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The inclusion of "Hispanic => Latinx" is staggering because: - The vast majority of Hispanic people don't like "Latinx" - "Latinx" was invented to avoid gende
by nfw2 4y ago
The inclusion of "Hispanic => Latinx" is staggering because:
- The vast majority of Hispanic people don't like "Latinx"
- "Latinx" was invented to avoid gendered words like "Latino", and "Hispanic" isn't gendered
- It's listed under "imprecise language", but "Latinx" isn't any more precise.
It's so ironic that "colonialism" has now come to mean anything progressive academics don't like, but telling a minority group what they must call themselves because "we know what's best for you" is considered totally fine.
- woooooo 4y agoThe kicker for me is if we want to anglicize Spanish because we know better than them... we could just say Latin! It's already a word! But it doesn't come with ingroup signaling and so here we are..
- shrimp_emoji 4y agoRight?! Kublai was on this train 700 years ago: https://youtu.be/FJUueJzLr54?t=169 https://youtu.be/FJUueJzLr54?t=169
- el-salvador 4y agoWhen you read Latinx in Spanish it reads as "Latín Equis". "Equis" is a word we use when talking about something or someone irrelevant. Like the x in an algebra formula. https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=equis https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=equ...
- soundnote 4y agoWait, what does that mean wrt the Dos Equis beer then? Is the most interesting man in the world actually irrelevant?
- hedora 4y agoI think you meant most interesting person in the world. Geez.
- el-salvador 4y agoTIL The beer was first named Siglo XX which stands for 20th century. The name Dos Equis later came about from the roman numeral for twenty, which is XX.
- School-Cotton 4y agoIn my understanding “Latin” also includes people from Latin Europe, (France, Italy, Spain, etc.), so it’s a bit less precise.
- spritefs 4y agoAlso note that Latino is a Spanish word, Latinx is obviously an English word. So we have non Latino white people telling Latinos to use an English word to refer to themselves Definitely no colonial undertone to this dynamic whatsoever
- lliamander 4y agoWorth noting that Latinos are themselves colonizers (well, at least of mixed ancestry). Latinx is still stupid and condescending, but framing it as colonialism is a bit reductive.
- el-salvador 4y agoIn the early 1800s my Latin American country still had separate towns for different ethnicities, but today most of us are of mixed ancestry. Does the modern definition of colonizer include mixed ancestry descendants too?
- the_third_wave 4y agoLatinx is not even an English word, it is a made-up word. It is not language evolution but an attempt at language revolution which fortunately seems to have failed thus far. May it keep on failing and may it - and the multitude of other attempts - serve as a warning that Newspeak better remain in the dystopic novels from which it often seems to originate.
- anon223345 4y agoI heard a member of the Lantinx community say they hate the term Latinx because X literally difficult to say in Spanish lol, it’s like Latin-ehkess not latin-ex
- sergiomattei 4y agoWe hate it because it's colonialist, patronizing and makes no sense within our linguistic roots.
- 908B64B197 4y agoExcuse my ignorance but let me treat this thread as a safe space: should I prefer the use of the term "pendejex" to be gender inclusive in Spanish?
- khazhoux 4y agoWhen in doubt, and to be inclusive, you can use "idiota de mierda", which is not gender-specific.
- lstodd 4y agoGreat advice, seriously
- debugnik 4y ago> to be gender inclusive in Spanish? Just look for a different term that is already gender inclusive. Maybe one day us Spanish speakers will agree on gender-inclusive inflections, but currently -e is not really having any traction outside dedicated LGBT circles, and -x or -ex even less. I admit I hesitate to speak to the odd person expecting -e and I'm supposed to benefit from it catching on! Grammatical gender just sits in a similar position to closed class words: you can't just add new gendered inflections to a language and expect speakers to still be able to speak it without effort, specially when it propagates to adjectives through linguistic agreement. Imagine if someone asked you to use tay instead of singular the or something similar. I can't comment on pendejo/a as it isn't part of my dialect, so I'm not sure what would be equivalent with similar nuance, but I doubt anyone cares about being inclusive when insulting.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- el-salvador 4y agoI've seen Latinx used by US universities and Fortune 500 companies, but not really used by the people I know. It may be different in more affluent or academic circles though.
- somewhereoutth 4y agoFurthermore, Hispanic != Latino (or even Latinx) Specifically, Hispanic relates to Spain and the Spanish speaking world, whereas Latino indicates Latin America which includes Brazil, but not Portugal.
- School-Cotton 4y agoIn the context of US immigrant groups they’re almost the same, as there are huge amounts of Mexicans, Central Americans, Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and their descendants, but relatively few people from Spain, Portugal, or Brazil.
- rsj_hn 4y agoArgentina, for example, has a huge population of those from Italy. Brazil from Portugal, Mexico and central America from Spain. This is why you generally don't want to call an Argentine or Brazilian "Hispanic". My guess as to why we call the continent "Latin America" is because for a long time Argentina dominated, being one of the richest and most advanced countries in the world, even giving birth to the expression "As rich as an Argentine". It is is still very important even today, but I don't want to get my Brazilian friends upset with me.
- School-Cotton 4y agoIn order to interpret this stuff correctly you have to understand that we’re talking about ethnic/cultural groups in the US, not in Latin America. There are not many Argentines in the US, so the distinction rarely comes up.
- rsj_hn 4y agoIf you want to know why, in the US, we call someone an "X-American", whether that is a German-American, Latin-American, Hispanic-American, African-American, then you need to know where these terms come from. Words always have a historical, rather than a logical, explanation.
- tzs 4y ago> - The vast majority of Hispanic people don't like "Latinx" It's worse than that. The majority of Hispanic people (around 75%) haven't even heard of it [1]. Only about 3% use it. Even among the demographic that it has the most recognition in (ages 18-29) only 42% of heard of it, and only 7% use it. Many also find it offensive [2]. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latinx-offends-or-bothers-them-here-s-ncna1285916 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latin...
- Pelayu 4y agoThe thing is though, in Spanish, the masculine form of a noun already also takes the duty of neuter form. E.g. “Latinos” already refers to a general group of people, regardless of gender. It doesn’t mean a group of only men.
- soundnote 4y agoIt doesn't matter to these sorts of people. "Guys" is similarily in generic use in English and I've seen mods of an ostensibly inclusive space immediately get on the case of a newcomer who just said "hey guys" as a greeting on arriving to a Discord server.
- mindslight 4y agoAny time I see a word abused with an -x suffix, I file it in the same mental bucket as the people who stylized their IRC nicks like xXDeSTRoYeRXx.
- ASalazarMX 4y agoNew Hispanic rule: you can't use "LatinX" unless you agree to be called "GringX". You can try to impose something if you accept another random imposition in return, equivalent exchange style. BTW, GringX is pronounced as GriguEquis.
- sacnoradhq 4y agoAnecdotally, the vast majority of Latinos I know hate the term as a virtue signal purity test invented by academics expressing guilt for their whiteness.