That’s pretty much what I was going to say- Spanish and I would assume the rest of the Romance languages as well, are explicitly gendered- every noun has a gender, and that affects the pronouns, endings, etc… So for example, a wooden table is “una mesa de madera”. Tables are feminine, so it’s “una” rather than “un”. Similarly, a car is “un automobile”, and cars are masculine.
If I remember right, the default in Spanish for collective nouns is masculine. So you might have a bunch of Latinas marching for women’s rights, but if you’re collectively talking about people of Latin American derivation, the way the language works is that they’d collectively be called “Latinos”.
Latinx seems like some sort of (IMO) peculiarly PC way of trying to circumvent the gendered nature of the Romance languages, and it seems a bit silly to me, although I don’t have a dog in the fight either way.
And that’s the problem. Intrinsically gendered language when referring to people. Much like the generic he for people of unknown gender in English being lately changed to a simple they, the supporters of Latinx would like to see something similar. The male form should not be the default.
There is something to this (modulo the debate on what is in fact sexist language and what is just random gender stuff that does not mean anything), but the neuter gender is pretty vestigial in Spanish, and IMO none of that has to do with English anyway.
Tell it to the Romans. It’s just a linguistic convention with thousands of years of use, not the patriarchy keeping anyone down. That’s why it’s a bit absurd, IMO.
Heck, go further back than that and tell it to the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. Clearly people somewhere in the range of 4000 to 7000 years ago got it wrong.
I’ll address the inherent misogyny that exists in the here and now. If it’s just a convention and a bit absurd, then surely the current trend of eliminating the generic he in English is equally absurd.
Please explain. How “exact” do you require ethnic descriptors to be? How would you describe persons/issues dealing w/ unspecified central/S Am countries?
A “Central or maybe South American.” Is someone from Spain a Latino or a Hispanic? The first president of Peru was Bernardo O’Higgins. Was he in one of these groups?
“Asian” is a geographical descriptor. “Tai Yai” is an example of an ethnic group.
Since we are talking “thoughts on the term”, you tell me, but do you really encounter many references to “Latin America” or “Hispanic America” compared to South America?
Spaniards are obviously Hispanic (and technically Latino, but not in the sense of Latinoamericano), but let us not forget about Catalans, Basques, etc.
There is one and only one (IMO) case where Latinx makes sense. That is for a Latino person who is nonbinary or trans or otherwise nonconforming. They have a very understandable reason to eschew gendered pronouns, and they have a right to define how they themselves want to be called. As long as it’s an individual preference, I’ll respect it and use it.
But as for all the well-meaning Anglos who have now decided that Latinx is a more sensitive way to say “Latin-American Person or Persons”, sorry, that’s a dumb contrived fad, and I’ll continue to oppose it vigorously.
To be sure: nor Latin. But many Basques are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain, which is an illustration of why things are tricky. They are as Spanish as anyone, at the same time there are Basque nationalists.
Catalans and Portuguese are Latin but also maybe not that Hispanic.
In general, people can call themselves what they want to. It’s certainly not my place to rule on decisions completely or largely outside of my experience. I know no one who uses this term, many who potentially could - so a debate on how much I like it is even less relevant. In general, traditional usages have at least one thing going for them. Tradition. That’s not always enough, of course. But if it is good enough for potential users of this term, so be it. If they prefer this term, that too is their choice and not mine.
Where are you running into these “well meaning Anglos” who are insisting that everyone use “Latinx?” You’ve been complaining about them a lot, but as near as I can figure, they don’t appear to actually exist.
Still definitely not a widely preferred or standard term among people of Latin American descent, but obviously not merely a “dumb contrived fad” on the part of “well-meaning Anglos”.
I’m not trying to argue that anybody, Anglo or otherwise, is obligated to like or use the term “Latinx” if they don’t want to, except in contexts where they’re specifically requested to do so as a preferred descriptor. But AFAICT, the claim that the use of “Latinx” is merely an “Anglo” “fad” completely unrelated to the choices and preferences of Spanish-speaking people themselves is just the usual smugly contrarian urban legend.
