[HN Gopher] Nobody in Miami Says 'Latinx'
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Nobody in Miami Says 'Latinx'
Author : impish9208
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-02-08 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| philwelch wrote:
| Two thoughts here:
|
| 1. If the English language needed a gender-neutral term for
| Latino, we could have just used "Latin", which has the triple
| benefit of already being an English word, already being gender
| neutral, and already having the desired meaning.
|
| 2. While I'm grateful for the pushback against renaming other
| ethnic groups without their input or consent, this is the exact
| same origin story as the term "Native American".
| leephillips wrote:
| I live in Central America and the only time I hear or see this
| monstrosity is in NPR reports. Use this word if you want to
| remove any shred of remaining doubt about what a tool you are.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I'm currently in Colombia and have been here many times for
| several months at a time. I too have never heard of "latinX"
| outside of online diatribes from Americans
| poisonarena wrote:
| solo los pinches pochos usan este gonorrea
| nilmask wrote:
| "Filipinx" introduces non-gendered terminology in an already
| ungendered language, using letters not even in the Tagalog
| language. I don't know any Filpinos who use it.
|
| Not only is it ignorant, it's literally racist white cultural and
| linguistic imperialism. Wasn't the enslavement, rape and murder
| of my ancestors over centuries enough for you all already?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I don't think homeless people call themselves 'a person
| experiencing homelessness' either.
| uxp100 wrote:
| But my (limited) experience is that they don't use homeless
| either. The few people I knew used to talk about "sleeping
| rough" or something like that.
| nailer wrote:
| In autism land (which is a cool place you all should visit)
| there's a discussion about 'person first language'. I haven't
| made my mind up either way.
| philwelch wrote:
| Is this the logic whereby "colored people" is an offensive
| slur while "people of color" is the preferred nomenclature?
|
| My primary complaint with this stuff is the same as my
| primary complaint with corporate/marketing/bureaucratic
| jargon: it's just ugly and overcomplicated language. I wish
| we could speak plainly instead of dressing up our language in
| ugly fashions.
| sublinear wrote:
| Nobody offline has ever said "latinx" out loud except to ask what
| it is.
|
| Not to diminish the very real issues these ideas attempt to
| resolve, but in some ways political correctness is just as much
| of a hallucination as anything ChatGPT spits out. That's what's
| so terrifying and divisive about it.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Is there a real issue? El carro is a problem? La casa is a very
| real issue?
| int_19h wrote:
| It can be a problem wrt occupations and other descriptions of
| people if there's no non-gender-neutral term to describe them
| - people then tend to fall back onto the whatever their
| cultural stereotypes are when gendering those, effectively
| reinforcing them. For example, when "engineer" is "el
| ingeniero" rather than "la ingeniera" by default.
|
| But there are certainly much better ways to solve it that
| don't involve bolting on things that are alien to the
| language phonotactics.
| barelysapient wrote:
| It is for people who find binary gendered terms in language
| offensive.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| seems circular
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| This is just hilarious to me because I imagine Spanish is
| like French where every word and pronoun, including the
| sky, a windshield and a machine gun is gendered.
|
| It's basically like saying "we're going to be inclusive of
| you by calling your native tongue offensively sexist." Gee,
| I wonder why it's not popular.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nobody?
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| [dead]
| karaterobot wrote:
| I heard it in an All Hands meeting only recently, while talking
| about our DEI and hiring processes. It confused me for a
| second, but then I realized what word they were saying. But, to
| your point, it probably confused me because it's so rare to
| actually hear someone say it.
| kbelder wrote:
| I was watching a Disney+ show (aimed at young teens) with a
| Latina main character and she used the term. Took me
| immediately out of the show, because it made me think there
| must not have been any Latinos on the writing staff.
| YellOh wrote:
| What show?
| eesmith wrote:
| Who should I believe, an editorial in the WSJ, where all I can
| read is the headline and some introductory text, before I hit a
| paywall?
|
| Or a search of the Miami New Times web site at miaminewtimes.com
| where I can read about:
|
| "Latinx Art Sessions Explores What It Means to Be Latinx in the
| Art World " - https://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts/things-to-do-in-
| miami-lat... and here's that museum using "Latinx" at
| https://www.pamm.org/en/collection/?term_id=1347 .
|
| "Latinx Playwright, Cast, and Director of GableStage's Fade
| Recognize Themselves in Story" -
| https://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts/things-to-do-in-miami-fad...
| (Teo Castellanos is quoted as using 'Latinx' twice. He lives in
| Miami.)
|
| "Gay8. Celebrating the intersectionality of being Latinx and
| queer, Gay8 takes over Calle Ocho on February 19. Expect
| everything from drag shows to live music and dance parties as you
| celebrate every color of the rainbow." -
| https://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts/things-to-do-in-miami-cul... .
|
| Or a search of that event's web site, where
| https://www.gay8festival.com/news/gay8-festival-weekend-retu...
| says "The festival is set to attract over 80,000 guests and 70
| vendors, making it the largest Hispanic/Latino/Latinx LGBTQ
| hosted festival in the nation."
|
| To be clear, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx highlights the
| various controversies in using the term, and how only "2% of US
| residents of Latin American descent in the US use Latinx", and
| how it's mostly a US term, with Latine more common in the
| Spanish-speaking world.
|
| But 2% is not "Nobody", and I easily found counter-examples of
| people in Miami using it, making me distrust the editorial I am
| unable to read.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| My wife is a native Spanish speaker and an ardent feminist to her
| core.
|
| It has _always_ really bothered her about Spanish that (for
| example) you refer to one million women as "ellas" but one
| million men OR one million women and one man as "ellos."
|
| Despite this, she just cannot get behind -x endings in Spanish.
| datatrashfire wrote:
| My wife is 2nd generation. Her father once asked "What's
| Latinx?"
|
| He thought the notion that Latin grammar had become politically
| incorrect as absolutely insane and offensive.
|
| While well meaning, I believe a lot of the ideas in vogue with
| the identity movement is harmful to the cause of equity and
| inclusion. It just doesn't sell to working class people
| regardless of their cultural background. Which is an impediment
| to obtaining the political power needed to create actual change
| beyond arguing about the right words to use.
| a_shovel wrote:
| Speculation: There may be more news articles, TV segments, and
| online comments complaining about "Latinx" than there are people
| who have ever used the term to refer to themselves or others.
| It's never been a popular term among any group, not even among
| people who want Spanish to be more gender-neutral ("Latine" and
| the -e suffix seems to be more popular among them, probably on
| account of it being pronounceable.)
|
| Plus, it's worth pointing out that there are some Latin Americans
| who prefer the term "Latinx" and use it to describe themselves.
| Not many, of course, but not zero. So accusations that it's only
| used by Anglophones are wrong.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has used her position to
| push use of the term so it's not exactly fringe.
| dekhn wrote:
| it's not fringe, it's a subsection of progressives.
|
| I'm glad there were so many articles about this; it made
| clear to a lot of people who thought they had to say "latinx"
| to be inclusive, didn't actually need to do so (it seems like
| lots of people want external guidance about what they can and
| cannot say and somehow there was a message that latinx was
| inclusive).
| basch wrote:
| It appears to be a popular word in styleguides. It has been
| adopted by journalists, thus you mostly see it from people with
| authoritative voices.
| barelysapient wrote:
| It seems to me the majority of the group should get to pick the
| labels used to describe the group. And since that hasn't
| happened yet with latinos, it's unfair to use 'Latinx' without
| their permission.
|
| The analogue is the F and N words for people in those
| communities. Both of those words were forced on those
| communities by people outside those communities.
|
| Forcing this label on latinos, without their consent, is an act
| of violence and furthers the long-standing marginalization of
| that community.
| a_shovel wrote:
| It seems hyperbolic to compare slurs to a word for a group
| that's merely unpopular.
|
| The framing of Latinx as a word unwillingly forced onto Latin
| Americans by outsiders is exactly why I brought up that some
| people use it to describe themselves.
| int_19h wrote:
| Thing is, there are also many Latinos who _are_ complaining
| about it being forced on them and /or treat it as a form of
| cultural imperialism (not necessarily in these exact terms,
| but e.g. "anglos are mutilating my language"). So it can be
| offensive either way, and it's down to how many people
| you're willing to offend.
| barelysapient wrote:
| I think its far to early in the etymological lifespan of
| words to make that claim.
| quattrofan wrote:
| [dead]
| andrewmg wrote:
| In Washington, D.C., I haven't heard anyone _say_ it in
| conversation.
|
| Perhaps the reason is that, once you hear it's pronounced "luh-
| tinks," you can't read or think of it any other way.
| basch wrote:
| That pronunciation is for lack of a better word, the minority.
|
| https://twitter.com/REMEZCLA/status/958714776615620609?ref_s...
|
| In other news, x is supposed to be pronounced either sh or
| h(j). Don Quishote or Mehico (originally Meshicl.) _Latinish_
| still gets my vote.
|
| Regardless of your opinion of the word, a descriptivist will
| acknowledge that a subset of people ARE using the word, and
| that its use should be documented. And thus, needs a
| pronunciation. Even if at the moment it appears to be mostly
| tribal signaling.
| [deleted]
| whalesalad wrote:
| nobody anywhere who is latin american uses this term.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| They don't use the term because they don't use "latino" which
| is mainly an American word with a context that mainly makes
| sense in the US.
|
| But "woke" latinos definitely use "x" and "@" in this way like
| "hola todxs" and "bienvenidxs".
|
| This is the main thing missing from this conversation. Pointing
| out that a Mexican in Mexico doesn't call themself a latino is
| different than claiming "x" isn't used as a neuter token in
| latam. Anyone in a group chat with cosmopolitan latinos under
| 25 would know that "x" is in fact being used.
|
| Or just search Twitter for "todxs".
| int_19h wrote:
| How is it pronounced in verbal communication, though?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It isn't. It's a text comms phenomenon. I suppose there's
| no reason it won't hit a critical mass where people come up
| with a pronunciation like how "lol" crossed into verbal
| use, but it doesn't have to.
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