Question: LatinX?

[HMS_Irruncible]

@BigT

In short, nothing you are arguing makes any sense to me as someone who, while he would avoid the term “woke,” does try to do the things you describe as “wokeness.” The things you are saying do not describe me or anyone else I know who acts similarly.

One possibility here is that I’m lying or insincere. The other possibility is that your own personal experiences don’t define everyone in the world. (It’s the latter one).

[HMS_Irruncible]

@DSeid

You really read “the current norm is increasingly to have a non-gendered word for a group of people” as “a norm to neutralize gendered groups of people”

A way to address miscommunication is to say “What I meant was…” Another way is to say “tee hee, you didn’t understand me.”

@DSeid

Those “foreign origin words used as American English words” are called “American words”.

Actually that’s not the term. The term is “loanwords”. There’s nothing that dictates whether loanwords must or must not conform to English grammar. Many don’t.

@DSeid

If you proposing similarly dropping usage of “Latina” in reference to women and referring to women of that culture as “Latinos” … well go for it if you want but I doubt you’ll find many takers.

I’m not sure where you took the understanding that I propose a prescriptive change for anything. I am opposed to a few English-speakers tinkering with Spanish and others jumping on it out of a sense of hypercorrectness when, as multiple other Spanish speakers have stated in this thread, it sounds like gibberish. I mean, are we going to try to force Filipinx? Why not? Aren’t Filipinxs equally entitled to a sense of inclusion?

[DSeid]

@ISiddiqui

You appear to ignore where I mention the millions of Spanish speakers in this country. It isn’t just creating an American English word but a way of defining the millions of Spanish speakers who live in the US. And with the effect of telling those people that how they define themselves is insufficient.

It would perhaps be informative to to read that Pew link given early in the thread. If what you want to do is to refer to members of these groups how they want to be referred to then “Latino” is not the winner, and “LatinX”, a newer word just beginning to gain in usage, is more than anything else just not yet known. (It’s highest adoption rate is among younger women of the group.) The overwhelming favorite of members of this broad group of people from a variety of countries south of the United States border? Is to not be lumped together as a singular identity at all. They prefer to be identified by country of ancestors’ origin followed by “American” and do NOT especially like any of the “pan-ethnic” identifiers. Also while very few use or prefer the new word “Latinx” very few actively object to it. Only “12% of respondents who had heard of Latinx express disagreement or dislike of the term”. (Again with 75% not being aware of it.)

When describing their identity, more than half (54%) of Hispanics say they most often use the name of their ancestors’ Hispanic origin (such as Mexican, Dominican, Salvadoran or Cuban). An additional 23% say they describe themselves most often as “American.” And one-in-five (20%) most often use the pan-ethnic terms of “Hispanic” or “Latino” to describe their identity.

That’s not new either. Going back to the 90s, when “HIspanic” was considered a colonist demonym and replaced:

In a recent national survey of Hispanic political attitudes, researchers may have found a key to the issue: Most Hispanics/Latinos prefer to identify themselves as Puerto Rican, Colombian, Dominican or just plain American.

“The intelligentsia engaged in a political debate that had no resonance among the people,” said Rodolfo de la Garza, co-author of the study and a professor in the department of political science and government at the University of Texas at Austin. The larger question suggested by the study was whether a label for the larger group is useful at all in characterizing a population that is not monolithic.

Indeed, in Miami there are bumper stickers that proclaim “No soy hispano, soy Cubano” (I am not Hispanic, I am Cuban), a sentiment echoed among other groups loath to see their achievements and struggles vanish in the swirl of the melting pot.

Personally I think that the pan-ethnic lumping is rarely of value. But it is often how data is collected and presented.

IF a pan-ethnic phrase is to be used, over the objection of the members being so identified, then right now “Hispanic” appears to have moved from reviled as the colonist phrase to the least objectionable option, and has the advantage of being a non-gendered word. But that reviled history, and the historic birth of the “Latino/Latina” American English identifier as a way to respect that members of the groups disliked it so much, makes its wide adoption pretty unlikely.

@HMS_Irruncible

I propose a prescriptive change for anything. I am opposed to a few English-speakers tinkering with Spanish

You are in fact being prescriptive. What do you think objecting to how others use these loanwords that are part of the evolving American English language is?

I’ve read no one in this thread prescriptively “correct” anyone else’s use of “Latino” or “Latino/Latina” or “Hispanic” … the only prescriptiveness I read is an attempt to “correct” those who use “LatinX”.

[ISiddiqui]

@DSeid

IF a pan-ethnic phrase is to be used, over the objection of the members being so identified, then right now “Hispanic” appears to have moved from reviled as the colonist phrase to the least objectionable option, and has the advantage of being a non-gendered word. But that reviled history, and the historic birth of the “Latino/Latina” American English identifier as a way to respect that members of the groups disliked it so much, makes its wide adoption pretty unlikely.

From the Pew survey:

While some Hispanics say Latinx should be used as a pan-ethnic term, few say they prefer it over others. A majority (61%) say they prefer Hispanic to describe the Hispanic or Latino population in the U.S., and 29% say they prefer Latino. Meanwhile, just 4% say they prefer Latinx to describe the Hispanic or Latino population.

61% is a fairly high number it seems and I think can qualify as “wide adoption” (Hispanic & Latino origin are the terms used on the US Census as well). The other thing quite interesting is that Latinx is most popular among those Latin Americans who are English dominant (6% prefer Latinx compared to 2% of Spanish dominant Latin Americans - thought the Spanish dominant are far more ok with Latino than English dominant and Bilingual groups, yet still a over majority prefer Hispanic). Though Hispanic has the one major issue in that it excludes Brazilians.

[JRDelirious]

@DSeid

The overwhelming favorite of members of this broad group of people from a variety of countries south of the United States border? Is to not be lumped together as a singular identity at all. They prefer to be identified by country of ancestors’ origin followed by “American” and do NOT especially like any of the “pan-ethnic” identifiers.

True, has been so for a long time. Many of us embraced Latino or Hispanic (though I was surprised of the numbers saying Hispanic’s the most popular(*) ) as a way to address the issue of “at least don’t confuse us all for the Mexicans, dammit!” but it still creates a problem of lack of differentiation to specific needs and aspirations.

Academics and social-political activists in the USA have favored the pan-ethnic identifier as a force multiplier – one single pan-ethnic Hispanic/Latino identifier becomes counted as “the largest minority”, passing African Americans nationwide as of earlier this century, with all that may entail in receiving attention and exerting influence. But it creates its own problems internally since it suggests an expectation we all should be on the same page.

(* Paul Rodriguez, 1980s : “What’s the difference between Hispanics and Latinos? Latinos have jobs.” Inside the community it used to be that the attitude was that Hispanic came from Census Bureau, while Latino at least originated among our own societies.)

[DSeid]

@JRDelirious

as a force multiplier – one single pan-ethnic Hispanic/Latino identifier becomes counted as “the largest minority”, passing African Americans nationwide as of earlier this century, with all that may entail in receiving attention and exerting influence. But it creates its own problems internally since it suggests an expectation we all should be on the same page.

Those were the thoughts I was thinking as I decided on the word “rarely” - the potential to be thought of as a large bloc having some advantage but even that offset by the cognitive errors that result from lumping say Cuban Americans of Florida with rural Mexican Americans in Texas. Politically at least they are far from the same page.

My WAG is that whichever word is used by the mainstream to lump across pan-ethnic lines will become less liked over a decade or so, and the lesser used will become the less objected to. The very idea of this lumping is an othering based on a superficial commonality without appreciation of actual individual subcultures. Who would like any word that does that to them?

[JRDelirious]

@DSeid

WAG is that whichever word is used by the mainstream to lump across pan-ethnic lines will become less liked over a decade or so

I suppose I may live to see the time when whatever comes next will get a reaction of “Whatever, kid, plain simple LatinX and BIPOC were good enough for your mother and I!”

[md-2000]

Hmmm… this is the first time I’ve heard of Latinx -which I would have assumed is pronounced la-TINKS and referred to a clothing brand or something. or is it la-TEEN-ecks? (By Spanish pronunciation rules it should be la-tee-NECKS?) First I’ve heard that Latino or Hispanic was an objectionable term. (Except someone might complain that “Hispanic” means they come from the island of Hispanola)

I imagine Chinese might object to being referred to by the Mandarin word if they were from a group that spoke Cantonese.

I suspect the short answer to all this is - if there truly is a problem, then the people who are identified, affected, and offended will insist on the correct term, not well-meaning woke white rescuers. I find it odd that a group whose entire language is rife with (occasionally irregular or meaningless) gendered words would see fit to convert one word to neutral in a way that does not work well in their language. Perhaps gendered words are a touchy point in English because there are so few of them that the gender identification of those that we do have, stand out glaringly by comparison?

[LSLGuy]

@md-2000

… Perhaps gendered words are a touchy point in English because there are so few of them that the gender identification of those that we do have, stand out glaringly by comparison?

Well, yes, that is the problem, to the degree there is one. What English word can refer in a non-gendered way to folks of Latin extraction to an English-only speaking audience or to a bilingual audience?

I would have preferred “Latin” over “Latinx”, but the academics forgot to ask me first.

FYI latinx seems to be pronounced like “LAtin-ecks”. IOW plain old ordinary “Latin” with the “ecks” sound tacked on. Again this is an English word, not a Spanish word being used in an English sentence.

[Miller]

@md-2000

I suspect the short answer to all this is - if there truly is a problem, then the people who are identified, affected, and offended will insist on the correct term, not well-meaning woke white rescuers.

Framing this as white people dictating to non-white people how they should identify sort of bothers me. As near as I can tell, the people who originated the term, and the people actively lobbying for its adoption, are all people who identify as Latinx. There are lots of white people in the media using it, but that’s not the same as white people mandating it. They’re just reacting to, as you put it, the people who are affected by the term, and who have insisted on correcting it.

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@md-2000

I find it odd that a group whose entire language is rife with (occasionally irregular or meaningless) gendered words would see fit to convert one word to neutral in a way that does not work well in their language.

That’s why upthread I suggested that “Latini” would be better. And I’m not just doing a vanity re-post of my idea–I seriously believe it would work better than the other suggestions I’ve heard (save perhaps for “Latin” but I think that could be used to refer to other folks too so it’s not great.)

Latina
Latino
Latini

Isn’t an “i” actually a plural ending in some Latin languages? Italian, I think? Maybe something else? Pig Latin maybe?

[Miller]

It sounds like a drink that is served in a martini glass, but is in no way, shape, or form a martini.

[DSeid]

@JRDelirious

FWIW, even “Latino” is a sort of artificial term. Some time in the 1800s the (mostly white criollo) litterati of that part of the world wanted to come up with a transnational name that would encompass the Hispano/Luso/Franco-phone nations, as a way to contrast the already rising Anglo power up north, and reached for “Latin” heritage as the reference

This and several other posts have me curious about the history of the rise and fall of various words to describe Americans whose ancestry traces to the countries south of the United States border. Which is a very GQ question that I am sure some here can answer much better than I can gather from my cursory read of wiki articles!

How much of a drive has there ever been within the communities with these countries of origin to have a pan-ethnic identifier, and how of the drive to have a pan-ethnic identifier has been driven by the more mainstream culture?

Per wiki “Latino” was always an American word, American Spanish in origin.

By the late 1850s, with the loss of California to Anglo-Americans or the United States, owing to the Mexican-American War, the term latino was being used in local California newspapers such as El Clamor Publico by californios writing about America latina and Latinoamerica , and identifying themselves as latinos as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in la raza latina "

Which links us to the “La Raza” entry, identifying it originally as a slur, then

in wide use in Latin America in the early-to-mid-20th century, but has gradually been replaced by Hispanidad in some countries. It remains in active use specifically in the context of Mexican-American identity politics in the United States (see Chicano).

So from a slur to an adopted pan-ethnic identifier to a phrase for Mexican Americans associated with “Chicano”?

Some more history here.

‘Hispanic’ Helps Unify Communities, Agenda

The first time the federal government used the word Hispanic in a census was 1980. The appearance of the term was borne from decades of lobbying. “It took the debates of the 1970s, the protests of the late 1960s to get us to 1980,” explains G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley and author of Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American .

Before 1980, those of Latin American descent were considered Spanish-speaking, having Spanish origin or white on the census. The latter frustrated Mexican-American activists because they had no data to prove that their communities needed resources for programs, such as job training. The National Council of La Raza, known today as UnidosUS, led in lobbying the Census Bureau to change the way it categorized Latinos and uniting Puerto Ricans and Mexicans to “hammer out a Hispanic agenda.”

“In the late 1960s and early 1970s as people in the Census Bureau and bureaucrats in the Nixon administration were thinking about what this new group would be called, Hispanic became a term that people thought would probably be well-known because it was linked to hispano ,” Mora says. “But Hispanic was helpful because it seemed more American.” …

… While 1980 marked a milestone, this pan-ethnic term didn’t really catch on until about the 1990s. By then, there had been two rounds of censuses and the media, particularly Univision and Telemundo, had helped to unite these communities …

… In the second half of the 19th century, the abbreviated words “ hispano ” and “ latino ” were in use in California among Spanish speakers, but eventually, other terms replaced them. By 1920, they had “virtually disappeared,” Gutiérrez writes.

The term Latino gradually re-emerged in English, appearing in books and even in a 1970 White House diary entry by Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson. In another early example, a March 17, 1973 issue of the Black Panther Party’s newspaper described a program drawn up by an “action group composed of Blacks, Latinos and Whites.” By 2000, Latino was on the census, with the question, “Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?”

Though Latino deemphasized the connection to Spain, some still rejected the term as it attempted to group several distinct cultures into one. …

… “White people did not make up Latinx,” he says. “It was queer Latinx people… They are the ones who used the word. Our little subgroup of the community created that. It was created by English-speaking U.S. Latinx people for use in English conversation.”

Though it’s unclear when or how it began, it’s mostly tied to the early 2000s, with it reportedly appearing on Google Trends in 2004. There are a few possibilities about how the word came to be. One theory is that Latin American protests inspired the word. From the 1970s to the 1990s, as feminists protested, they would X out words ending in “OS” to “visually… reject the notion that the default is the masculine,” Bowles says. It could have also been a nod to the use of X during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

I’m pretty sure that some posters here can fill in the above. My ignorant understanding of it is that pretty the only people of those ancestor origins who frequently use a pan-ethnic identifier are those trying to unite the groups for political clout, but that otherwise there is little sense of shared identity? And that of the current generation of activists, who skew younger and more “woke” than the mean, “LatinX” is growing in popularity and seems to have originated out of some segments of those groups?

[Delayed_Reflex]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

@md-2000

I find it odd that a group whose entire language is rife with (occasionally irregular or meaningless) gendered words would see fit to convert one word to neutral in a way that does not work well in their language.

That’s why upthread I suggested that “Latini” would be better. And I’m not just doing a vanity re-post of my idea–I seriously believe it would work better than the other suggestions I’ve heard (save perhaps for “Latin” but I think that could be used to refer to other folks too so it’s not great.)

Latina
Latino
Latini

Isn’t an “i” actually a plural ending in some Latin languages? Italian, I think? Maybe something else? Pig Latin maybe?

In Argentina, there is a movement among some younger folks to use ‘e’ as the neutral letter, which frankly seems to make a lot more sense to me than ‘x’. You can also pluralize it less awkwardly than Latinx (how would you pronounce Latinxs?) - Latine and Latines sound better than Latini to me (the latter definitely sounds more like an Italian word), but I understand they still sound very strange to most Spanish speakers.

[ISiddiqui]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

That’s why upthread I suggested that “Latini” would be better.

From what I understand in Argentina the non-gendered term that has been settled on is Latine, which I find works fairly well.

I see I’ve been beaten by @Delayed_Reflex !

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Delayed_Reflex

In Argentina, there is a movement among some younger folks to use ‘e’ as the neutral letter, which frankly seems to make a lot more sense to me than ‘x’

The thing about that is “Latine” would be pronounced in Spanish close to “Latina” wouldn’t it?

I will say that “Latine” or maybe even “Latinu” are my favored choices after “Latini”. It’s a vowel thing. “LatinX”, “LatinP”, “LatinJ”, LatinZ", etc, are all bad choices IMO.

@Delayed_Reflex

Latine and Latines sound better than Latini to me (the latter definitely sounds more like an Italian word)

But what language does “LatinX” sound like? Martian?

[DPRK]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

That’s why upthread I suggested that “Latini” would be better. And I’m not just doing a vanity re-post of my idea–I seriously believe it would work better than the other suggestions I’ve heard (save perhaps for “Latin” but I think that could be used to refer to other folks too so it’s not great.)

Latina
Latino
Latini

Isn’t an “i” actually a plural ending in some Latin languages? Italian, I think? Maybe something else? Pig Latin maybe?

latina = feminine
latino = masculine
latini = masculine plural
latine = feminine plural

In Italian, anyway. Not in Spanish, which is far more spoken in Latin America. But it still renders such suggestions IMO confusing and defeats their purpose.

(But I unequivocally insist you not confuse latina/latinus/latinum/latini/latinae/latinorum/latinarum/… in actual Latin. That is just not cool.)

[mhendo]

I’ve taught for the past twelve years at a university in San Diego county. We are officially designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) by the U.S. Department of Education, and about 37 percent of our students identify as Latino/a/x or come from Spanish-speaking families.

To the extent that I see and hear the term Latinx on campus, it is largely in official communications from the university itself, or is being used by a relatively small number of faculty members and activist students. The majority of Latino students on campus don’t use it, either in conversation or in their class writing.

In 2015, the university created a center to serve the interests of students from Latin American backgrounds, and it goes by the rather unwieldy moniker of the Latin@/x Center. I’m not quite sure how you’re supposed to pronounce that.

[Eva_Luna]

Hispanic-Americans don’t necessarily speak Spanish (or Quechua) once they’ve been in this country for more than a generation or two

I’ve had quite a few Guatemalan Mayan clients over the years from tiny highland villages with no roads, electricity, etc. who spoke various Mayan dialects and minimal to no Spanish. A couple of the questions on many immigration forms ask about race/ethnicity, and one of the choices is Hispanic. If you think about it, my Mayan clients were actually pre-Hispanic. I believe in self-identification and would take their word for it, though, and after some discussion, they usually agreed. (Although with the language barrier, I was never really sure what they thought!)

[Dangerosa]

It honestly doesn’t surprise me that a lot of Latinos don’t like Latinx. It seems specifically designed to address female erasure - and for a culture that has a lot of toxic masculinity, that’s going to be a challenge.