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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

"The American Cancer Society advises that Latinx, along with the equally gender-neutral Latine, Latin@, and Latinu, “may or may not be fully embraced by older generations and may need additional explanation.”

Cool cool, I look forward as a white guy to explaining to a group of Spanish people why they are wrong and are really LatinX and I'm doing it for their protection.

Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn both English and then a made up filter created by well paid academics on top of it.

Just don't be racist, we don't need all these made up rules created by our betters.

It's all so tiresome.

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A good friend of mine is a Spanish translator for a social services agency. She was telling me that the "latinx" thing is a real problem, because for people -- particularly older people -- who are not strong on their reading in the first place, they hit "LatinX" and genuinely have zero idea what that's supposed to mean.

So then time, energy, and goodwill gets wasted by having to explain to people what they "should" be calling themselves. The people she's talking to thinks the whole thing is just stupid, and is a thing that only white people care about.

But she also mentions that the younger generation of LatinX people do care, and often prefer the term. It's all a big mess and makes compassionate communication more difficult.

There's an extra layer of post-colonialism in this situation, but it's otherwise almost identical to the discussion happening in English about gendered pronouns. I think the following can both be true:

1. It's bad to tell people that they're using their native language badly if you're not a native speaker (especially in a scenario where there's a social power dynamic at play, like Spanish speakers trying to navigate discrimination in the US). People making things harder for immigrants without compassion for their challenges are probably making a mistake.

2. It's bad to say "this whole thing is just stupid" about a radical shift in language that's being deliberately embraced by younger people to break down discriminatory gender traditions, just because it's new and you're mildly confused about it. People making things harder for gender-nonconforming people are probably making a mistake.

Replace “younger people” with “a few younger people from a particular socioeconomic class” to be more accurate.

The eternal outraged youth will always find a few hobby horses to ride. Sometimes they lead to good things. This is a particularly smelly one, unfortunately.

It’s not bad to say “this whole thing is just stupid”. It’s just incomplete to say…it’s also musically ugly (language is a song of sorts) and culturally insulting. The intent is understandable, the linguistic implementation ridiculous. How about actual younger people developing another, more beautiful, culturally acceptable, word to achieve the same objective? Why continue to ride this malodorous hobby horse their elders forced between their legs? (I think that image is acceptably gender-nonconforming, and oddly appropriate.)

Anyway, according to la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española

https://www.asale.org/la-asociacion

the body responsible for the preservation of the Spanish language across the Spanish-speaking world, it isn’t a Spanish word (not acknowledged in the official dictionary)

https://dle.rae.es/Latinx

Santiago!

BTW your phrase “mildly confused” is demeaning and insulting to readers who would genuinely struggle with incorporating this in their normal Spanish speech after decades of surviving without it. Bit ironic for someone concerned with “sensitivity” to write.

> The eternal outraged youth will always find a few hobby horses to ride. Sometimes they lead to good things. This is a particularly smelly one, unfortunately.

Nonbinary people face real discrimination, including but not limited to the dismissal of that fight as pointless outrage.

> it’s also musically ugly (language is a song of sorts)

This is ridiculous. Ugly-sounding words will always exist.

> and culturally insulting ... How about actual younger people developing another, more beautiful, culturally acceptable, word to achieve the same objective

What does any of this even mean? Real Spanish-speaking nonbinary young people did come up with a working solution. If you think it's too ugly sounding, fine, you get to have an opinion. If you think it shouldn't exist because it's too ugly sounding to you, honestly, fuck off. That's not a valid complaint.

> https://www.asale.org/la-asociacion

I am aware of La Asociación. I understand that they literally make the rules. I need you to understand that they do not actually make the rules. Language is how people communicate. New words happen.

So on the one hand: 1. You don't like the sound of the word 2. An intrinsically conservative body hasn't yet recognized the word

On the other hand: 1. Nonbinary would simply like a word to refer to themselves because one doesn't exist.

But, I will concede that it was pretty rude of me to write "mildly confused". I shouldn't have been so uncharitable.

This word is also an issue for screen readers that some visually impaired people rely on. The use of "x" in the end of words to signal gender neutering is a very debated topic in Portuguese-speaking forums and nowadays, most people tend to agree that it's not optimal because it's not universally intelligible.

Latin person, person from a Latin-heritage background, and such, although more verbose, are preferred.

> "LatinX"

How is such a word pronounced? Is it "Latin" + "ex" or is it "La" + "tinx" (-inx like in Sphinx)?

X is pronounces EK-EES in Spanish.

so its "LA-TEEN-EK-EES" if we are respecting the Spanish language.

but in reality such silly butchering of a language isnt respecting the Spanish language in the first place. its merely more communism attempts to disrupt tradition & reform societies towards some immature high school wanna-be communist ends by people who've never lived in communist society.

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "communist".

Okay, but my understanding is that this word is an English word, hence the premise of the article.

The article/this discussion is my first exposure to the word.

The most amusing part about this is that literally the entire Spanish language is gendered, so we should probably change all words to 'x' replacements as well.

No more "los gatos"!

Lxs gatxs has so much more of a latin ring to it. (/s)

Spanish is being obliterated by lXs que lo hablan peor.

> No more "los gatos"!

Do you often use “cats” to describe a particular group of humans, whise gender identity you are concerned about including?

I think you have finally hit upon the solution to the pronoun problem.

In almost no case till I care about the express sexuality of the person for whom I am using a pronoun and I resent having to be forced to care about their self-centered nature, being self-centered myself.

However, instead of saying "he is wearing a weird hat", I can say "that cat is wearing a weird hat"

And I don't have to worry about it.

Gracias.

Any group is the girls, the dolls, the girlies... Haven't used cats since I stopped wearing all black.

There is an amusing and depressing irony to a colonizer's language being re-colonized by another colonizer.

Spanish, from Spain, a country in Europe, is a language made up by white people.

Latinx is form a handful of non-binary latin activists in the US, and co-opted by left-wingers who think they're doing the right thing.

They weren't White to my grandparents.

It should obviously be pronounced "le-teh-quis gah-teh-quies", right?

"Spanish is being obliterated by white people."

Spanish is being obliterated by a very small minority of politically biased and likely neo-marxist-propaganda-influenced young people.

You're right, fixed it to 'those who speak it worst'

I mean technically white people invented Spanish

> But she also mentions that the younger generation of LatinX people do care, and often prefer the term. It's all a big mess and makes compassionate communication more difficult.

As someone who's interacted extensively with the Hispanic community in the United States, I just want to point out that the younger generation generally are not completely fluent in Spanish. They often can understand their parents perfectly well but have trouble actually speaking the language.

With that in mind, I'm still suspicious that preferring LatinX correlates primarily with fluency in Spanish rather than age.

>The people she's talking to thinks the whole thing is just stupid, and is a thing that only white people care about.

https://www.newsweek.com/call-latinx-what-it-lexical-imperia...

sorry, newsweek's a bit of rag these days, but it's where i happened to find the essay republished.

Also the grammar of Spanish doesn't have an X suffix at all.

> Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn both English and then a made up filter created by well paid academics on top of it.

Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language non-binary community, originally for use in Spanish, neither (AFAIK) by “well-paid academics”.

Latinu and Latin@ I’m less sure about, but wouldn’t be surprised if they are the same. While there’s legitimate debates about their use, the “created by white English-speaking academics and imposed on the people labelled by them” narrative is itself White-centering myth.

(OTOH, the anglicized, instead of mixed, pronunciation of LatinX is probably a White anglophone invention, the original is like latino/a with the final vowel removed, and with the english name of the letter “X” in its place.)

> Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language non-binary community, originally for use in Spanish, neither (AFAIK) by “well-paid academics”.

This is disputed, both sides have evidence for them and no one really knows.

I'm fluent in Spanish and have a hard time seeing a native Spanish speaker inventing LatinX. There's no good Spanish way to pronounce it, and inserting the English pronunciation of the letter 'x' is an odd choice for someone who's paying attention to identity politics—you would think they'd try to find an alternative that feels less anglo.

> I'm fluent in Spanish and have a hard time seeing a native Spanish speaker inventing LatinX. There's no good Spanish way to pronounce

There's no good English wsy to pronounce it either. Its a deliberate linguistic transgression. (Aesthetically, its why I personally like Latine better for the specific purpose of explicit inclusion of non-binary identities, but, being neither Latin nor non-binary, I don't weight my aesthetic preferences heavily on the issue.)

EDIT: Really, the problem of how to identify a group in a way inclusive of a subgroup to whose existence the broader group is at best, as s whole, ambivalent is the real issue, and the origin stories, and more to the point the attempt to impute malign motives based on particular origin stories, is a way to avoid reaching the issue.

It's still a deliberate linguistic transgression that borrows from English. Its English pronunciation ("Latin-eks") is awkward but not completely foreign.

It's a word designed to convey an inclusive Spanish-speaking identity. Why would a native Spanish speaker choose to invent a word that is far easier to pronounce in English than in Spanish?

> EDIT: Really, the problem of how to identify a group in a way inclusive of a subgroup to whose existence the broader group is at best, as s whole, ambivalent is the real issue, and the origin stories, and more to the point the attempt to impute malign motives based on particular origin stories, is a way to avoid reaching the issue.

No, the origin stories are very much part and parcel with the issue you're discussing. Either the Spanish community itself decided that it needed non-gendered words, or a bunch of white Americans decided the Spanish community needed non-gendered words.

If the drive to change Spanish did not originate with Spanish speakers, that is very much a concern, and grandstanding about including subgroups doesn't make it less of an imperialistic affair; it just comes off as "civilizing the savages".

> Either the Spanish community itself decided that it needed non-gendered words, or a bunch of white Americans decided the Spanish community needed non-gendered words.

Pretty sure that whatever identifier is right for the community of interest here, its not “the Spanish community”, and, irrespective of any debate about the origin of the terms, a subset of the community of interests has decided they need gender neutral terms and expressed preference for one or more of them. The question then is how to refer to the community as a whole, given the existence of a diversity of preferences.

>Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language

I doubt it. Having lived in Latin America, Latin American social norms are influenced by Catholicism and their societies are more conservative & traditionalist than the US and Europe.

The vast majority of people in Latin American countries (outside of Costa Rica & Chile) struggle with academic achievement (including literacy levels), adequate n utrition, enviornmental pollution.

To claim that they would put neo-marxist language changes before actual human needs (literacy, nutrition, environment) is a paltry claim and demonstrates a lack of experience with such societies.

You’ve commented a number of times on this post, and every time you relate equity language to communism/Marxism.

I’m struggling to follow your reasoning. What does communism have to do with anything?

It might be a simple association. The war against language as an instrument to control people has been part of every communist regime.

> The vast majority of people in Latin American countries (outside of Costa Rica & Chile) struggle with academic achievement (including literacy levels), adequate n utrition, enviornmental pollution.

Do they?

• Literacy rate:

    The average for 2020 based on 7 countries was 93.91 percent.The highest value was in Colombia: 95.64 percent and the lowest value was in El Salvador: 89.98 percent.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/literacy_rate/Lati...

• Food security:

    During 2019, 7.4% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean lived with hunger

    In 2019, almost a third of the population, 191 million people, were affected by moderate or severe food insecurity. Of these, 57.7 million, approximately 10% of the region's population, was severely food insecure

https://www.fao.org/americas/publicaciones-audio-video/panor...

• Tertiary education:

    Between 2000 and 2018, higher education gross enrollment rates in the region more than doubled (increasing from 21 percent to 52 percent), making LAC the region with the third-highest average higher education enrollment rate in the world after North America with 86 percent, and Europe and Central Asia with 70 percent.

https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/738931611934489480-0090...

• Environmental pollution

You're probably right about this one, but it's not worse than most of the rest of the world, including very rich countries such as the UK and Germany.

https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/738931611934489480-0090...

> they would put neo-marxist language changes

This is just nonsensical gibberish. I'll call it neo-misesist language.

The last link (pollution) got pasted wrong. This is the reference I wanted to use: https://ourworldindata.org/outdoor-air-pollution#share-expos...

I was wondering... Have you lived in Latin America?

I've lived in Mexico, and visited Panama and Colombia.

I met very few educated citizens of those countries. The educated ones I did meet I felt were my equals, in terms of education. It was fantastic. The problem is that they're few and far between.

This article is from 2005, but may highlight the problem:

"Despite having three times the population of Argentina, Mexico produces about 2,000 fewer titles each year.

There are roughly 500 bookstores in Mexico, which translates into one for every 200,000 Mexicans, compared to a ratio of one to 35,000 in the US and one to 12,000 in Spain, according to the Mexican Booksellers Association.

A recent UNESCO study revealed that Mexicans read on average just over two books per year, while Swedes finish that many every month.""

https://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0216/p01s04-woam.html

These idiots should just use the word "Latin", which has been a normal word for centuries, instead of creating newspeak. Cultural Marxism doesn't even attempt to fix anything; it simply complicates and distorts pedestrian matters in the ivory towers it has penetrated, confusing the very people they're trying to "help".

So, this is a linguistic trojan horse. There's no proper use case for the term "LatinX" except to normalize the pronoun/trans agenda in the Spanish-speaking world.

"There's no proper use case for the term "LatinX" except to normalize the pronoun/trans agenda in the Spanish-speaking world."

This is an excellent summary of the entire discussion on the topic of the silly, childish, politically-motivated concept of "LatinX"

thanks, friend! I don't write much lately; most of my thoughts end up as 1 or -1 comments on this site.

Do you think Spanish-speaking trans people exist?

I mean not if you can't say LatinX. It essentially removes them from existence.

Obviously sarcasm but that's pretty much the argument.

And there was no need for bringing up this unreadable "Latinx" word in the first place.

There's already a centuries-old gender-neutral word for Latino/Latina that is, surprise, "Latin". Or "Latin person" if you will.

I was born in South America, and I really reject being called a "Latinx". It sounds dehumanizing.

I think the only sensible way to resist this is to poke fun at it. Humor did a great job at whittling away the absurdities of the Soviet Union, and it can do the same with this dystopian diversity nonsense.

It’s about class. Not in the usual American sense of how much money you make, but in the older sense of people thinking they are better sorts of people because they have the correct diction, education, religious views, professions, and so on.

Indeed, and someone with money and a desire to prevent actual class conflict can get a lot of mileage out of encouraging tensions in the narrow, purely expressive sense you describe

That’s the Marxist analysis and there might be something to it, but I think the main driver is just human nature.

People like to feel superior. In one era that was “I’m a devout Christian from a good family unlike those other whores and sodomites,” in another it was “I’m a hard working industrialist unlike those lazy, old money playboys,” and now it’s “I’m a social worker dealing with the problems of BIPOC folx, unlike those finance bros that only care about money.”

Right, this is not a new phenomenon. Whether it's meaningful to pin it on human nature, I'm not sure; we consider ourselves unique as a species largely for our ability to recursively adapt the environment to ourselves, and then ourselves to the new state of affairs, and so on. We do generally prefer to think we're smart and good and well-informed and justified in our decisions, no doubt. We also usually prefer to keep what we have, which could be taken to support the traditional Marxist line.

All I'm saying is in an attention economy, one does well to reflect and ask who benefits from one's beliefs and their mode of expression. Substitute money for power, reputation, or any scarce social resource, and I think the analysis still tends to work, whether or not it echoes Marx.

It is a universal truth that all of us feel worse or better than. No matter how mich politically-correct stuff you put on top.

And there is nothing wrong with it. Respect is the only thing needed.

I wonder how much if this is a result of corporate power fighting for ever-increasing economic inequality.

Class discussions about material wealth are excluded from the zeitgeist because they make the ultrarich people who control things uncomfortable and they don't want any discussion that could lead to change.

The war over language could perhaps be viewed as a way to enjoy the privileges of classism without the material requirements. It doesn't threaten capital, so it is amplified to drown out dissent.

> It doesn't threaten capital, so it is amplified to drown out dissent.

Wedge issues have been political footballs since the Reagan Era. Keep everyone riled up about something essentially trivial and no real economic changes happen.

A ~20 year old punk song goes "we are the queer / we are the whore / the ammunition / of the class war"

I am spanish. I fully agree this is all deeply stupid political-industry stuff that just generates artificial conflicts.

Like many other things in politics.

Spanish people are not Latino (or Latina, or Latinx). Latino means from Latin-America (or descended from people who are).

Hispanic means from a Spanish-speaking country.

Spanish people are Hispanic, but not Latino.

I can't tell if you're intentionally misconstruing here, but assuming you're not - you would not be in a position of explaining to Spanish people why they are wrong and are really one thing or another (Also I assume you mean hispanic people, or Spanish-speaking people?) You'd be explaining the reasoning behind the modern use of the term, and allowing them to decide for themselves how to engage with it.

The idea isn't to design a new armband that you require people of a particular group to wear each week - the idea is to ask those people what they want, and then respect them when they answer you.

If someone says they identify as Latinx, then you identify them as Latinx. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It's not about the enforcement of identity, *it's about the deconstruction of traditionally enforced identities in the first place*, it's about exploring the creation of new identities outside of the bounds of conservative tradition.

“may or may not be fully embraced by older generations and may need additional explanation.”

I directly quoted the article that specifically said additional explanation had to be made.

"If someone says they identify as Latinx, then you identify them as Latinx" except that's not what the article says. It discussed how LatinX is often used as the default in progressive language.

As a Hispanic American, I very regularly tell people I am Latino and that Latinx is incredibly offensive to my heritage. I'm in my 30s and the younger people I know also find it offensive.

maybe instead of arguing about what non-gendered term we should call this group of people we should instead admit that 'latino' is a projection onto a wide variety of people that have different cultural backgrounds but roughly share a language and sometimes a skin tone.

Or maybe we should tell people who started latinx garbage and started the arguing to fuck off and

> we should instead admit that 'latino' is a projection onto a wide variety of people that have different cultural backgrounds but roughly share a language and sometimes a skin tone.

instead of inventing more names to divide people by, just... not ?

I guess I should go back to referring to all people from SE Asia as Chinese since my American friends are just too lazy and dismissive to bother with people's actual nationality and prefer broad and vague terms for the other.

You could just call them asians as is widely accepted since forever.

There is nothing wrong with using more generic term if you don't know exact nationality of the person.

I go by XatinXox, personally. And I expect people to call me that before I even inform them of what I am called. They should just know.

I think you're joking, but 'Xicanx' is a real neologism in the same realm as Latinx.

Out of curiosity, more or less offensive than referring to you as Latina?

If it's blissful ignorance where someone doesn't know the how gendered pronouns work, that's not a problem. If it's someone who is intentionally adding an X to the end because of some perceived gender nonsense, then that's offensive.

In that first paragraph, you can also read it as a society for the study of the American Cancer, and it also makes sense. Unfortunately, it metastasized and any connected tissue gets infected as well.

I guess most immigrants don't need to learn the shibboleths, unless they suddenly get into money and want to join the upper class. It's about discriminating between the commoners and the rulers, that's why it constantly evolves, too. Need to regularly release new ciphers if you're communicating in the open with a trivial cryptography.

> Just don't be racist

I am so sorry if this pedantic, but I think it's an important distinction to make.

Both Hispanic and Latino are not races but rather an ethnic group. The race of people who belong to the Hispanic and Latino ethnic groups varies by country and even at the individual. One can have predominately African ancestry, predominately European ancestry, or predominately indigenous ancestry, while all belong to the same ethnic group of Hispanic or Latino.

I do not bring up this point to try and detract from the legitimate discrimination and oppression that many individuals and groups in the Hispanic and Latino community face.

People of Jewish heritage belong to what is known as an ethno-religious group. The idea that "Jews are a race" was either first proposed, or at least heavily perpetuated by the Nazis, and it is still considered offensive to refer to people of Jewish heritage as belonging to a different race.

Regardless, the idea of race is a social construct with absolutely zero biological or scientific basis behind it. There is only one "race", and it's the "Human Race."

In an ideal world, we would not even need to make these distinctions because we are all Homo Sapiens -- we have no subspecies. Maybe one day we can achieve this world if we stop the pathetic, needless, and disgusting hatred for our fellow man.

I'm a white Jew from Africa:)

So race wise I'm either Jewish, White, African or maybe African American now that I live in America.

Joking aside, I agree with your point

> So race wise I'm either Jewish

What did I just say? ;)

Which part of Africa?

As I understand it, Middle Eastern (including Egypt). people are considered "white" by the US Census (for those unaware).

If natively from Morocco/Egypt/Perhaps more, would you not be considered Mizrahi or are you talking like European ancestory? Not like any of this matters in the absolute slightest at the end of the day.

I, myself, have 0% < x < 25% Sephardi with another 0% < x < 25% Ashkenazi heritage. My other half is pure Wonderbread levels of European whiteness.

Apparently, I'm a mutt because my ancestors liked to travel and liked to bang whatever population was there when they arrived (I am kidding, this goes for most people).

My great grandparents fled Russia to South Africa during the pogroms. Ancestry wise I'm 99% Ashkenazi Jew (not a lot of mixing going on in my background I guess) and 1% (I can't remember what the test said, it's been years since I looked but it was a couple different ones). I kind of ended that by marrying into an Irish family and having kids that look like leprechauns :)

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