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"Latinx" is not cultural appropriation. On the contrary, it was coined by people of Latin American heritage who feel uncomfortable with the gender binary or who

"Latinx" is not cultural appropriation. On the contrary, it was coined by people of Latin American heritage who feel uncomfortable with the gender binary or who have an explicit non-binary gender identity. These people felt unrepresented by their own native language, so they tried to find a term they could use to describe themselves that would make them feel comfortable. There have been other attempts too, like "Latine", "Latin@" and so on. And Spanish is far from the only language where this is happening - native speakers of many gendered languages who are non-binary have been trying to find ways to assert their identity in their own language. Personally, I don't use "Latinx" in normal, everyday conversation. "Latino" or (in English) "Latin American" works fine. But if I know I am speaking about a group of people where there are non-binary members who care about this, or if the topic is diversity/inclusion in particular, then I try to use Latinx. Why not? There's nothing appropriative about trying to use language that marginalized people have asked we use to better include them.

mastazi 5y ago
> it was coined by people of Latin American heritage Were they predominantly people of Latin American heritage who lived in Latin America and spoke Spanish or Portuguese, or people of Latin American heritage whose primary language might have been English because they lived in a predominantly English speaking country? Let's say a person of Latin American heritage, but whose everyday language is English, modifies their Latin American language in ways that conform to the English language. How do we evaluate that? Yes, I agree that we could not call it appropriation, because that person is indeed of Latin American heritage, but is this not still a form of "cultural imperialism", where a language that is dominant for political or economical reasons imposes itself over other languages? And does it not become cultural appropriation later on, the moment that word spreads and becomes mainstream mostly among people of non Latin American heritage, while Latin Americans seldom use it to refer to themselves? > There have been other attempts too, like "Latine", "Latin@" and so on. Yes, it is true that there have been some attempts at making the language more gender neutral in other languages too, as I said above I'm Italian and I saw some attempts in Italian as well, things like "Cara/o cliente..." ("Dear customer..." where "dear" has both the feminine and masculine termination, separated with a slash). And I don't have issue with those attempts. But I take issue specifically with this: why attempting to make the language more gender neutral, using a device (grammatically neutral words) that is typical of the English language and doesn't really exist in Spanish? I am of the opinion that you can use an inclusive language while still speaking Spanish, e.g. you could say "Latinos y Latinas", or for brevity you could write both terminations with a slash like in the Italian example above, there is no need to force an English language device onto Spanish.
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  I really don't see this as something worth making a fuss about. Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world. Concepts and ideas that did not exist 100 years ago do exist today, and the language evolves to express those. Given Spanish is spoken as a first language by hundreds of millions of people in tens of countries around the world, I don't think it should be seen as a problem that some of those Spanish-speaking people are finding new ways to express an experience that perhaps other Spanish-speaking people don't find relevant to them. There are 40 million native Spanish speakers in the United States, and millions more who speak it as a second language. At least some proportion of those consider themselves non-binary, and would like to have a term that explicitly recognizes that identity. (Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities.) I don't think it really matters if "Latinx" is a word that was developed in the United States by people who live there. It might be a bit crass to refer to people across the entirety of Latin America using that term, but I don't see anybody doing that. As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation. To be clear, I am not an American, so I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot. But I don't think this particular term is something worth worrying about. The way I see it there are many worse things Americans could be doing than creating a new word that people there have a use for.
  - mastazi 5y ago
    > I really don't see this as something worth making a fuss about. I see it as a problem when it's used to identify a minority that overwhelmingly rejects this term as it's been noted elsewhere in this thread. That's something that is usually true of racial slurs. Of course, I'm not saying that Latinx is a racial slur, but that it shares this characteristic with racial slurs. > Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world. Of course, but that doesn't justify forcing terms onto minorities. > Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities. I think it does, because in Spanish, Italian and similar languages the masculine grammatical gender is also used for plurals where the grammatical gender is indeterminate (it's used as a substitute of the neutral gender, due to the fact that we don't have the neutral gender in our grammar)[1]. That is why I fail to see how someone who is a native speaker of those languages, and is familiar with the grammar, would find that definition non-inclusive. Unless they were projecting a way of thinking that is typical of the English language (where grammatical gender = gender identity) onto that other language. > As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation. Yes of course you are right. But people don't use "diva" exclusively to refer to people of Italian descent - so it's not the same as "Latinx", which is being used to define a minority - which overwhelmingly rejects that term apparently. Speaking of Italian words assimilated into the English language - my personal pet peeve is English speaking people saying "Bravo!" at the end of an exhibition, even if the performer is not a woman ("bravo" is masculine). > I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot. Yes, sometimes in HN discussions it's considered as a given that they are talking about the USA and I often interject and ask "in what country?" I'm like the "internationalist police" of this forum ahah :-D [1] An example would be: "Tutti gli italiani, uomini e donne, dovrebbero vaccinarsi" - "All Italians, men and women, should get the vaccine" - "Italiani" is grammatically masculine but it's being used as a neutral here. To an external observer this might seem masculinist, or you might see it the other way around (the masculine grammatical gender ends up being de-emphasised because it's often used for non-masculine nouns).

mastazi 5y ago

> it was coined by people of Latin American heritage Were they predominantly people of Latin American heritage who lived in Latin America and spoke Spanish or Portuguese, or people of Latin American heritage whose primary language might have been English because they lived in a predominantly English speaking country? Let's say a person of Latin American heritage, but whose everyday language is English, modifies their Latin American language in ways that conform to the English language. How do we evaluate that? Yes, I agree that we could not call it appropriation, because that person is indeed of Latin American heritage, but is this not still a form of "cultural imperialism", where a language that is dominant for political or economical reasons imposes itself over other languages? And does it not become cultural appropriation later on, the moment that word spreads and becomes mainstream mostly among people of non Latin American heritage, while Latin Americans seldom use it to refer to themselves? > There have been other attempts too, like "Latine", "Latin@" and so on. Yes, it is true that there have been some attempts at making the language more gender neutral in other languages too, as I said above I'm Italian and I saw some attempts in Italian as well, things like "Cara/o cliente..." ("Dear customer..." where "dear" has both the feminine and masculine termination, separated with a slash). And I don't have issue with those attempts. But I take issue specifically with this: why attempting to make the language more gender neutral, using a device (grammatically neutral words) that is typical of the English language and doesn't really exist in Spanish? I am of the opinion that you can use an inclusive language while still speaking Spanish, e.g. you could say "Latinos y Latinas", or for brevity you could write both terminations with a slash like in the Italian example above, there is no need to force an English language device onto Spanish.

alisonatwork 5y ago
I really don't see this as something worth making a fuss about. Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world. Concepts and ideas that did not exist 100 years ago do exist today, and the language evolves to express those. Given Spanish is spoken as a first language by hundreds of millions of people in tens of countries around the world, I don't think it should be seen as a problem that some of those Spanish-speaking people are finding new ways to express an experience that perhaps other Spanish-speaking people don't find relevant to them. There are 40 million native Spanish speakers in the United States, and millions more who speak it as a second language. At least some proportion of those consider themselves non-binary, and would like to have a term that explicitly recognizes that identity. (Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities.) I don't think it really matters if "Latinx" is a word that was developed in the United States by people who live there. It might be a bit crass to refer to people across the entirety of Latin America using that term, but I don't see anybody doing that. As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation. To be clear, I am not an American, so I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot. But I don't think this particular term is something worth worrying about. The way I see it there are many worse things Americans could be doing than creating a new word that people there have a use for.
- mastazi 5y ago
  > I really don't see this as something worth making a fuss about. I see it as a problem when it's used to identify a minority that overwhelmingly rejects this term as it's been noted elsewhere in this thread. That's something that is usually true of racial slurs. Of course, I'm not saying that Latinx is a racial slur, but that it shares this characteristic with racial slurs. > Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world. Of course, but that doesn't justify forcing terms onto minorities. > Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities. I think it does, because in Spanish, Italian and similar languages the masculine grammatical gender is also used for plurals where the grammatical gender is indeterminate (it's used as a substitute of the neutral gender, due to the fact that we don't have the neutral gender in our grammar)[1]. That is why I fail to see how someone who is a native speaker of those languages, and is familiar with the grammar, would find that definition non-inclusive. Unless they were projecting a way of thinking that is typical of the English language (where grammatical gender = gender identity) onto that other language. > As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation. Yes of course you are right. But people don't use "diva" exclusively to refer to people of Italian descent - so it's not the same as "Latinx", which is being used to define a minority - which overwhelmingly rejects that term apparently. Speaking of Italian words assimilated into the English language - my personal pet peeve is English speaking people saying "Bravo!" at the end of an exhibition, even if the performer is not a woman ("bravo" is masculine). > I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot. Yes, sometimes in HN discussions it's considered as a given that they are talking about the USA and I often interject and ask "in what country?" I'm like the "internationalist police" of this forum ahah :-D [1] An example would be: "Tutti gli italiani, uomini e donne, dovrebbero vaccinarsi" - "All Italians, men and women, should get the vaccine" - "Italiani" is grammatically masculine but it's being used as a neutral here. To an external observer this might seem masculinist, or you might see it the other way around (the masculine grammatical gender ends up being de-emphasised because it's often used for non-masculine nouns).