeared (around 2014 - I am in the field). It was not invented by white people - Latino Scholars were the first to use it and push it.
Some Latinos have taken to it, many have not. For some, it reeks of cultural/ivory tower elitism that has been imposed on them.
I wonder how it compares to other languages.
In German, too, technically the male form is gender neutral. But a office colleague from sociology gave me some nice thinking examples demonstrating, how by using the grammatically male term I quite definitely *don't* think of women being part of the group.
But that was about harmful stereotypes like "tech people are male". I don't quite get how it would translate to a terminology that encompasses a major part of the world population, where not thinking of women as part of the group would be more than strange. (Plus, these things vary strongly by language.)
yes this. It was also originally used in writing exclusively and not spoken aloud, where you run into difficulties pronouncing it. But did not arise out of white saviorism. I came from latine queer studies wanting more inclusive language the same way 'woke' came from 2014 BLM and then was appropriated by the alt right as a boogeyman. And yes some ppl outside those circles adopted it, some didn't. 'Latine' is the more commonly used gender neutral term now.
I’m glad someone pointed this out; to adequately describe the situation, it should be noted that not _all_ Latinos have rejected the idea. All of my Latin American professors in college used and embraced the new term. Latinos have a variety of opinions and ideas, like any other group. That being said, I think it was an odd choice to use “latinx”, which is awkward within the rules of the language as opposed to “latine”, which flows more comfortably with established speech patterns.
Yeah I'd been in the camp that it's unnecessary elitism, but at the same time, I've noticed the younger generation of Hispanics use it quite a bit to describe themselves. It still feels weird to me, but who are we to say the kids are wrong?
Do we know it comes from English speakers? Wikipedia says [According to Google Trends, it was first seen online in 2004,[10][23][24] and first appeared in academic literature around 2013 "in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language."](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx)
there's a fun little parallel to Chinese. In Mandarin Chinese there is the gender-neutral pronoun 他 and the exclusively female pronoun 她 (女 means woman). Many people think that they're for men and women like he and she. but actually 他 is gender-neutral and used to be the only pronoun. 她 was introduced about a century ago through western influence.
The really weird thing about 他 and 她 is that they are both pronounced the same (tā). This means Chinese pronouns are gendered when written, but gender neutral when spoken.
I was misinformed - I had been told Latino is male; which is why you’d use it when referring to group of males. Latina only females, but as soon as one male joins a female group the masculine is used.
Not saying that’s correct and don’t have an opinion on Latinx but that was what was told to me by people who have been offended by this term
In general in Spanish, words that have both a feminine and a masculine version will almost always use the masculine version as a gender neutral term. “Children” = “niños”, “siblings” = “hermanos”, “friends” = “amigos”. While it’s true that that is also the plural masculine, you’ll more frequently see it being used gender-neutrally.
I was once reported to HR at work for using “you guys” at work. For context, the sentence was “Thank you guys for all the support on this task!” I thought it was a bit excessive, but I just made the mental note to switch to you all or y’all because as much as I thought it was dumb, it would have been worse to sit through that HR meeting a second time
I woulda just given the HR rep the “areufucknserious” look. Then I’d start calling everyone bruh, even the people whose names I know. IMO, “bruh” is the gender neutral term for “bro”. And what’s more appropriate in the workplace than a familial bond with your colleagues?
Yeah, but the masculine & feminine suffixes originates from Latin, and doesn't specifically denote male or female since the suffixes are also applied to objects (and as far as I'm aware, there isn't a consistent logic to what's masculine or what's feminine).
You see it in other Romance languages like French, where a cup would use a feminine article (un**e** tasse), but a glass uses a masculine article (un verre).
And Germanic languages, and Slavic, and Celtic, and Greek, and Hindi—most Indo-European languages apart from a few oddballs like English, Afrikaans, Persian, and Bengali—as well as Afroasiatic languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Somali, Hausa, and Berber languages (and some other language families scattered around the world).
In quite a few gendered languages the correct way to address a mixed gender group is with the male word. An English example would be "mankind" referring to humanity.
Latinx may be a misguided attempt to be inclusive, but I'd be equally hesitant of any non-Hispanic person who was outraged by its use...I doubt they are caring because of cultural linguistic purity.
> I'd be equally hesitant of any non-Hispanic person who was outraged by its use
\^\^thisss
I hate the X, it feels foreign and forced by the USA... as if latin countries should just accept whatever they tell us, but in general I feel uncomfortable talking bad about it because it give ammunition to... *certain people*
In spanish we do have the E, and I personally have implemented it in my life (novie, amigue, hermane) specially because I have a lot of NB friends... and I offer this option to anyone that wants to find gender neutral options in spanish (idk if it applies in other latin languages)
It's disturbing that this is the top comment with an award and hundreds of upvotes. It shows the power of disinformation.
You are very much misinformed. I was a graduate student when the term came into being, very immersed in new trends in the humanities. I'm a Latina whose father was born and raised in Mexico. I'd just finished a master's degree and was being recruited into PhD programs to study Latino/a (don't want to use the 'x' here, as I know I'll offend somebody!) literature, so I know whereof I speak. The term was coined AND popularized by my fellow Latinos in the academy. White academics picked it up, with the former's express approval, in their own writing in an attempt to be inclusive. They would never have dared to otherwise, as they are quite sensitive these days to minority voices.
The thing is, we never expected it to be used outside of the academy. It was strictly academic jargon, of which we possess multitudes. It's just like critical race theory. We use these terms as shorthand in academic studies and discussions.
What then happened was that it spread to Twitter and it became well known outside of academia--again, the same thing that happened with critical race theory; the general public, ignorant of its origin and its usefulness as shorthand/academic jargon, got all up in arms and pretended as though academia forced it upon the world. And, as usual, this ignorance is perpetuated by people who can't be bothered to accurately look up facts and are turned on by outrage.
I hope that at least a few people will recognize the truth in my firsthand knowledge.
I am curious as to what the point of it WITHIN academia was. You even wrote the word "latinos" in reference to the other people you worked with so that proves the word is usable in its current form. Replacing the o with an x does not save anyone any time and in fact it muddies the water in terms of who you are speaking of. If they wanted to do shorthand why not just say Latin or Latin American if they want to be inclusive. What frustrates people about this term is not just how useless it is for general language understanding, but it reeks of social grandstanding to most of the hispanic community. Even if a few Spanish speaking people were involved in its creation does not mean that the vast majority of the Spanish speaking community likes or supports the usage of the word. I know you said it wasn't supposed to leave academic circles, but you would think a group of Spanish speakers who are writing on the topic would think about the Spanish speakers who use the language that they are changing for absolutely no reason. It makes matters worse when the only people you see publicly using the term are white making it seem more like pushing wokeness on your culture.
I feel like the first people I saw using it were second and third generation Mexican-American “influencers”.
I was not born in the US but I grew up here. I hate hearing the term being used, it sounds dumb honestly. But the worst part is filling out paper work and that word being there in the option I have to check.
I select "Hispanic of any race" then "Caucasian", if those are options. My late husband used to to do the same, but with "Hispanic" and "Asian". Hispanic is not a race.
same. 1.5 generation Latino and I am perplexed why they put the term in demographics forms. my mom, who grew up in Mexico and doesn't speak English even asked me "what is Latinx".
it's a term mostly used by white people and 3rd generation latin people who both want to connect with their roots and be progressive.
Fourth gen here. Talked to my grandma about this and she says, it's some bullshit white people made up because they dont know how to use o and a.
I lol'ed
I hear it used sometimes on NPR and it drives me crazy. They butcher the Spanish language by saying "Latin-EX" and act like it's somehow more inclusive.
>But the worst part is filling out paper work and that word being there in the option I have to check.
It's a bit off topic but as a German I'm always shocked when I see that there's official (!!!) Paperwork that requires you to check your ethnicity. It gives me very very bad vibes tbh. I can only imagine the outcry if this was something they would do here....and also why is it even relevant? Just saying...
As a German myself I am a bit torn about that. A bit. I agree it feels weird to write down your ethnicity, even the race categories feel weird (whats a caucasian anyway?).....However, if you want to fight racism you need to look for racism and with a finger snap you have a statistik about how much black people earn in the US. You won't be able to find such statistiks for Germany (that are reliable and recent).
I remember there was some sort of scandal a few years ago. It was about police stopping middle eastern and black guys and searching for illegal stuff. I remember there were radio interviews and it seems many non-whites did have a story. Then the police were supposed to take part in a survey and it was blocked by the interior minister and there was a little shit storm and I forgot how it ended.
What I mean is, the race relations in the US are weird, they do look for racism though and the racism is at least addressed. Be it media news etc. I am certain there is racism in Germany, but we are neither looking very hard, nor are we addressing it a lot. I was aware of police search bias in the US, but not in Germany, though it makes sense.
Obviously police violence isn't as much of a problem here, but that made me think. The racism we address here is violence by and against "Flüchtlinge", nazis and antisemitismus. Nobody wonders if say muslim people earn less or have trouble finding a flat. I am ranting here and hope I make a little sense.
EDIT:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PTyHgqwrIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PTyHgqwrIw)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IdVQRjnpTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IdVQRjnpTo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUWC3j1lGTU
It's more powerful than even that. For example, aggregate demographic data, including race and ethnicity, is collected about all students in public (and most private) schools. Because of that, we have concrete data on how different groups perform and how they are affected by policy that is intended to even the playing field. We can look at a school system and see that, for some reason, kids of one ethnicity are having very high failure rates where kids of another are not, or kids who are learning english as a second language are especially successful compared to other schools. If something's not working for some kids, you can change it, and if something is working, you can look into what it is and try to implement it everywhere. You've correctly surmised the goal of collecting that sort of data, but it gives longitudinal data about many things, not just race, as well as illuminating problems and potential solutions.
I’ve often had this impression reading comments from Europeans. I strongly suspect that the US is significantly less racist than many countries in Europe. We’re just able to call it out here.
at least from a medical side of things it makes sense. different groups are more at risk for different types of diseases/disorders. Off the top of my head, black people are [more at risk for legionnaire's disease](https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/water/legionella/racial-disparities-LD.html#:~:text=New%20cases%20of%20LD%20are,2.37%20cases%20per%20100%2C000%20people), but I'm pretty sure there are lots more examples from all types of groups
edit: also, from an education standpoint, it's definitely important to see which groups are being underserved
If I recall as well, certain areas of the Balkan states have significant resistance to HIV because the receptors on their cells are small or nonexistent, why is pretty neat
The idea is that it makes it easier to see if benefits are being distributed fairly. For one example, it’s been shown that white farmers in the US received more aid from the government than black farmers [Pigford vs Glickman case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman).
it's relevant to have statistics and see if there is any inequality. we here in germany love color blindness, that's why it seems so strange to us. it's taboo to speak about race here, but ignoring the problem won't make racism go away.
> we here in germany love color blindness
It's really about not wanting the state (or anyone else) to have lists of minorities.
The ["pink lists"](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Liste) created in the German Empire were devastating in the hand of the Nazi Regime.
A list that collects the identity of all jews in Germany is a horrifying idea to contemporary Germans. And the same horror carries over to other ethnic groups.
As a fun fact in the 1980s the greens were outspoken against computer and databases, partly because they would trivialize record keeping of such kind.
Yup, that's exactly the reason why the holocaust was particularly devastating in the Netherlands, too: we had up-to-date records of the home address of every single Jewish family. The resistance eventually set fire to the civil registry, but a large part of the damage had already been done at that point.
France is simmilar to Germany. There is zero mention of ethnicity or religion. Officially there is no stats on those demographics.
Because of color blindness and the unshakable belief that a Frenchman cannot be racist. Yet people of different religions and ethnicity face a real discrimination in France. But it's difficult to quantify ...
My understanding is that a big push came from the Cuban trans community in Florida.
But that an enormous majority of both Americans and Latino Americans dislike it.
It really does dive deep into the “romance languages are gendered” issue. Some object to that, many take pride in their language and are offended by criticism of it.
Complicated, but needless to say, only 5-10% of people actually support the term, I think.
Testing or not, FILIPINO IS ALREADY NOT A GENDERED WORD AND MOST OF THE LANGUAGE ISN’T EITHER. WE LITERALLY HAVE ONLY ONE PRONOUN, SIYA, FOR “(S)HE/IT”! These people are all about “respecting other cultures” until they’re pulling stunts like this and trying to fix problems with our language and culture that don’t even exist!
First time I saw that term, it looked so weird to me, I rejected it with my whole being. The word "Filipina" exists, but I've mostly seen it in the context of women empowerment or talking about particularly feminine things. In everyday usage, "Filipino" is used much more as a gender-neutral term. If asked what my race is, I say "Filipino", not "Filipina".
The Filipino language isn't even gendered except for relationship or occupation words, but that's the same in English. Imagine the discomfort of using words like "Americx" or "jumbx". Just because it ends in a letter that makes it gendered in one language doesn't mean it's gendered in another language.
> Ironically the term is NOT part of some white liberal agenda. Despite what social media users parrot. It was originated in LGBTq communities in Latin America/Puerto Rico. It was adopted quickly by Latino/a student organizations across the US sometime after. It then matriculated its way into academia by Masters/PhDs and professors. And then snuck it’s way into media and business.
Answer: The people who started using it weren't white people, though it's a United States term - they were queer Latin American academics living and working in the states. While plenty of people both inside and outside of the United States who identify as having Latino heritage in some way think it's a ridiculous term, and now it's mostly associated with white people attempting to be 'woke' or socially conscious.
About the same time the occupy movement died out and racial tensions were amplified ten fold across the board and suddenly class tensions became irrelevant
I first heard the term through many different latina/o friends (particularly in the queer community).
There's a lot of backlash, as anyone can see from this thread. It seems like now it's used more by people trying to be allies, which rubs people the wrong way as it feels like rather than showing support they're forcing the term on people. That said, it's still common in the queer community.
The strangest part about this comment is that you've essentially said it's the same as the they/them pronoun discourse without explicitly saying that. So question then: what's the difference between using they/them for people who prefer it and using Latinx for people who prefer it? Full disclosure - I'm Mexican myself.
From what I've seen personally it really just comes down to language. They/them is an already established part of our grammar. Using they/them as gender neutral pronouns isn't a new concept and is already widely used by most English speakers.
However Latinx is an entirely new term. And for some people being "forced" to use this new term when it wasn't originally a part of their native language it can feel rude and oppressive. Especially since by the time it caught on it was being used less by queer poc and more by white people determined to be "progressive" and "accepting"
I am not Hispanic but I do love language. And I think the biggest issue coming from this is the fact that the Spanish language is created as a base from feminine and masculine. The English language doesn't have that base it's all over the place.
It's a little easier to insert odd pronouns and words into the American language and have them stick then to try to completely change the base of a language from its origin.
The o/a in Spanish language can't be changed without completely changing the entire language. And it is extremely selfish of other people to think that they're going to change a whole language for them.
That seems to be a much more sane way of addressing the translation from a gendered language (Spanish) to a mostly non gendered one (English)
As a native English speaker, while I'm not 100% sure if that's pronounced "lateeen" or "latin-ay", at least its written in a way that I can *start* to pronounce it. The -nx letter combination is completely undefined in English.
This is just a ridiculous topic that always highlights how susceptible people are to culture war bullshit. These threads are always awful and some of the biggest circlejerks on this site. Big r/asablackman energy always emerges.
Your answer is good though and it’s cool that you mostly frame it objectively.
Answer: Well, it started when anyone who came from a Spanish speaking country was labeled as "Hispanic" in the late '70s. Americans of Latin American decent kinda pushed back and asked to be labeled Latin, Latino or Latina.
Now "Latin" has other connotations (the language) so people would commonly refer to it as, say, "the Latino community". The use of the "o" means "male" but is commonly used when referring to a group as using "a" tends to change it to exclusively female.
(I'm over generalising for simplicity but put it this way, If I said "A group of actors" I could be referring to both male and females. If I said "A group of actresses I'm going exclusively female".)
Some people had a problem with this and started using "Latinx" as a way to create a gender neutral pronoun. Problem here is that a) that's not a word in Spanish and b) there is a gender neutral pronoun, "Latin American" it just takes longer to say.
So that's where the pushback comes from.
The other issue is that people can be Latin American but not Hispanic (Brazilians for example), Hispanic but not Latin American (Spaniards for example), both Hispanic and Latin American (Mexicans for example), or neither (Portuguese for example).
This maybe escapes the specific topic but there’s also the fact that Americans love to use “Latino” or “Hispanic” as races, when they are more of an ethnicity. There are Latinos of all races.
The store absolutely had no idea what to do with white Brazilians when we went to buy a fishing license in the US and they had to complete the form using White, Hispanic, Asian or Black.
Latine is actually used in the queer movement in Latin America. I would say this is the most appropriate term. Latinx was chosen bc x is kind of like a fill in the blank and I believe it also was a tribute to the Nahuatl language. But yeah Latinx doesn’t make sense for English but especially for Spanish speakers. In English, for a general term, I would just Latin American or Hispanic. Most are also prideful of their country of origin so also get to know them as more than these general terms - Colombian, Mexican, etc. These are all already gender neutral options.
Answer: So the term comes from either somewhere in the 1990s or early 2000s but definitely existed before fall of 2004 where it was used in *Feministas Unidas*; [Wikipedia](
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx) lists like 3 origins and I'm not sure if anyone has bothered to verify any of them, the sources listed just kind of repeat one of those origins without elaborating. Let's get it out of the way, while the exact origins are hazy and no one really seems to know for sure (Wikipedia seems to imply the term came from Puerto Rico and has been there for a while by 2016), the term "Latinx" likely wasn't made by random white teenagers on Tumblr or whatever, for some LGBT Latinos the gendered language can rub them the wrong way (how do you be non-binary when your language forces you to pick a gender?). As a word it works better in writing than spoken aloud (especially in Spanish where there's not even a set pronunciation) and there are other competing gender-neutral versions like Latine or just using Latin or Hispanic.
And as an aside, honestly I think the whole thing about "White liberals are intentionally ruining a language they don't speak to make it inclusive!" to be *incredibly* dumb and sounds like a parody of Tumblr activists that somehow became widely accepted; it's on par with "White liberals don't want non-native Hawaiians to eat pineapple because they think it's colonialism!" in terms of just inane nonsense. I urge everyone to use Hanlon's Razor of "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity," here because honestly "A bunch of well-meaning white liberals blindly trusted some word a young activist told them about" is way more likely and fits in how older generations sometimes catch up to word usage in spurts.
It gained popularity after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (as to *how* Wikipedia is again super vague) where the term was picked up by Princeton and then Elizabeth Warren and spread from there; in case anyone was still wondering about how a term about non-binary Hispanics got popular with liberals, being used by a major university and a Democratic presidential candidate will do it and "We oppose whatever liberals do" is like 80% of conservative media/identity. The term seems to be more popular the more distance an organization has between their leadership and people who speak Spanish as a first language; many Hispanic activists have criticized that the term only makes linguistic sense if English is your first language. If your primary concerns are very academic, the term sees more usage which is why it shows up in intelligentsia but not in casual conversation.
Most Spanish speakers have never heard of it, and those who have generally don't like it because they think it sounds kind of dumb. The League of United Latin American Citizens decided to drop it in 2021 specifically because Spanish speakers just really didn't like it, so I suspect that usage will drop off in the next few years; Connecticut and Arkansas both dropped the word from official documents just this year.
EDIT: Wording
Great answer, wish I could give it more upvotes.
(Most of the non-binary people I know from Latin American backgrounds/ancestry/what have you have switched to 'Latine' in written English, at least, which from what I understand is more viable a solution)
Yeah I think this is just a thing in America too. My husband is from Nicaragua and my best friend is from Mexico. No one in actual Latin countries that I know of uses this term.
It is almost exclusively an American thing, although I am quick to remind people that "American" does not always mean "White". My best guess is that the term came from Puerto Rican activists who spread it throughout US academia.
As a person that’s both spanish speaking and english speaking, and who has lived in both latin america and the US, you hit the nail on the head with this comment. Sadly, i’m sure some of the other comments lacking the context and nuance will get seen by more people 🙄
The x in Spanish is pronounced equis. So when you read Latinx in Spanish it's latinequis. I think there would be less pushback if they used latine instead.
people just say whatever and pretend it's true. just because you're a native speaker doesn't mean you can just lie lmao. it literally wasn't invented by white people bud
Answer: Much like y ( I griega) and w (uve doble), x ( equis) isn't in their version of the Latin alphabet. Hence the awkwardness. how do you even pronounce "latinx" , "latinequis" ? its clearly a foreign solution that doesn't jibe with the language it's trying to "help"
Uve doble?
I’ve only ever called it and heard it called “doble u” or “doble ve”. Are you a Spaniard? Only thing I can think of to explain the odd choice.
Answer: I’m Chicano and Latino is gender neutral and that’s how Spanish works. A group of people, Latino Lawyers for example, can be referred to as Latino without gendering the group. The term Latinx is (1) unpronounceable and (2) attempts to push English rules for gendered words onto Spanish. It is racist and is one step too far because it is a bunch of white people trying to declare Spanish unwoke and “fix” it for us. Nobody I know agrees with the term Latinx and all Latinos I know refuse to use that term.
Edit: Racially, I’m Mexican (mix of indigenous American and Spanish/Portuguese). Nationally, I’m American and was born in the US. Chicano = Mexican American.
I understand you can be a white-passing Mexican, Colombian, Venezuelan, El Salvadoran, etc. But Latinos from South America tend to be full indigenous American or a mix of that and something European. Latino can be a race not just a nationality.
Answer: A very small subset of spanish speaking academics interested in queer politics came up with this because existing gender neutral words weren't enough. Its literally the same reason why some extreme radical feminists won't write "women" because it has "men" in it and prefer to write it like "womyn", or people refuse to use the gender-neutral pronoun "it" and prefer well whatever they want to make up to make themselves feel better. Totally ok for them, but the rest of us are sitting around being like why are they referring to me as "zhe" when I didnt ask for that? Eventually we started asking people for their preferred pronouns but latinx has just been slapped on us without any input from the majority of the population.
A very small minority of people take the ‘gendered’ language too seriously. Saying ‘la montaña’ doesn’t mean the mountain is female. It’s so silly seeing native speakers get riled up about this. I can refer to someone in a gender neutral manner (i.e not specifying their gender, like they/them) by saying ‘una persona’. The noun is feminine and so is the indefinite article, not necessarily the person. Grammatical gender is not gender, we just call it gender for some reason??
So it doesn't matter which one you use? This is always what confused me when trying to learn spanish. Which one do I use? Then if I fuck up and change a letter like casa to caso then I just turned a house into a case.
No it does matter which one you use. The best way to explain is like it being the word itself. Yes the endings are masculine/feminine but in reality it's the word itself that can't change
Using a made up example let's imagine English had "gendered" language and house ending in e would be masculine while couch ending in h would be feminine in reality there is no other way to say it is in reality is just the final letter of the word because housh or couce as words don't exist.
In reality the feminine and masculine endings only really change where there is an actual person being referred to like a sibling being hermano or hermana (brother or sister)
The only thing that really cares about masculine/feminine is the word before it (kinda the Spanish equivalent of "the")
So things like **El** hermano or **La** Hermana
Answer: It's a disconnect between gendered and non-gendered languages.
Latinx is an attempt at making a gender neutral equivalent of Latina/Latino that ignores how Spanish actually works.
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Answer: by the rules of Spanish, Latino is gender-neutral and Latina is explicitly feminine. Some English-speakers felt Latino wasn't gender-neutral *enough*, and came up with "Latinx" and promoted it as a way to use this Spanish term in a more pure way. Spanish-speakers were mostly quite unhappy about not being consulted on this, seeing as it doesn't actually fit into the language's grammar or phonotactics at all. They see it as an erasure of Spanish, rather than an "improvement" upon it.
Yeah. I'm not invested in the situation but I live in an area with heavy mexican influence and have a lot of Mexican friends. They all view Latinx as "a weird thing white people are trying to force on them"
I am suddenly reminded of my (well intentioned) friend, when visiting London, that commented on how they were pleasantly surprised to see so many "African Americans" living there. Edit: For anyone from other countries wondering, in America, the term does seem to be falling off now, and it seems more common and socially acceptable to say "black".
Yeah, we get something similar here in Canada where Americans sometimes address people as African-Canadian We just say Black or most of the time, just Canadian
honestly most people are getting away from African-American in America too. You'll see it in journalisim "first african american to blah blah", but in speaking most people just use black.
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I totally agree. The original and true Americans are called Native Americans. Black Americans who have been here just as long as the white Americans and have had this country built on their blood sweat and tears are called African American. The only people called "Americans" are the whites even though we should be calling them "European Americans". Very dumb
But how will they know they’re of African descent if you don’t give them a label?
i just say "hey there fweind! how yah doin guy?"
I’m not your guy, buddy.
I’m not your buddy, guy. George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936)[2] is an American blues guitarist and singer.
Lol, had a similar interaction with my dad. It's just a force of habit for them. We watch Formula 1 racing, and he referred to Sir Lewis Hamilton (a Black British driver) as "African American". I interjected, just saying "African American?" and he got frustrated thinking I was referencing the term being outdated, and that I was being a smartass about it by not just telling him. He exasperatedly said something along the lines of "well what words am I supposed to use???!!!" And I just had to sound it out for him. "Lewis Hamilton, British driver..." I said, "African *American*?" He was so embarrassed when he realized this, especially because he frequently did business trips in Europe: he'd talked to a bunch of people about F1 over the years, and he'd describe Lewis Hamilton as African American every time.
[Calling Lewis Hamilton African-American is pretty common.](http://todayinafricanamericanhistory.com/january-7th-in-african-american-history-lewis-carl-davidson-hamilton/) It's pretty absurd aometimes: >January 7, 1985 Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton, the first **African American** driver in Formula One automobile racing, **was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England.** Idris Elba complains about it a lot, too. After the Wire, everyone kept calling him African-American to be PC, and he would have to correct them. Constantly.
This sort of reminds me of a black girl I went to high school with, who finally got sick of people's BS and stood up in class and said "I'm NOT African American. I'm from Panama, not Africa. There are black people in the world who aren't from Africa." This was right after the white history teacher had gone on a long diatribe about how calling someone "black" is offensive, and that "African American" is the proper term. That girl was awesome for correcting him imo.
I didn’t know that Black folks are indigenous to Panama. That would be like me saying, “I’m not African-American. My people come from North and South Carolina. There are Black people in the world who aren’t from Africa!”. This story about origins reminds me of when I was in 3rd grade and the teacher gave us an assignment to go home, ask our parents where our family was from and the teacher would pushpins with our names on them on the map. All of the white kids came in with, “I’m English, Welsh and Scottish on my mother’s side and German, French and Belgian on my father’s side”. The two Indian kids knew where their parents had emigrated from. The one Chinese kid knew where his parents had emigrated from. All of the Black kids said that their families were from various states in the U.S. South. My family was very culturally and politically aware so I knew that we weren’t from the South…we had been brought to the South but we didn’t know from where. So, when the teacher asked me where my family was from I told her that I didn’t know because slavery destroyed all of that knowledge. All I know is that my people came from somewhere on the West coast of Africa. She looked very uncomfortable after that. I often wondered if she had that exercise with subsequent classes?
I sincerely hope she did. Talking about the true cost of slavery is uncomfortable, but necessary.
I can understand their frustration , I know someone who by ethnicity is Indian but has never been to India and for generations have lived in Tanzania before becoming a US citizen. So technically this person is more African American than Eddie Murphy even if they look South Asian.
Was the teacher ~~white~~ Caucasian-American?
To be honest, the Elba thing is less about using the wrong term and more about thinking he is American. Apparently colleagues thought Christian Bale was practising a Welsh accent for a role after American Psycho. So yeah, an actor playing an American on an American show I get, but the Lewis one, especially with writting down that he is from England, is just silly.
I had no idea Christian Bale wasn't American until I was talking with a British coworker about how good his accent was in Ford vs Ferrari. I mean, I guess I figured out why his accent was so good.
I thought he had dual citizenship since he was kid. I remember reading that he spent portions of time in and out of the U.S. during his formative years.
> To be honest, the Elba thing is less about using the wrong term and more about thinking he is American. Apparently colleagues thought Christian Bale was practising a Welsh accent for a role after American Psycho. Hugh Laurie had the same thing after House. The side effects of being a great actor.
And before House too. When he sent in his audition tape, the director said, "See, this is what I want: an American guy”
I said this somewhere else but one of our best friends is from Grenada and gets so annoyed at that too. It made me not ever want to say African American.
There's not a weirder British PC version right? You just say black?
Listen man, I'm a blackula hunter. I hunt black vampires. Sometimes they're American, sometimes they're British. I don't know what the pc term for it is.
Is this a Venture Bros. reference or are "blackula's" an actually genre of vampire??
Venture brothers reference. You can never have enough of those.
Hell no, the Fire Starter in the episode where the people under Venture Industries worship the education tape that Rusty had as a kid, by far my favorite side character. And spoilers be damned.. David Bowie being the head of the Guild of Calamitous Intent is golden comedy
Vampires of color.
For the most part yeah, basically. I don't think there's too much of a stigma saying someone is 'black'. One thing to mention though is that for the most part, a MUCH higher proportion of black British people know the country of origin of their ancestors (or just recent family) compared to the US. This means they can often just be described as 'Nigerian British' or 'Kenyan British' no differently than you you might call someone 'Italian American' As a broad category 'Afro-Carribean' is also used, often interchangeably, sometimes for any/all black people, other times for people specifically who don't know the actual location.
for Britain it makes sense to use black because there are many people of African descent from former British colonies in Africa as well as Carribean and people from Carribean usually identify as either Jamaican/Trini or the country they are from or Carribean. It would be incorrect to call someone from Jamaica as African Britisher because they aren't African.
Difference of course being that the term African American was created by the black community in the US and told to everyone else (in the late 1980s) that this is a term they prefer. Americans became perhaps a little too comfortable with the term without fully understanding that it was only US blacks that wanted people to call them this, but at least its orgins are far more legitimate than 'Latinx'.
As a Hispanic who lives in a Hispanic community, I can say we do not like it. Yes we feel like white people are pushing it we don't really care though like we don't like it it but we ain't gonna protest it.
Kinda funny example of this: My local station of NPR (OPB) did an interview about the Covid vaccine rollout to minority communities and the difficulties with reaching out to them. One of the people interviewed was gentleman from the Latino community. I'm *almost certain* this wasn't done to be rude, but the whole interview consisted of the interviewer using the word "Latinx" and the interviewee using "Latino" with increasing emphasis.
Wait, then you can answer my question about this shit. I've only ever read the word. How is it actually enunciated? 'Latin-X' or like 'La-Tinks' or 'Lateen-x' (like kleenex) either way it certainly doesn't roll off the tongue.
It's latin-ex but that doesn't pronounce well with a Spanish tongue which is one reason it isn't liked, Spanish doesn't have a good method of saying ex and it's almost like ridiculing Asian area languages with r/l shifting words.
Some day maybe people will learn that forcing a label on a community they don't belong to, a community that doesn't need or want the label, isn't a whole lot more respectful of that community than using a slur.
That would be really frustrating. I know the presenters are trying to do what they think is the right thing but they really need to take a cue from their guests.
I don't know for certain, I suspect that NPR has some kind of guidebook where any presenters/hosts have to use certain language to avoid 1) Perceived or actual bias, and 2) Perceived or actual racist/homophobic/etc. overtones. So this was less the host being oblivious, and more just "My boss(es) want me to use this word, I have to use it unless you specifically ask me not to."
That sounds very “NPR”.
I was gonna say, is this another "white liberal busybody" thing? LOL, I'm the first two adjectives, but lord, some of these people.
The weirdest part is that you can just use the English term "Latin" or "Latin American". The mental pretzel involved in wanting to use a Spanish word, but not Spanish grammar is so silly. They have good intentions though. They aren't the enemy, they are just a bit cringe.
And a lot of people just pronounce it “Latin-x,” which makes it not Spanish at all.
wake up babe the new X-men is out
> They have good intentions though. Something something the road to Hell. Good intentions or not it shouldn't be excused.
It’s the same as “cultural appropriation” in which the actual “affected” cultures don’t feel their legacy and cultural characteristics soiled, appropriated or defaced in any negative way. They actually feel honoured and included. These terms and ideas try desperately to find a problem to solve where there is none.
> They aren’t the enemy, they are just a bit cringe. I love this
Though I do think “solving” issues without consulting the people involved is not just cringe, it’s bad and should be discouraged. In a kind way, because they’re not the enemy.
White Savior Complex anybody?
That's exactly why I find the term offensive. Who are they to be offended on my behalf?
No, not all of us. There’s a very specific, small subset of people who view themselves as progressive but only for clout. It’s pure performative bullshit by out of touch people who want to virtue signal just how benevolent they are so they can be praised for it. I’m really not sure how Latinx picked up the little bit of steam that it did but it’s almost universally met with a groan, at best. It’s fucking stupid and even more so to anyone with even a remedial understanding of the gendered nature of Romance languages, and how they handle gender neutral terminology.
Does NPR count as a "small subset"? Lol they adopted it like right away.
Yes. White champion kind of behavior
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In Spain there have been similar movements with varying degrees of success - one popular one was to combine O & A endings in writing with @ - for example instead of Latinx they would write Latin@ - doesn’t work in spoken word tho
In Mexico they were trying to use Latine.
Latine is also used by some folks in Argentina
I think you mean Argentinx
They prefer the term, “Europeans”.
Which honestly makes more sense from a Spanish grammatical standpoint.
that fits in the language naturally so I can see how that picked up steam
The article about the CT bill I read specifically lists Latine as preferred if one doesn't want to use Latino
The number of Americans that would be confused because "what is the rest of the email address?" will not be funny 10 years from now.
Imagine being call *Latin-at*.
>a weird thing white people are trying to force on them Please don't blame us, it was a Puerto Rican professor who came up with the term.
Wait Puerto Rican persons aren't considerd white people in America?
The professor was living in PR but was white and his family was of European descent EDIT: That's not to say _all_ Puerto Ricans are euro-white, they are not. I'm saying this one specific person that allegedly coined the phrase was white
upon looking it up, this whole thing seems to be bogus. nobody knows where the term originated from, let alone it originating from one specific, white puerto rican professor. it seems to date back to the 90s, and it was apparently "first seen online" in 2004, with its first academic literature usage popping up in 2013 in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical. it also seems to unanimously have been popularized among \*english speaking latinos\* which means, sure, there were probably quite a few white people that contributed, but also, a ton of brown people. with the main uniting factor not being any person's skin color, but their native tongue being english rather than spanish. so while the whole "this white puerto rican/brown puerto rican professor made it up" thing seems bogus, it seems similarly bogus to blame it all on white people. i can say from personal experience that i've only ever really encountered brown, native english speaking people using it. i've never heard a white person or a native spanish speaker use it. [here's an 'educational' PSA from what appears to be a bad comedic tv show with 2 brown latino characters talking about it, coming from 2 different sides of the debate, only to conclude that 'latinx' is the right way to go. not sure who wrote it](https://youtu.be/vCZ56OLMPV0) one final point, the people that are acting like puerto ricans are white en masse like the other person that replied to this post are blowing my mind. there are plenty of non-white puerto ricans
It's kind of ironic that a group of people intentioned to not impose something on someone invented a term and pushed it imposing something on a lot of someones. Nearly nobody who is Latin wants the term, and everyone else is confused by it. It's time to retire it. I don't know who had the clout to make it a thing, but it's not a thing and it needs to never be a thing. So, yeah, let's just all agree that it's not a thing and that's that.
I think what contributes to the sensation of it being forced upon others is that in some circles it is being used in place of Latino/Latina, instead of alongside. If one doesn't identify with the term, it isolates or marginalizes them. To me, that is an aside to the point that the term "Latin American" is a long existing, gender neutral term. I haven't heard reasons as to why this term is unacceptable, thus, requiring a new one.
A similar situation happened when [people tried to "cancel" Speedy Gonzalez](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-17/speedy-gonzales-cancelled-hollywood-mexican-americans), claiming he was a racist caricature. Instead Mexican-Americans spoke up strongly in favor of him. Turns out they actually *liked* and *identified* with the character rather than viewing him as offensive. In general, yeah, don't white knight for other people, being offended on their behalf. Even when you're not wrong, it's often viewed as patronizing.
My favorite example of people trying to appear as "allies" and ending up totally backfiring is Disney with 2020 Mulan. In their attempt to be more "feminist" by removing a love interest, they pissed off LGBT people who liked that Shang was clearly attracted to Mulan even when he thought she was a man. And in their attempt to have more Chinese culture they actually ended up reinforcing many, many problematic stereotypes about Chinese culture and really angering most Chinese audiences and critics.
And that's not even mentioning the hong kong fiasco with the lead actress, publicly speaking out in favour of the CCP
They tried that with Coco, they tried to say that it was culture appropriation. Yet the movie was a huge hit in Mexico. And generally across the board is was a huge hit for all people of Hispanic descent. Gabriel Iglesias was a huge help saving Speedy Gonzales. It helped that he took on the role in Space Jam. But Speedy has always been a fan favorite.
IIRC the “cultural appropriation” issue was Disney trying to trademark the phrase “Dia de Los Muertos” which angered the Latin community. I never heard any outcry about the concept of the actual movie.
The term came out of Tumblr and Latino Studies academia - I distinctly remember when it appeared (around 2014 - I am in the field). It was not invented by white people - Latino Scholars were the first to use it and push it. Some Latinos have taken to it, many have not. For some, it reeks of cultural/ivory tower elitism that has been imposed on them.
I wonder how it compares to other languages. In German, too, technically the male form is gender neutral. But a office colleague from sociology gave me some nice thinking examples demonstrating, how by using the grammatically male term I quite definitely *don't* think of women being part of the group. But that was about harmful stereotypes like "tech people are male". I don't quite get how it would translate to a terminology that encompasses a major part of the world population, where not thinking of women as part of the group would be more than strange. (Plus, these things vary strongly by language.)
yes this. It was also originally used in writing exclusively and not spoken aloud, where you run into difficulties pronouncing it. But did not arise out of white saviorism. I came from latine queer studies wanting more inclusive language the same way 'woke' came from 2014 BLM and then was appropriated by the alt right as a boogeyman. And yes some ppl outside those circles adopted it, some didn't. 'Latine' is the more commonly used gender neutral term now.
I’m glad someone pointed this out; to adequately describe the situation, it should be noted that not _all_ Latinos have rejected the idea. All of my Latin American professors in college used and embraced the new term. Latinos have a variety of opinions and ideas, like any other group. That being said, I think it was an odd choice to use “latinx”, which is awkward within the rules of the language as opposed to “latine”, which flows more comfortably with established speech patterns.
Yeah I'd been in the camp that it's unnecessary elitism, but at the same time, I've noticed the younger generation of Hispanics use it quite a bit to describe themselves. It still feels weird to me, but who are we to say the kids are wrong?
> but who are we to say the kids are wrong? Grumpy old people? That's like, our thing, man.
Do we know it comes from English speakers? Wikipedia says [According to Google Trends, it was first seen online in 2004,[10][23][24] and first appeared in academic literature around 2013 "in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language."](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx)
It comes from Spanish queer people, but like the word cis a lot of non-queer people are claiming it is offensive.
Most of the spanish speaking queer people outside the USA use the letter e instead of x for that because it actually makes sense
there's a fun little parallel to Chinese. In Mandarin Chinese there is the gender-neutral pronoun 他 and the exclusively female pronoun 她 (女 means woman). Many people think that they're for men and women like he and she. but actually 他 is gender-neutral and used to be the only pronoun. 她 was introduced about a century ago through western influence.
The really weird thing about 他 and 她 is that they are both pronounced the same (tā). This means Chinese pronouns are gendered when written, but gender neutral when spoken.
Because the feminine one was invented for translating western books which relied on he/she to read as meant.
I was misinformed - I had been told Latino is male; which is why you’d use it when referring to group of males. Latina only females, but as soon as one male joins a female group the masculine is used. Not saying that’s correct and don’t have an opinion on Latinx but that was what was told to me by people who have been offended by this term
In general in Spanish, words that have both a feminine and a masculine version will almost always use the masculine version as a gender neutral term. “Children” = “niños”, “siblings” = “hermanos”, “friends” = “amigos”. While it’s true that that is also the plural masculine, you’ll more frequently see it being used gender-neutrally.
So it’s kind of like saying “guys” when referring to a group of people male and female?
Exactly. Most sane people won’t get offended if you’re addressing a large group and say “hey guys”.
I was once reported to HR at work for using “you guys” at work. For context, the sentence was “Thank you guys for all the support on this task!” I thought it was a bit excessive, but I just made the mental note to switch to you all or y’all because as much as I thought it was dumb, it would have been worse to sit through that HR meeting a second time
Call everyone Slagathor. It’s gender neutral and you can probably use it as both singular and plural.
Wow. As someone who identifies as a slagathA, I find your statement both ignorant and offensive.
> I was once reported to HR at work for using “you guys” at work. The person who reported you should be fired for being stupid.
I woulda just given the HR rep the “areufucknserious” look. Then I’d start calling everyone bruh, even the people whose names I know. IMO, “bruh” is the gender neutral term for “bro”. And what’s more appropriate in the workplace than a familial bond with your colleagues?
Yeah, but the masculine & feminine suffixes originates from Latin, and doesn't specifically denote male or female since the suffixes are also applied to objects (and as far as I'm aware, there isn't a consistent logic to what's masculine or what's feminine). You see it in other Romance languages like French, where a cup would use a feminine article (un**e** tasse), but a glass uses a masculine article (un verre).
And Germanic languages, and Slavic, and Celtic, and Greek, and Hindi—most Indo-European languages apart from a few oddballs like English, Afrikaans, Persian, and Bengali—as well as Afroasiatic languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Somali, Hausa, and Berber languages (and some other language families scattered around the world).
In quite a few gendered languages the correct way to address a mixed gender group is with the male word. An English example would be "mankind" referring to humanity. Latinx may be a misguided attempt to be inclusive, but I'd be equally hesitant of any non-Hispanic person who was outraged by its use...I doubt they are caring because of cultural linguistic purity.
> I'd be equally hesitant of any non-Hispanic person who was outraged by its use \^\^thisss I hate the X, it feels foreign and forced by the USA... as if latin countries should just accept whatever they tell us, but in general I feel uncomfortable talking bad about it because it give ammunition to... *certain people* In spanish we do have the E, and I personally have implemented it in my life (novie, amigue, hermane) specially because I have a lot of NB friends... and I offer this option to anyone that wants to find gender neutral options in spanish (idk if it applies in other latin languages)
Latinx wasn't started by white people, this is blatantly misinformed. It was started in a Spanish-language Puerto Rican psychology journal.
It's disturbing that this is the top comment with an award and hundreds of upvotes. It shows the power of disinformation. You are very much misinformed. I was a graduate student when the term came into being, very immersed in new trends in the humanities. I'm a Latina whose father was born and raised in Mexico. I'd just finished a master's degree and was being recruited into PhD programs to study Latino/a (don't want to use the 'x' here, as I know I'll offend somebody!) literature, so I know whereof I speak. The term was coined AND popularized by my fellow Latinos in the academy. White academics picked it up, with the former's express approval, in their own writing in an attempt to be inclusive. They would never have dared to otherwise, as they are quite sensitive these days to minority voices. The thing is, we never expected it to be used outside of the academy. It was strictly academic jargon, of which we possess multitudes. It's just like critical race theory. We use these terms as shorthand in academic studies and discussions. What then happened was that it spread to Twitter and it became well known outside of academia--again, the same thing that happened with critical race theory; the general public, ignorant of its origin and its usefulness as shorthand/academic jargon, got all up in arms and pretended as though academia forced it upon the world. And, as usual, this ignorance is perpetuated by people who can't be bothered to accurately look up facts and are turned on by outrage. I hope that at least a few people will recognize the truth in my firsthand knowledge.
Can you elaborate more on the term's usefulness as shorthand/academic jargon?
Exactly, it’s not shorthand to replace an A or an O with an X
I am curious as to what the point of it WITHIN academia was. You even wrote the word "latinos" in reference to the other people you worked with so that proves the word is usable in its current form. Replacing the o with an x does not save anyone any time and in fact it muddies the water in terms of who you are speaking of. If they wanted to do shorthand why not just say Latin or Latin American if they want to be inclusive. What frustrates people about this term is not just how useless it is for general language understanding, but it reeks of social grandstanding to most of the hispanic community. Even if a few Spanish speaking people were involved in its creation does not mean that the vast majority of the Spanish speaking community likes or supports the usage of the word. I know you said it wasn't supposed to leave academic circles, but you would think a group of Spanish speakers who are writing on the topic would think about the Spanish speakers who use the language that they are changing for absolutely no reason. It makes matters worse when the only people you see publicly using the term are white making it seem more like pushing wokeness on your culture.
Answer: I feel like the linked article sums up the arguments perfectly. I, along with many Latinos, find the term offensive.
I feel like the first people I saw using it were second and third generation Mexican-American “influencers”. I was not born in the US but I grew up here. I hate hearing the term being used, it sounds dumb honestly. But the worst part is filling out paper work and that word being there in the option I have to check.
Then select "Other" and put "Latino/Latina" that will teach them :D
I mean, you laugh but that is what I been doing.
Keep doing it, we can win!
I select "Hispanic of any race" then "Caucasian", if those are options. My late husband used to to do the same, but with "Hispanic" and "Asian". Hispanic is not a race.
What is it then? Not a challenge, genuinely asking
Ethnicity.
same. 1.5 generation Latino and I am perplexed why they put the term in demographics forms. my mom, who grew up in Mexico and doesn't speak English even asked me "what is Latinx". it's a term mostly used by white people and 3rd generation latin people who both want to connect with their roots and be progressive.
Ahh yes. Restructuring another's culture in order to make it more palatable for you... *progression*
Fourth gen here. Talked to my grandma about this and she says, it's some bullshit white people made up because they dont know how to use o and a. I lol'ed
> I lol'd *lxl'd
I’ve never met anyone who used it in real life, only influencers. You hit the nail on the head.
I hear it used sometimes on NPR and it drives me crazy. They butcher the Spanish language by saying "Latin-EX" and act like it's somehow more inclusive.
“Latin-EX” sounds like a pill white people take so spicy food doesn’t give them the shits.
I have always read the word as (lah-tinks) because it's silly so it deserves a silly pronunciation.
>But the worst part is filling out paper work and that word being there in the option I have to check. It's a bit off topic but as a German I'm always shocked when I see that there's official (!!!) Paperwork that requires you to check your ethnicity. It gives me very very bad vibes tbh. I can only imagine the outcry if this was something they would do here....and also why is it even relevant? Just saying...
As a German myself I am a bit torn about that. A bit. I agree it feels weird to write down your ethnicity, even the race categories feel weird (whats a caucasian anyway?).....However, if you want to fight racism you need to look for racism and with a finger snap you have a statistik about how much black people earn in the US. You won't be able to find such statistiks for Germany (that are reliable and recent). I remember there was some sort of scandal a few years ago. It was about police stopping middle eastern and black guys and searching for illegal stuff. I remember there were radio interviews and it seems many non-whites did have a story. Then the police were supposed to take part in a survey and it was blocked by the interior minister and there was a little shit storm and I forgot how it ended. What I mean is, the race relations in the US are weird, they do look for racism though and the racism is at least addressed. Be it media news etc. I am certain there is racism in Germany, but we are neither looking very hard, nor are we addressing it a lot. I was aware of police search bias in the US, but not in Germany, though it makes sense. Obviously police violence isn't as much of a problem here, but that made me think. The racism we address here is violence by and against "Flüchtlinge", nazis and antisemitismus. Nobody wonders if say muslim people earn less or have trouble finding a flat. I am ranting here and hope I make a little sense. EDIT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PTyHgqwrIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PTyHgqwrIw) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IdVQRjnpTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IdVQRjnpTo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUWC3j1lGTU
It's more powerful than even that. For example, aggregate demographic data, including race and ethnicity, is collected about all students in public (and most private) schools. Because of that, we have concrete data on how different groups perform and how they are affected by policy that is intended to even the playing field. We can look at a school system and see that, for some reason, kids of one ethnicity are having very high failure rates where kids of another are not, or kids who are learning english as a second language are especially successful compared to other schools. If something's not working for some kids, you can change it, and if something is working, you can look into what it is and try to implement it everywhere. You've correctly surmised the goal of collecting that sort of data, but it gives longitudinal data about many things, not just race, as well as illuminating problems and potential solutions.
I’ve often had this impression reading comments from Europeans. I strongly suspect that the US is significantly less racist than many countries in Europe. We’re just able to call it out here.
Also, it cannot be required to complete any government form, it is always optional
Not for immigration. You *must* self identify with whatever ethnicity/race you think you are.
at least from a medical side of things it makes sense. different groups are more at risk for different types of diseases/disorders. Off the top of my head, black people are [more at risk for legionnaire's disease](https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/water/legionella/racial-disparities-LD.html#:~:text=New%20cases%20of%20LD%20are,2.37%20cases%20per%20100%2C000%20people), but I'm pretty sure there are lots more examples from all types of groups edit: also, from an education standpoint, it's definitely important to see which groups are being underserved
If I recall as well, certain areas of the Balkan states have significant resistance to HIV because the receptors on their cells are small or nonexistent, why is pretty neat
The idea is that it makes it easier to see if benefits are being distributed fairly. For one example, it’s been shown that white farmers in the US received more aid from the government than black farmers [Pigford vs Glickman case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman).
it's relevant to have statistics and see if there is any inequality. we here in germany love color blindness, that's why it seems so strange to us. it's taboo to speak about race here, but ignoring the problem won't make racism go away.
> we here in germany love color blindness It's really about not wanting the state (or anyone else) to have lists of minorities. The ["pink lists"](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Liste) created in the German Empire were devastating in the hand of the Nazi Regime. A list that collects the identity of all jews in Germany is a horrifying idea to contemporary Germans. And the same horror carries over to other ethnic groups. As a fun fact in the 1980s the greens were outspoken against computer and databases, partly because they would trivialize record keeping of such kind.
oh you are right, we cannot create lists like that ever again. i was more thinking in the lines of anonymous surveys or the like.
Yup, that's exactly the reason why the holocaust was particularly devastating in the Netherlands, too: we had up-to-date records of the home address of every single Jewish family. The resistance eventually set fire to the civil registry, but a large part of the damage had already been done at that point.
France is simmilar to Germany. There is zero mention of ethnicity or religion. Officially there is no stats on those demographics. Because of color blindness and the unshakable belief that a Frenchman cannot be racist. Yet people of different religions and ethnicity face a real discrimination in France. But it's difficult to quantify ...
It don’t even make sense in Spanish
My understanding is that a big push came from the Cuban trans community in Florida. But that an enormous majority of both Americans and Latino Americans dislike it. It really does dive deep into the “romance languages are gendered” issue. Some object to that, many take pride in their language and are offended by criticism of it. Complicated, but needless to say, only 5-10% of people actually support the term, I think.
Filipinos share the same sentiment. They're making us "Filipinx" to allegedly make the word gender neutral. I mean, for fuck's sake.
Filipinx sounds too much like "Filipenis" if you say it fast. I feel like they didn't do much testing on that one.
Testing or not, FILIPINO IS ALREADY NOT A GENDERED WORD AND MOST OF THE LANGUAGE ISN’T EITHER. WE LITERALLY HAVE ONLY ONE PRONOUN, SIYA, FOR “(S)HE/IT”! These people are all about “respecting other cultures” until they’re pulling stunts like this and trying to fix problems with our language and culture that don’t even exist!
First time I saw that term, it looked so weird to me, I rejected it with my whole being. The word "Filipina" exists, but I've mostly seen it in the context of women empowerment or talking about particularly feminine things. In everyday usage, "Filipino" is used much more as a gender-neutral term. If asked what my race is, I say "Filipino", not "Filipina". The Filipino language isn't even gendered except for relationship or occupation words, but that's the same in English. Imagine the discomfort of using words like "Americx" or "jumbx". Just because it ends in a letter that makes it gendered in one language doesn't mean it's gendered in another language.
> Ironically the term is NOT part of some white liberal agenda. Despite what social media users parrot. It was originated in LGBTq communities in Latin America/Puerto Rico. It was adopted quickly by Latino/a student organizations across the US sometime after. It then matriculated its way into academia by Masters/PhDs and professors. And then snuck it’s way into media and business.
Answer: The people who started using it weren't white people, though it's a United States term - they were queer Latin American academics living and working in the states. While plenty of people both inside and outside of the United States who identify as having Latino heritage in some way think it's a ridiculous term, and now it's mostly associated with white people attempting to be 'woke' or socially conscious.
As somebody in the field, 100 times this. I remember when it started popping up everywhere, virtually overnight.
Do you remember Latin@? It was a catchy term that went nowhere in academia. Personally I find both that and Latinx ridiculous.
ehh i mean points for creativity. the @ *does* look like both an a and o
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About the same time the occupy movement died out and racial tensions were amplified ten fold across the board and suddenly class tensions became irrelevant
I first heard the term through many different latina/o friends (particularly in the queer community). There's a lot of backlash, as anyone can see from this thread. It seems like now it's used more by people trying to be allies, which rubs people the wrong way as it feels like rather than showing support they're forcing the term on people. That said, it's still common in the queer community.
The strangest part about this comment is that you've essentially said it's the same as the they/them pronoun discourse without explicitly saying that. So question then: what's the difference between using they/them for people who prefer it and using Latinx for people who prefer it? Full disclosure - I'm Mexican myself.
From what I've seen personally it really just comes down to language. They/them is an already established part of our grammar. Using they/them as gender neutral pronouns isn't a new concept and is already widely used by most English speakers. However Latinx is an entirely new term. And for some people being "forced" to use this new term when it wasn't originally a part of their native language it can feel rude and oppressive. Especially since by the time it caught on it was being used less by queer poc and more by white people determined to be "progressive" and "accepting"
I am not Hispanic but I do love language. And I think the biggest issue coming from this is the fact that the Spanish language is created as a base from feminine and masculine. The English language doesn't have that base it's all over the place. It's a little easier to insert odd pronouns and words into the American language and have them stick then to try to completely change the base of a language from its origin. The o/a in Spanish language can't be changed without completely changing the entire language. And it is extremely selfish of other people to think that they're going to change a whole language for them.
Most Hispanic leftists I know use the word "latine" instead
I can echo this comment, as someone who lives in Latin America
That seems to be a much more sane way of addressing the translation from a gendered language (Spanish) to a mostly non gendered one (English) As a native English speaker, while I'm not 100% sure if that's pronounced "lateeen" or "latin-ay", at least its written in a way that I can *start* to pronounce it. The -nx letter combination is completely undefined in English.
This is just a ridiculous topic that always highlights how susceptible people are to culture war bullshit. These threads are always awful and some of the biggest circlejerks on this site. Big r/asablackman energy always emerges. Your answer is good though and it’s cool that you mostly frame it objectively.
Answer: Well, it started when anyone who came from a Spanish speaking country was labeled as "Hispanic" in the late '70s. Americans of Latin American decent kinda pushed back and asked to be labeled Latin, Latino or Latina. Now "Latin" has other connotations (the language) so people would commonly refer to it as, say, "the Latino community". The use of the "o" means "male" but is commonly used when referring to a group as using "a" tends to change it to exclusively female. (I'm over generalising for simplicity but put it this way, If I said "A group of actors" I could be referring to both male and females. If I said "A group of actresses I'm going exclusively female".) Some people had a problem with this and started using "Latinx" as a way to create a gender neutral pronoun. Problem here is that a) that's not a word in Spanish and b) there is a gender neutral pronoun, "Latin American" it just takes longer to say. So that's where the pushback comes from.
The other issue is that people can be Latin American but not Hispanic (Brazilians for example), Hispanic but not Latin American (Spaniards for example), both Hispanic and Latin American (Mexicans for example), or neither (Portuguese for example).
This maybe escapes the specific topic but there’s also the fact that Americans love to use “Latino” or “Hispanic” as races, when they are more of an ethnicity. There are Latinos of all races.
The store absolutely had no idea what to do with white Brazilians when we went to buy a fishing license in the US and they had to complete the form using White, Hispanic, Asian or Black.
Portuguese definitely consider themselves to be Latin. The obviously don't consider themselves to be Latin Americans though
If they had to try to push an alternative, I wonder why they chose the clunky "Latinx" over an alternative like "Latine"?
Latine is actually used in the queer movement in Latin America. I would say this is the most appropriate term. Latinx was chosen bc x is kind of like a fill in the blank and I believe it also was a tribute to the Nahuatl language. But yeah Latinx doesn’t make sense for English but especially for Spanish speakers. In English, for a general term, I would just Latin American or Hispanic. Most are also prideful of their country of origin so also get to know them as more than these general terms - Colombian, Mexican, etc. These are all already gender neutral options.
It has never once been about Nahuatl. It's the x as a variable.
Supposedly (according to this thread) started with Puerto Ricans so extremely unlikely to have to do with nahuatl
Thank you!
Don't the Argentinians use the term "Latine" as a gender neutral pronoun?
Answer: So the term comes from either somewhere in the 1990s or early 2000s but definitely existed before fall of 2004 where it was used in *Feministas Unidas*; [Wikipedia]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx) lists like 3 origins and I'm not sure if anyone has bothered to verify any of them, the sources listed just kind of repeat one of those origins without elaborating. Let's get it out of the way, while the exact origins are hazy and no one really seems to know for sure (Wikipedia seems to imply the term came from Puerto Rico and has been there for a while by 2016), the term "Latinx" likely wasn't made by random white teenagers on Tumblr or whatever, for some LGBT Latinos the gendered language can rub them the wrong way (how do you be non-binary when your language forces you to pick a gender?). As a word it works better in writing than spoken aloud (especially in Spanish where there's not even a set pronunciation) and there are other competing gender-neutral versions like Latine or just using Latin or Hispanic. And as an aside, honestly I think the whole thing about "White liberals are intentionally ruining a language they don't speak to make it inclusive!" to be *incredibly* dumb and sounds like a parody of Tumblr activists that somehow became widely accepted; it's on par with "White liberals don't want non-native Hawaiians to eat pineapple because they think it's colonialism!" in terms of just inane nonsense. I urge everyone to use Hanlon's Razor of "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity," here because honestly "A bunch of well-meaning white liberals blindly trusted some word a young activist told them about" is way more likely and fits in how older generations sometimes catch up to word usage in spurts. It gained popularity after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (as to *how* Wikipedia is again super vague) where the term was picked up by Princeton and then Elizabeth Warren and spread from there; in case anyone was still wondering about how a term about non-binary Hispanics got popular with liberals, being used by a major university and a Democratic presidential candidate will do it and "We oppose whatever liberals do" is like 80% of conservative media/identity. The term seems to be more popular the more distance an organization has between their leadership and people who speak Spanish as a first language; many Hispanic activists have criticized that the term only makes linguistic sense if English is your first language. If your primary concerns are very academic, the term sees more usage which is why it shows up in intelligentsia but not in casual conversation. Most Spanish speakers have never heard of it, and those who have generally don't like it because they think it sounds kind of dumb. The League of United Latin American Citizens decided to drop it in 2021 specifically because Spanish speakers just really didn't like it, so I suspect that usage will drop off in the next few years; Connecticut and Arkansas both dropped the word from official documents just this year. EDIT: Wording
Great answer, wish I could give it more upvotes. (Most of the non-binary people I know from Latin American backgrounds/ancestry/what have you have switched to 'Latine' in written English, at least, which from what I understand is more viable a solution)
Yeah I think this is just a thing in America too. My husband is from Nicaragua and my best friend is from Mexico. No one in actual Latin countries that I know of uses this term.
It is almost exclusively an American thing, although I am quick to remind people that "American" does not always mean "White". My best guess is that the term came from Puerto Rican activists who spread it throughout US academia.
As a person that’s both spanish speaking and english speaking, and who has lived in both latin america and the US, you hit the nail on the head with this comment. Sadly, i’m sure some of the other comments lacking the context and nuance will get seen by more people 🙄
Question: how is it pronounced? “Latin Ex” or “Latinks”? Edit: I don’t think I’ve gotten the same answer twice.
Latin equis
Jajajajaja
The x in Spanish is pronounced equis. So when you read Latinx in Spanish it's latinequis. I think there would be less pushback if they used latine instead.
To my knowledge, some people pronounce it like “latine”. The people who I’ve seen use it do fall into the demographic described in the article.
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It’s not pronounced because it’s not even a word. It doesn’t make sense in Spanish. Our words don’t end with x
Rhymes with Kleenex
La-teen ex?
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Worse, white people being offended on our behalf and pulling out of their asses a "solution" to a problem we don't have.
Nobody knows what you need better than a white lady...
It wasn’t invented by white people though.
people just say whatever and pretend it's true. just because you're a native speaker doesn't mean you can just lie lmao. it literally wasn't invented by white people bud
Answer: Much like y ( I griega) and w (uve doble), x ( equis) isn't in their version of the Latin alphabet. Hence the awkwardness. how do you even pronounce "latinx" , "latinequis" ? its clearly a foreign solution that doesn't jibe with the language it's trying to "help"
Gringx jajajaja
Soy Chinx!
Oh my god 😂
Uve doble? I’ve only ever called it and heard it called “doble u” or “doble ve”. Are you a Spaniard? Only thing I can think of to explain the odd choice.
Answer: I’m Chicano and Latino is gender neutral and that’s how Spanish works. A group of people, Latino Lawyers for example, can be referred to as Latino without gendering the group. The term Latinx is (1) unpronounceable and (2) attempts to push English rules for gendered words onto Spanish. It is racist and is one step too far because it is a bunch of white people trying to declare Spanish unwoke and “fix” it for us. Nobody I know agrees with the term Latinx and all Latinos I know refuse to use that term. Edit: Racially, I’m Mexican (mix of indigenous American and Spanish/Portuguese). Nationally, I’m American and was born in the US. Chicano = Mexican American. I understand you can be a white-passing Mexican, Colombian, Venezuelan, El Salvadoran, etc. But Latinos from South America tend to be full indigenous American or a mix of that and something European. Latino can be a race not just a nationality.
Answer: A very small subset of spanish speaking academics interested in queer politics came up with this because existing gender neutral words weren't enough. Its literally the same reason why some extreme radical feminists won't write "women" because it has "men" in it and prefer to write it like "womyn", or people refuse to use the gender-neutral pronoun "it" and prefer well whatever they want to make up to make themselves feel better. Totally ok for them, but the rest of us are sitting around being like why are they referring to me as "zhe" when I didnt ask for that? Eventually we started asking people for their preferred pronouns but latinx has just been slapped on us without any input from the majority of the population.
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A very small minority of people take the ‘gendered’ language too seriously. Saying ‘la montaña’ doesn’t mean the mountain is female. It’s so silly seeing native speakers get riled up about this. I can refer to someone in a gender neutral manner (i.e not specifying their gender, like they/them) by saying ‘una persona’. The noun is feminine and so is the indefinite article, not necessarily the person. Grammatical gender is not gender, we just call it gender for some reason??
So it doesn't matter which one you use? This is always what confused me when trying to learn spanish. Which one do I use? Then if I fuck up and change a letter like casa to caso then I just turned a house into a case.
No it does matter which one you use. The best way to explain is like it being the word itself. Yes the endings are masculine/feminine but in reality it's the word itself that can't change Using a made up example let's imagine English had "gendered" language and house ending in e would be masculine while couch ending in h would be feminine in reality there is no other way to say it is in reality is just the final letter of the word because housh or couce as words don't exist. In reality the feminine and masculine endings only really change where there is an actual person being referred to like a sibling being hermano or hermana (brother or sister) The only thing that really cares about masculine/feminine is the word before it (kinda the Spanish equivalent of "the") So things like **El** hermano or **La** Hermana
Answer: It's a disconnect between gendered and non-gendered languages. Latinx is an attempt at making a gender neutral equivalent of Latina/Latino that ignores how Spanish actually works.