AOC criticizes Democrats for railing against “Latinx”

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If Democrats are criticizing individuals for identifying themselves as Latinx, then I agree with AOC. It's no one's business if someone wants to use that term. But if Democrats are criticizing people who aren't Latino for using it as a way of being politically correct, then I'm with those Democrats on this one.

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So she supports “Latine”.  

I actually think that’s a great solution!
It’s such a better solution on every dimension that it’s existence makes the attacks against “Latinx” much stronger.

The problem with Latine is that

A. It still isn't an actual Spanish word

B. It sounds like a racial slur (Wh*tey, D*rkie)

A. Latine originates from actual Spanish-speaking countries and seems to be the preferred term among Hispanics.

B. Only if you have literally zero grasp on how Spanish is pronounced

I was so crestfallen to see someone responded to this before I did. Lmao, imagine being an American in the twenty-first century and thinking "e" in Spanish is pronounced like "ie"/"ey" in English.

I know that you can't expect people to pronounce foreign words perfectly, but it is kind of sad that a nice five-vowel system like Spanish gets absolutely massacred by English speakers.

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Oh, I was summoned here. But I'm tired of arguing the same over and over again. I'm just gonna say that polling in South American countries has shown that among the minority that uses lenguaje inclusivo latinx is preferred over latine for reasons that I have already explained (because, for all you people here talk about the sancticity of Spanish language none of you seem to understand how it actually works)


For the rest of the thread, I will just refer to this statement found on my hometown:

First of all, thank you for providing this perspective on here; it is important for people on Atlas to realize that Latinx is more than just an Anglo thing even if we might not like it (and even if it's not the most politically wise word for outsiders to use in the US).

Two questions about that poll though: who are the respondents (what country) and isn't it just about writing? I would think stuff like Latin@ would be impossible to say out loud, and Latinx would be awkward too especially in the plural. Now that I think of it, how do you pronounce Latinx in Spanish? Is Latinxs pronounced any differently?

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One thing I don’t get about Latinx is why do people say it’s about trans rights? I thought the point of Latinx was to not have “Latino” as the default in cases where the gender is unclear or there is a mixed group of people, which is considered sexist since having the “o” ending as the default implies male superiority over females

If you ignore non-binary people, but you want to promote equality between men and women, you could just say "Latinos and Latinas" or something like that. The only advantage "Latinxs" has over that, other than being shorter, is that it includes non-binary people.

And as I've said before, this is great, but it's not really fair that only one ethnic group in the US has to change its name to accommodate non-binary people.

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Oh, I was summoned here. But I'm tired of arguing the same over and over again. I'm just gonna say that polling in South American countries has shown that among the minority that uses lenguaje inclusivo latinx is preferred over latine for reasons that I have already explained (because, for all you people here talk about the sancticity of Spanish language none of you seem to understand how it actually works)


For the rest of the thread, I will just refer to this statement found on my hometown:

First of all, thank you for providing this perspective on here; it is important for people on Atlas to realize that Latinx is more than just an Anglo thing even if we might not like it (and even if it's not the most politically wise word for outsiders to use in the US).

Two questions about that poll though: who are the respondents (what country) and isn't it just about writing? I would think stuff like Latin@ would be impossible to say out loud, and Latinx would be awkward too especially in the plural. Now that I think of it, how do you pronounce Latinx in Spanish? Is Latinxs pronounced any differently?

That poll is from Argentina, I shared the link on a thread a while ago, I will look for it later.

The reason the poll is about writing is because Latinx is for writing. You don't "say" Latinx o latin@ , you read it in your mind as whatever you want but you still have the visual cue that is inclusive. When I read latinx on Atlas I read it as Latino, that is also the reason why is so popular compared with latine, latine disrupts your reading while Latinx does not.

This is why I always insist that Latinx came from Spanish speakers. Is something that makes perfect sense for written Spanish which has plenty of abbreviations impossible to pronounce like these

But Latinx as an inclusive form doesn't make any sense whatsoever in English (and yes, saying l-ah-tinks out loud is dumb)

For spoken Spanish some people do use latine but is more common to say todas y todos and so on (and in fact that form is VERY widespread in formal settings in Chile)

OK, that's an important distinction. In the US, "Latinx" is regularly used in both speech and writing, usually pronounced something like "la-tin-EKS". If someone in Chile or Argentina was reading a text out loud that had the word Latinx in it, how would they pronounce it?

Overall though, really interesting stuff.

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EDIT Addendum: It's also worth noting that American users of it often use it in a very performative manner, like saying things like "Latinx man"/"Latinx woman" when even the point of a gender neutral word is meaningless, which I think alienates people as well and kind of demolishes the argument it's only about covering non-binary people or mixed groups or whatever.

My favorite is "My Latinx brothers and sisters".