3 ms·
I still don't get the term latinx. Have they considered... Latin. As in, Latin America, for instance?
by 908B64B197 5y ago
I still don't get the term latinx.
Have they considered... Latin. As in, Latin America, for instance?
- azth 5y agoIt's incredibly offensive. They're projecting how English works on gendered nouns onto other language (Spanish) and then getting worked up over it. It's astounding that the people pushing the term don't see the irony.
- wumpus 5y agoAlso nicely ironic that the language Latin is gendered. So "Latin America" in English is "America latina" in standard Spanish, and Google wants to translate it to "Americae" in Latin ("Americas", plural, feminine gender, nominative case.)
- rcoveson 5y agoI have seen some concern about this issue in El Salvador. But "latinx"? Not once. It's unpronounceable in Spanish. You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H, which can't work at the end of the word. I've heard native English speakers say it's pronounced "lah-TINKS", which is so obviously foreign it's painful. Two solutions I've seen native speakers employ: Sometimes in written language, the @ symbol will be used because it's like an A and an O overlayed ("latin@s"). When speaking, the only thing that could work would be E, "latines", which at least would be pronounceable and would rhyme. Did the idiot who thought of "latinx" think about rhyming? Spanish speakers write poetry and music too.
- tablespoon 5y ago> But "latinx"? Not once. It's unpronounceable in Spanish. You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H, which can't work at the end of the word. I've heard native English speakers say it's pronounced "lah-TINKS", which is so obviously foreign it's painful. That's pretty ironic. I never made that connection, though I only have a basic familiarity with Spanish phonetics. My understanding is that "latinx" is pretty much exclusively a performative English-speaking white liberal thing. It's not very pronounceable in English, either. I've never actually heard it spoken, but mentally I read it as "latin-ex." Personally, I don't think I'd ever even try to use "lah-TINKS," since I'd be afraid it'd be interpreted as an ethnic slur.
- mshroyer 5y ago> I've never actually heard it spoken Tune into NPR for an hour and you're sure to hear it.
- umanwizard 5y agoI’ve heard it spoken (never, of course, by someone actually from Latin America), and it’s indeed pronounced latin-ex.
- robocat 5y agoThis video gives some background to the term, and pronounces it latin-ex: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bs339gW_xqU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bs339gW_xqU (I tried to pick a short video without any adverts.)
- umanwizard 5y ago> You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H Interestingly, in both of those cases it was originally pronounced like our “sh”, which is a sound that doesn’t exist in Spanish.
- bluedino 5y agoHispanics don't get it either.
- bitwize 5y agoOne of my favorite responses to this came from a Mexican on Twitter and was something to the effect of "Fuck off, pendejx."
- busterarm 5y agoI laughed _so hard_ at this and am going to steal it.
- busterarm 5y agoIndeed. The only ones I've ever seen push it in the workplace are the ones that never learned how to speak Spanish. Telling.
- bushbaba 5y agoWith them shoving their privilege into others. The exact thing they preach not to do.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ekaros 5y agoAlso why is it limited just to latin, why not whitx, blackx, asix, arabx, jewx and so on? Why aren't they inclusive towards all other groups?
- postsantum 5y agoIronically, some groups use the -x for chinese people
- umanwizard 5y agoOr latine which was invented by people who actually speak the language.