Thoughts on the term 'Latinx'?

General
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Dropping in my opinion. I’m fine if someone, or a group, etc., wants to be referred as Latinx or Latine. Within certain contexts it makes sense, but I don’t like it when used in a “Find and Replace” for every mention of Latino/Latina.

Example A (good): A bar frequented by LGBTQ+ Hispanic/Latin American people, given the context, I think it’s perfectly fine it’s referred as a “Latinx/Latine Bar.” “How about that cozy Latinx bar, El Bombón?”

Example B (not good): Going to get food from X or Y Latin American country. I don’t think it’s good if you write something like P1 - “Oh am I’m starving, I’ll kill for some Latinx food right now.” P2 - “Hey now, I know this little hole in the wall spot owned by this Latinx guy called Lionel, I tell you he knows how to make a mean [food item]!”

So, I think it’s okay when used in its own context. There’s a whole different subject regarding gendering of other words (i.e personx, amigx, etc.) and Spanish speakers vs non-Spanish speakers’ usage of these words were things start to get really spicy, but I don’t know if that’s a discussion for today.

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Hello! I’m a woman born, raised and still living in a South American country. As most people have mentioned here, the term “latinx” is one I saw used by people from USA, and it’s personally a term I don’t like. Not only because there is no proper pronunciation of it in Spanish, but also because it feels extremely USAcentric.
Spanish has a complicated relationship with gender neutral terms, as it’s a language which assigns gender to everything and a lot of people aren’t “used to using neutral terms”. However in the last few years the use of gender neutral terms has been raising, especially with younger generations; and what is being used to indicate gender neutral is the letter e. For me “latine” feels more “natural” as it is easier to pronounce and I have heard other people from Latin America using it.

With that being said, please take into account that “Hispanic” and “Latine” aren’t the same and AREN’T interchangeable. Hispanic means someone who speaks Spanish, it could be someone from Latin America or someone from Spain. Latine means people from Latin and South America, but doesn’t necessarily mean they speak Spanish, like Brazilian people (who speak Portuguese).

Good luck!

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I agree so much, the problem arises when people never get the chance to adapt naturally. I have no problem with using Latine when I am next time in Brazil and talk to an NB. That is just basic courtesy. But I must confess if someone would get aggressive I would block and shut down because of my social anxiety.
I had that happen one time and had a really bad breakdown. That may be the reason I am having such a strong opinion :sweat_smile: I am so sorry

Furthermore I think that is the core of the problem with this word coming out of the USA and the expectations thru social media for the world to just except this new word as theirs ( sry to my US friends :sweat_smile:)

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(Feel like i should add in at the “title” that i am not non-binary but i am Brazilian so take what i say with a grain of salt, se você for também do Brasil e estiver lendo isso ahco que seria legal você adicionar o que pensa também, especialmente se você for membro da comunidade LGBTQ+)

The biggest problem with the word is because it’s how it’s written, Latinx is simply considered wrong in Romance Languages.

But it is anglicized, Latinx was created by the Americans which makes a very big problem as since it was created in the United States, Latinx ends up following the English grammar (which is a Germanic language) and have different rules compared to the two main languages used in Latin America which are Spanish and Portuguêse which are Romance languages and that don’t use gender-neutral as English speakers do.

Portuguêse pretty much gendered almost the entire vocabulary (including non-living things), for instance instead of using “The” we use “O” or “A” which ends up gendering words to male and female respectively, ironically it also genders the word “Pessoa” known in English as “Person” to feminine being written as “A Pessoa” but despite all of what I mentioned, Person still remains gender-neutral and the words being gendered works more as a phonetical thing (which can basically be explained as “we wrote and speak this way because it sounds nicer than saying this word in another way”) and we still have Inclusive Language which is used to include words and try making sentences inclusive to everyone without discriminating a group and not interfering with the language rules.

There is also a pretty big problem with Non-Binarys in Brazil is that their pronouns are still having problems with the authority that regulates the Portuguêse language which is the Brazilian Academy of Letters because since the pronouns end up written in a way that don’t follow Portuguêse grammar rules with the consequences of many linguists considering non-binary pronouns wrong (The government also deems Non-binary pronouns wrong and made some regulations to make schools to not teach about non-binary language but they don’t stop schools from explaining and teaching about inclusive language and they also don’t stop you from legally changing your gender to “Other” and being nonbinary)

And don’t get me started on the linguist variations, accents, and regionalism on each region in Brazil that are very different from
each other and which each region have their own linguistic identity as for instance we have :
*Carioca
*Baiano
*Sulista
*Gáucho
*Mineiro
And by the way, these are only some of them and only Sulista can be actually translated which means Southern while translating the others would either change the meaning (Mineiro literally means miner but in this context I mean the regional culture) or simply would be untranslatable, now try to fit in non-binary pronouns (it’s going to either be very difficult or simply not going to happen)

Besides like I mentioned before, non-binaries are still having trouble trying to adapt words to make them gender-neutral and also follow Portuguêse grammar rules correctly, then the Americans created Latinx with some of them trying to force it down to another language they know nothing about and having a very different language structure compared to English, so trying to make Latin Americans say Latinx against their own will is Ignorant, Arrogant, and also Cultural Imperialism, but if you didn’t force it them to starting saying it and they decide to say Latinx with their own free will, then it’s still a bit Ignorant and Arrogant since you are giving an opinion on how a Language should change despite not knowing anything about it.

In either case, Portuguêse and Romance languages in general simply don’t work well with non-binary pronouns and words (at least currently), so saying Latinx in Latin American countries ends up being wrong and also bringing the chance of alienating people against non-binaries and making more problems against the Non-binary discourse for inclusion.

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Usage wise, Latinx is fine for now. Prefer Latine more. Spelling wise…Latinex is a better spelling of the word instead of just flat since Latinx looks very clunky in writing. Still prefer Latine more. idk tired of this “conversation” since it’s Spanish Purists posting about their grievances without knowing that Latinx has been in use amongst Latine/Latinx enabies online since 2004. It just got popularized fairly recently. Especially stupid when…ya know Spanish was forced upon us…so idk language changes, culture changes, get used to it and help integrate it seamlessly without it looking or sounding clunky or stay mad.

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‘Man’ in english was once gender neutral, with the prefix ‘Were’ for the masculine and ‘Wif’ for the feminine. ‘Wifman’ evolved into ‘Woman’, and ‘Were’ was dropped entirely to make ‘Man’ alone the new masculine form. Conflating masculine and neutral terms (in one direction or another) seems to happen in a lot of languages over time.

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Hello, I’m Brazilian and part of the lgbt+ community!
So I don’t think there is a problem with using suffixes that don’t work verbally (saying latinx/latin@/etc sounds rather impossible for me) especially because the whole O + A thing can make people very uncomfortable (gender dysphoria). As a Brazilian you know that even when the word is “gender neutral” it still holds it’s gender.
I’m a supporter of neutral pronouns (elu/etc) even though, I MYSELF don’t use them since I get confused, and saying from a foreigner view it’s weird that we put gender labels on stuff like nouns, but I understand your point of view ^^
(Sorry if this sounds weird, I’m sleepy lol)

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I think Latine works much better, Latinex sounds like Latex a bit lol

Latine sounds better phoneticaly and sounding bit fancier and pleasant to hear and is also arguably the non-binary word with the biggest chances on being considered right to the Spanish/Portuguêse language academies, but that’s just my opinion.

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Thinking about it, Latin@ is arguably the best option to say outside of Latine online in my opinion, it just looks cooler than saying Latinx lol but i don’t think saying “arroba” everytime you say it in real life is going to be fun lol so i still think Latine is the better option

And i see your point on gender dysphoria, but that is sadly how Portuguêse was formed and trying to change that would likely take some of what makes Portuguêse into what is considered a very rich language

but hey Portuguêse has an real big history of changes (when the slaves came, we got a bit of influence from the african languages and dialects and same thing with the italians working on the coffee farms) so who knows? If the number of people that have gender dysphoria increase and demand some changes then it could likely happen and Portuguêse would have another major change.

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for whatever it’s worth, i am not from latin america but i am hispanic. my country and culture has absolutely zero public concept of the gender binary vs. assigned sex or the idea of non-binary people (it’s a very small country and my country of ethnic origin, so i feel comfortable generalizing like this).

but i end my words that address myself with -e when i can. people i worked with know my spanish is shit was still developing, so I’m 99% sure they just assumed it was a typo or that I got confused. Any document I drafted that require I refer to myself, though, I always did it… felt good, ngl. but yea, in regular conversation I just use the -o for myself. I’d rather misgender myself as masculine than misgender myself as feminine :man_shrugging:t5: some of the time people ‘correct’ and that leads to me being like ‘yea, i know what i said.’ lol afab culture amirite

maybe if i find myself in spanish-speaking queer spaces someday, I’ll adjust and start using -e. I’m in agreement that it sounds far better and naturally flows into Spanish as it is. I like the use of -@ a lot for text–in the context of like graphic design, blogging, texting; stuff like that. would definitely not work for a published work.

I can’t comment on the term ‘latinx’ specifically since it doesn’t apply to me, but I wouldn’t end my own Hispanic nationality with x. nor would i call myself africanx. ugh even writing that feels like an American activist injected themself into my keyboard :laughing::laughing:

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None of the Romance languages has a neuter gender - at least, none of the most widely spoken ones - but Latin did. This is a gross overgeneralization, but for the most part the neuter gender seemed to merge with the masculine at some point in the evolution. So the concept isn’t coming completely out of the blue linguistically, and had the Romance languages retained the neuter gender, a word like “latine” could have come into existence organically. I don’t see, say, the Real Academia Española jumping on that bandwagon any time soon, but then, their mission is necessarily a conservative one (I don’t mean socially conservative, but that they’re not supposed to accept any change to the language without evidence of consistent and widespread use). Colloquially, though, “latine” feels like something that could actually be a Spanish or Portuguese word, and “Latinx” emphatically doesn’t.

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To be fair, the academies for Romance Languages kinda need to be conservatives on changes too.

Portuguêse, Spanish, French are considered acclaimed languages due to either their structure, usage or phonetics so any small change can cause them to lose their “bragging rights award” but yeah Latinx is simply out of question but Latine could be their option (i could see the French putting it as their non-binary version of Latino but not really going to happen any time soon since Non-binary Latinos in France are like the minority of the minority)

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“Latine” is feminine in French.

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Oh wait Latine is the femine version of Latino in french isn’t it it? I forgot my bad lol

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Besides, as long as we’re talking about formal organizations of language preservation, I’m pretty sure the Académie Française would rather chop up the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal than formalize a third grammatical gender any time this century.

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I’m not part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and I can’t speak for those who are, but I am Latino, live in a Latin American country, and speak Spanish.

From the pronunciation point of view, I won’t unsheathe my sword and charge while yelling that it’s a downright stupid term, but “Latinx” is just weird to pronounce. Just like “todxs”, “amigx” and “compañerx”. Every time I read those terms I think of them as “Latinks”, “todks”, “amigks” and “compañerks”.

Spanish pronunciation doesn’t work like that, and my Castellano teacher made sure to teach my entire class that the only vowels were A, E, I, O and U.

Maybe it does work if you’re having a written conversation (in forums, social media, via SMS, etc.), but in spoken conversation (in my opinion) it’s better to use “Latine” and/or “Latin American”.

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Also speaking as a non-Latin here but there is another option to consider that I haven’t seen discussed. What about just dropping the last letter entirely and using Latin for the the neutral? I think Latin is only used as an adjective now (and for the language), but would that be too weird using it this way again?

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That would be another way, but I only see English speakers using this one.

“Latin” already means “Latín” (the language) in Spanish, so if you start using it IN Spanish to describe non-binary people of Latin American origins, many people could translate it into “Latín”, and that’s when confusion starts.

I still think it’s better to use “Latine” for Spanish spoken conversations and “Latin American” or “Latinx” for written conversations

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american born black puerto rican here :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed:t4:
as someone who identifies as nonbinary, and also has experience using conversational spanish (with family) and speaking spanish in an academic setting, the only time i’ve seen ‘latinx’ used is by people online. latino is already considered the gender neutral term, but i’ve also heard people use ‘latine’ irl. i think it’s up to personal preference, but i find the whole ‘latinx’ argument similar to the ‘womxn’ debate… it’s kinda stupid imo.
again, this is just my opinion and personal experience, but i thought it might be helpful considering i already have some experience with being non-binary and being hispanic :black_heart:

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I’m latina living in a latinoamerica country and I don’t really care about the word latinx, like, it doesn’t offend me or anything, but we don’t really use that term

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