Does anyone else find the whole 'Latinx' thing nonsensical?
I understand the reasoning, it's about being gender neutral. But why don't they just knock the vowel off the end and just say 'Latin'?
I understand the reasoning, it's about being gender neutral. But why don't they just knock the vowel off the end and just say 'Latin'?
But I don't understand why we don't just drop the o/a at the end and use "Latin". No article seems to explain this, and nobody here in HN has explained it either.
I'm not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it, I genuinely don't understand what's wrong with simply using "Latin", which would be linguistically more correct in English, and also a contraction of "Latin American".
Maybe there's some cultural nuance I'm missing, as I'm not American. All the Latin American people I know identify as being from their home country (mostly Argentina and Chile), rather than Latin American anyway. The whole Latino/Latina/Latinx thing seems to be some Pan-Latin American thing for US residents, trying to amalgamate a whole continent into a single cultural identity.
(Of course, if the south/Central Americans want a shared ‘Latinx’ identity then good for them, this comment is more about how Americans (the ones from the USA) refer to them.)
Someone demanding me to blanket treat an entire culture is dehumanizing every interaction with a person from that culture (and it makes each interaction tainted with ideology). I also can't respect someone who thinks they have the right to speak for an "identity" that crosses many cultures and national boarders, or contains millions of people. [1]
Let's reverse the roles. Would you feel comfortable if a white activist (assuming you are white) you do not know, who has never spoken to you before, and comes from a different country or background than you, is demanding the country/world to treat or label you a specific way? What if it was a male? Or female? Or Catholic or atheist? Democratic or republican? Blue collared or white collared? Has children, or doesn't? [1]
[1][1] A single word can be heavily loaded from a political or justice oriented ideology, and cause people to subconsciously distance themselves from people they interact with due to subconsciously projecting that ideology.
/rant.
Sure, but doesn't that apply to every such label? Latinx is the "controversial" term and Latino/a are the "accepted" ones, but that's just because we're having this discussion now; surely further back in history Latino/a were just as unfamiliar as Latinx is today.
Put another way: what label is not arbitrarily decided by pleas from some subset of that group and/or popular usage?
Through the usual meme grapevine I saw a tumblr post on reddit about this. Being gender neutral/genderless in this case is also actively ignoring Spanish linguistics (and arguably culture). Spanish is a gendered language like many others. It's not some patriarchal conspiracy to say Latino instead of Latina or vice versa, it's just how the language works. If I remember correctly as well, the gender neutral form would still be Latino.
Granted, they're being referred to through English here, which one could argue could benefit from just being 'Latin' (confusion between actual Latin aside). I'm of the opinion to keep loan words as close to the original as possible. Language changes over time but some words are still explicitly from elsewhere. So, keep it as Latino/Latina.
That argument that conflates the Spanish language and Latin American culture (which is not homogenous). Portuguese actually edges out Spanish in terms of European languages in South America, and there are hundreds of indigenous languages spoken there [1]. It's an appeal to the purity of a culture that is itself a product of colonialism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_South_America
We're not in South America, though. In the context of this article, we're talking about a town in the USA with a large number of immigrants from Latin America as a whole, most of whom are Hispanic and comparatively few of whom are Brazilian.
Which, again, in English, is usually used when discussing immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic.
To use x in an English text comes across to me as political activism.
it's really not that hard to use singular "they". we already do it naturally in instances like "someone left their coat here. i hope they don't need it today." it only gets confusing when you try to talk about a gender unspecified member of a group and the group at the same time.
you can certainly debate whether you should have to adjust the way you speak, but it's not like what people are requesting with pronouns is actually hard.
"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me as if I were their well-acquainted friend" - A Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3
As you point out, even people who criticize it use it, because it's natural in most situations. There would be very few people who would naturally say "each of the children called his parents" over "each of the children called their parents."
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/13/462906419/everyone-uses-singu...
>A lot of people tell you it sets their teeth on edge, but my guess is that they're not listening to themselves very attentively. Everyone uses singular "they," whether they realize it or not. In an engaging recent book called Between You & Me, the New Yorker's self-designated comma queen Mary Norris says that that use of "they" is "just wrong." But flip back a few pages and you find her writing "Nobody wanted to think they were not essential." If that sentence got by a New Yorker copy editor in her own book on grammar, what hope is there for anybody else? If you insist on coming down on singular "they," it's best to be a bit ironic about it, since you're almost certainly going to be making a hypocrite of yourself before the day is out.
"Eche on in þer craft ys wijs"
(Each one in their craft is wise)
We also have the term Hispanic to refer to folks from Latin America though I'm not quite sure what the underlying difference is.
There's also Chicano which means from Mexico.
People in Quebec are french-speaking or francophone, but calling them "French" is dismissing everybody in Quebec who is not of "pure" French descent.
Not quite. Brazil is in Latin America, but Brazilians are not Hispanic.
I think that's why it's largely considered Latin America instead of Hispanic America.
Latino/Latina means "of Latin America" (actually I think it's an abbreviation of the Spanish or Portuguese translation of "Latin American") and refers to people whose ancestors are from Latin America.
So an American whose ancestors came from Spain would be Hispanic but not Latina and an American whose ancestors came from Brazil would be Latina but not Hispanic. Someone whose ancestors came from Mexico would be both Hispanic and Latina.
Like most broad, potentially emotionally charged, cultural labels many people don't agree with this labeling and/or may self identify differently. Especially those who don't have a strong cultural or linguistical ties to where their ancestors are from.
So I think it is a very valid point to wonder why some regions came to be referred to (in american english) as latin america, where others that would in principle fit the logical criteria didn't.
I agree it could be put in a more constructive way, but yourself assuming they are not familiar with a particular culture just because you don't like their comment is what actually comes across as rude and dismissive to me.
Why is it cool to change the language about gender, but not about culture?
I am in the "western hemisphere" (by any possible definition), and this nomenclature is not by any means embedded in my culture. In high school, we learned latin as the language of our ancestors, we studied latin civilization and latin culture as part of the ancient Roman empire, etc. I remember being taught about our latin culture of southern europe of romance-speaking peoples, and they compared with the germanic culture of the north. At home, my father pushed into me the (of course, ridiculous) stereotypes of the serious, hard-working germanic peoples of the north, which are probably more intelligent but they have less creativity than us latins. I can call myself a "proud latin".
It does not seem that this usage of "latin" that you mention is particular to the western hemisphere, but rather to the U.S.. Moreover, the term "latin america" was precisely introduced to refer to the french-speaking colonizers of the continent.
Latino is a Spanish short cut for Latinoamericano or Latinoamericana. The anglicized version would be Latinamerican or just Latin. So they add the gender, Latino or Latina, and then renege it using Latinx. Why adding the gender in the first place?
Long ago, 'woman' was 'wifman' which meant something like 'one's wife'. And 'wif' meant 'spouse', gender neutral.
Now try to convince anybody today, that 'woman' can mean either partner in a marriage. Its not used, today, anywhere close to that meaning. Nobody will be on board.
We've got to move ahead from where we are, not where we're 'supposed to be' by anybody's rules.
"Latinå"
Too hard to type on physical keyboards though.
There are probably other reasons.