Clearly the bigger issue is going to be amongst those people speaking Spanish. Someone speaking English can avoid the the whole issue by referring to someone as a Cuban, Mexican, Peruvian, etc. rather than Latino / Latina / Latinx / Latine. Either way, the issue will only come up specifically when discussing someone’s pronouns rather than in general conversation. Someone speaking Spanish doesn’t have that option.
If it was the case that we could just say Mexican, Cuban, Peruvian, or whatever their national origin/ancestry was then we probably wouldn’t have adopted Latino to begin with. I’m not going to refer to someone as a Mexican unless I know for sure they or their ancestors did in fact come from Mexico. I’ve made such an assumption before and it’s both embarrassing to me and mildly annoying to the person I referred to incorrectly. And what are you talking about with pronouns? Latinx, Latino, Latina are not pronouns.
I meant in the sense that a Spanish speaker would run into the same difficultly with Mexicano/Mexicana/Mexicanx, Colombiano/Colombiana/Colombianx, Cubano/Cubana/Cubanx, and so on, while this isn’t a problem in English (assuming we do know someones actual national origin and aren’t just guessing). The pronoun thing was me thinking about how some people might include that in their social media profile as how they prefer to be referred to. I admit my usage of pronoun was not very accurate 
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I don’t think that’s true - I can say Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican , etc. about every Spanish speaking person I know well. I will never refer to my nephew’s wife as Latina/o/x or Hispanic - she’s Salvadorian if her origin/ancestry is relevant. And my sister-in-law is Puerto Rican. But if I’m talking about a group of people who have in common that their ancestry is from any of the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America , then some will be Mexican and others Dominican and so on, so I will have to use Latino or Hispanic or something similar even if I know each individual person’s background.
It’s not specifically about pronouns, but general awareness of grammatical gender in Spanish. English-speakers existed in a state of blissful ignorance about this until someone decided we needed to know that “Latino” is gendered (and therefore bad), and now we’re in a tizzy about the most equitable way to replace that Spanish word (and only that Spanish word).
I’ve noticed that “Latinx” seems to be falling out of favor with some preferring “Latine” instead (Lest one be tempted to think it’s an outlier, I’ve observed noted Latine Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has started favoring it on Twitter, whereas barely 6 months ago she was complaining about critics of “Latinx”. Give it time, I’m sure “Latine” won’t be the last iteration of this.
So yeah, although inclusivity and inclusive language is important, this feels more a species of the Left’s inability to pass up even the slightest opportunity to tweak other people’s language, even when it’s not even their own language.
I’m sure eventually we’ll surface a word we can all live with, but currently I’m not seeing enough consensus to jump on any particular bandwagon. I think “Latin” is perfectly fine, myself. Sure it’s not specifically “Spanish”, but then this debate has never been about what Spanish-speakers want or need.
I was trying to get to that aspect of the debate as well. Are we debating what term someone speaking English should use, or what term someone speaking Spanish should use? If the latter, does it matter if we’re talking about a native English speakers who learned Spanish as a second language vs. a native Spanish speaker?
Yeah, that pretty much lines up with my (certainly not original) conclusion back in April:
I’ve heard it around for a number of years, but I suspect that common usage is likely not to fall on that term, and it’ll be mostly a linguistic experiment. […] I just don’t get a sense it is widely catching on beyond those groups and certain academic pockets. I’m curious to see how it develops
I think I still occasionally hear it on NPR, but it does not seem to have expanded beyond some activists and academia and maybe even have shrunk, but I can’t reliably tell.
I listen to NPR regularly on my drive to/from work and my impression is that reporters still use Latinx exclusively. Interestingly, the interviewees in these articles will often use Latino/Latina when referring to that group (of which they’re a part).
I’m learning Spanish. Unpronunciability and the good chance that a person I might speak with won’t know the term at all aside, are the following gramatically correct?
Mi amigo latinx dice “hola”. [My Latinx (masc.) friend says “hi”.]
Es de la mujere latinx. [It belongs to the Latinx woman.]
Esto latinx es tu amigo, ¿verdad? [This Latinx (masc.) is your friend, right?]
Esta latinx es tu amiga, ¿verdad? [This Latinx (fem.) is your friend, right?]
Buenas, señor. Estoy buscando dos personas latinxs, un hombre alto con traje negro y su esposa con pelliroja. ¿Les vio? [Hello, sir. I’m looking for two Latinx people, a tall man wearing a black suit and his red-haired wife. Have you seen them?]
Creo que está buscando aquellos latinxs. [I believe you are looking for those Latinxs over there.]
ETA: More examples,
Unas latinxs llegaron a las once. [Some Latinxs (fem.) arrived at eleven.]
Los latinxs van a jugar el sabado. [The Latinxs (masc. or group of mixed gender) go to play on Saturday.]
~Max
If I have the usage correct, the answer to this question is no, not in Spanish, nor in English translations of Spanish, where every use of “Latinx” will still be gendered masculine or feminine.
~Max
I have had thousands of Spanish conversations with people from Latin America from many different backgrounds. I have never heard anyone use the term “Latinx”. I have no general objection calling someone or some group by a term they prefer. I sometimes object to changing a common term to be extremely inclusive of a very small number of people, when not discussing that group. (It is true not all pregnant people are female, but when discussing “pregnancy” in general, do not need to highlight this fact unless it is specifically relevant). But I’m not dogmatic about this.
My advice is to avoid the term “Latinx” unless asked to use it. It says more about the speaker than the subject. I might rarely use a term like “the Latin people” to avoid direct gender, but you really can’t avoid gender in Spanish. It is built into the language, as one does not say amigx.
On the broader subject, how do you speak to somebody in Spanish who identifies as nonbinary? Do they commit to masculine or feminine for the purpose of grammar - or does it simply not come up? Since masculine can refer to unknown gender, do they usually use masculine? Because from what I’ve learned it is impossible to be neutral in the language.
~Max
I’ll add some numbers for ease of reference. I’m not a grammarian in either Spanish or English, so I couldn’t explain exactly why some of these are incorrect, I just know that they are, or at least that they look weird to me.
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La is feminine, latinx is neuter, so the genders don’t agree.
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Es de la mujere latinx should be mujer latinx. No e after mujer. Also the same problem with la still being feminine.
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Este latinx … would be correct. Esto would be incorrect in that situation, even if you were to use Latino instead of Latinx. In this situation Este would be correct. Same issue with amigo vs. amiga vs. amiga vs. amigx (which looks extra weird to me). Making only one word gender neutral just looks bizarre.
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Esta should change to este to maintain a neuter gender. At least I think that’s how it would change.
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I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with “Les vio” or how I would change it, but it looks wrong.
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Aquellos would presumably be incorrect if you are using Latinxs, but aquelles and aquellxs aren’t words and AFAIK the neologisms haven’t yet been invented.
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Again, I’m not sure Unas would be correct if using Latinxs. Presumably it would require the neologism of Unes or Unxs.
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Same as above. Los would have to be Les or Lxs to maintain the use of neuter gender in the entire sentence.
A lot of changes would have to be made to Spanish to make it a gender neuter language. Changing just one noun to a neuter gender and leaving the other words masculine or feminine wouldn’t make sense. At least not to me 
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ETA: I think the English equivalent would be saying something like “they is running late” when using they as a gender neutral word to refer to a non-binary person instead of he or she. It just doesn’t look right, at least not to me .
That was my mistake, my original draft used a plural example (mujeres) and I forgot to take the ‘e’ off. But I’m not sure what to do about la, since I don’t know a neutral article.
My mistake. I should have known it was este, not esto. For reference, my class just covered those words last week.
Does ¿Les vio usted? look better?
I don’t think you could use les, since that’s the indirect object pronoun. Right?
But my main understanding was that only the word latinx itself would be gender neutral, similar to estadounidense [American, lit. “United-States-ian”], the referent would always be masculine or feminine for gramatical purposes.
Él es estadounidense y alto. / La es estadounidense y alta.
Él es latinx y rico. / La es latinx y rica.
El estadounidense es alto. / La estadounidense es alta.
El latinx es rico. / La latinx es rica.
Otherwise as you point out the entire language would have to change so you could use a whole slew of nonstandard neutral neologisms… one for every single adjective…
~Max
Right. Which is why the sentences look odd in Spanish, just like “they is running late” looks odd in standard English. “They are running late” doesn’t look odd to me, but that means we’ve changed two words. In English this isn’t a big deal, even though “they is” would be technically correct despite looking weird, because that’s the only instance of another word having to be changed to accommodate the singular they. In Spanish, as you say, the whole language would have to change. Part of the reason for that (in addition to the language not being gender neutral) is that Spanish has a lot more verb conjugation than English. Take this example.
I eat / thou eats / you eat / he/she eats / we eat / they/you all eat.
Yo como / tu comes / usted come / el/ella come / nosotros comemos / ustedes/ellos/ellas comen.
The changes in verb forms in Spanish are a lot more important than in English. The whole “it just doesn’t look right to me” would be a lot more noticeable to a native Spanish speaker using Latinx in place of Latino / Latina than to an English speaker replacing he / him / she / her with they / them.
ETA: Maybe I shouldn’t have used thou in the English example. Besides being archaic where the equivalent word in Spanish, tu, didn’t become archaic, I’m not actually sure that “thou eats” is correct. Maybe it should be “thou eateth.” But that’s a whole separate debate .
Is there a debate? It’s “thou eatest”; subjunctive “eat”. You may know, however, that this use of the second-person singular in English is today archaic or dialectical (in any case not neutral).
I was trying to compare English to Spanish, which still uses both the informal and formal second person singular (tu and usted corresponding to thou and you). The point I was trying to make is that a Spanish speaker using Latinx is more likely to sound as if they are “talking funny” compared to an English speaker since verbs in Spanish convey more information than in English. To continue my example of the verb eat, a Spanish speaker who says “comimos” will be understood as saying “we ate” They don’t have to say “nosotros comimos.” An English speaker has to say “we ate” since just saying “ate” doesn’t convey any meaning. Which means that in English we can change up the noun however we want without worrying about having to conjugate the verb differently (I ate, you ate, we ate, they ate, she ate, the Latinos ate, the Latinas ate, the Latinxs ate, and so on). A Spanish speaker changing a noun will have to come up with a different way of conjugating the verb and also have to consider the gender of the other words in their sentence.
To make a long story short, using Latinx in English means we’re changing just one word. Changing it in Spanish means having to change the entire language.
Minor quibble: semantically singular “they” is still grammatically plural. Standard English is “they are”. This is exactly the same as semantically singular “you”, which still uses the grammatically plural verbs (“you are”, even when “you” refers to one person).
Your larger points are correct.
I’d like to offer a grammatical explanation here, which is relevant to English speakers, and explains their total inability to deal with gendered languages.
English speakers have been taught that -the horrors!- letters a and o refer to female or male things in Spanish…
But they simply cannot comprehend that for speakers of gendered languages–gender doesn’t matter, and goes totally unnoticed in conversation.
The horror that English speakers feel is because they are forced to concentrate on the gender, and they feel awkward about it.
But for those of us who speak a gendered language–it is irrelevant. Because EVERY word in the language is male or female, and you just use it naturally.
To help Americans get a feel for how natural it is-here’s an example from English grammar, which you use naturally, with no effort:
In English, the letter s is added to make a plural. But for no logical reason whatsoever, we also add the letter “s” to verbs sometimes. (ex: I sit on the chair, but the cat sits on the chair).
This letter s serves no purpose at all, but we use it effortlessly and without thinking about it. It’s just a rule of grammar.
And for speakers of gendered languages (about half the human race), gender is also just a rule of grammar. In my language(not spanish), a car is feminine, but an automobile is masculine. A table saw is masculine, and an electric drill is feminine. You add vowels at the end of most words, (similar to the o and a in Latina/o), and nobody pays attention. It is just a rule of grammar, which you use effortlessly, like the “s” in my example of “sits”.
I think that’s why Latinos don’t care about this whole issue., which so terrifies English speakers.
Absolutely!
Oh, your example is even better than that! Orthographically, we add an “s” to indicate plural nouns and singular verbs. But phonetically, we add an /s/ or /z/. We just implicitly know which sound to add. Consider “the dog runs”, “the dogs run” vs “the cat jumps”, “the cats jump”. All spelled with “s”, but pronounced as /s/ or /z/.