Progressives, Hispanics are not 'Latinx.' Stop trying to Anglicize our Spanish language.

[TexasTowelie]

When Yale professor Cydney Dupree and her colleague analyzed more than two decades worth of political speeches and conducted experiments searching for bias when communicating with racial minorities, they were surprised by what they discovered. According to their report, published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, conservatives generally addressed whites and minorities similarly, but liberals were likelier to modify their speech and “patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent.”

Dupree cautioned that although liberals might be “well-intentioned” and “see themselves as allies,” they could be unwittingly contributing to racial division by dumbing down their language. In light of minorities understandably feeling marginalized, journalists, corporations and politicians would be wise to heed the professor’s warning. Instead, they are ignoring it.

One of the most notable examples of corporate America and politicians changing how they speak to ingratiate themselves with minorities is the growing use of “Latinx” as a descriptor for Latinos. What began in the 2000s among activists has now gained currency among marketers, media personalities and progressives. The intentions behind "Latinx" may be benign, but as the son of immigrants who grew up in a community with “English-only” ordinances, I am among the many Americans who consider it an absurd Anglicization of a language that generations struggled to conserve.

Spanish doesn't need to be changed

Progressives argue that Latinx fixes the gendered nature of Spanish, which they maintain is unfair to women and excludes individuals who do not identify as male or female. It is true that nouns are gendered in Spanish, but it is unclear what, if any, problem this poses to Americans.

Read more: https://www.thetowntalk.com/story/opinion/columnists/2019/10/25/latinx-race-progressives-hispanic-latinos-column/2455384001/
(Alexandria Town Talk)

[WhiteTara]

1. Heed this well, my fellow whities.

We may be well intentioned, but it's more important to be skillful and thoughtful of other cultures. We are so entrenched in racism, we dance along our merry way to Hell hurting others on the path.

[Loki Liesmith]

2. Grammatical gender is only loosely attached to sex.

People need to chill.

[abqtommy]

3. Which Spanish language are you protecting? The Spanish spoken in Spain? In Mexico?

In Colombia? In New York? In Dallas? Here in New Mexico? (English and Spanish are our official languages but the law doesn't specify Whose English or Whose Spanish is acceptable.) Because in each place there are differences in usage and idiom. I personally have no problems with language. If what is used works then I'll go with it. The concern presented in the op reminds me of attempts by some French people to prune anglicisms like "hamburger" from being used. Good luck to everyone in supporting their favorite language proposal but I won't hold out any hope for success. To me it's all a distraction from more important issues.

[SilasSouleII]

4. I don't want to be referred to as "Latinx"

Latino and Hispanic are ok but Latinx makes me cringe. Agree that there is no need to "fix" the spanish language. I still refer to myself as "Mexican American" because that's really what I am. Kind of like German American or Italian American vs European American, "Latino" clusters Latin American countries. "Hispanic" is used to to cluster all cultures that speak spanish together(not Portuguese or Brazilian from what I understand). Mexico is a North American country, I don't think there would be a movement to cluster Canadians, US citizens and Mexicans as AmericanX. Thanks TexasTowelie for bring up this topic.

[abqtommy]

5. I think that's fine. I won't use "Latinx" myself. I've been reminded by a waiter in Bogota that

I am not in Mexico (when I made the request "mas cerveza&quot and told me the proper local usage was
"otro cerveza" which only told me that I was dealing with a language snob and I don't think that's good. Which just illustrates how people are everywhere. I don't let it decrease the affection I have for many of the people I've met around the world.

I also refuse to use the English word "actor" to refer to an actress who is clearly a person who is a female and involved in the acting business. So go with your preferences in language. Sad to say, there are many people who let language serve as a way to express their prejudices but mostly I think we're doing ok. You offer me some new thoughts about language clusters and designations like
"AmericanX. But really, I think we're all part of the same family but live in different neighborhoods.

I support and agree with everything you have said and we could have a friendly discussion, I'm sure.
I think we should label records/cds, not people. One of my pet peeves is the use of the word "race"
and its derivatives since there's only one "race" and that's the human race. All the prejudice that exists is due to the natural differences in ethnicity among our human family. That's my passion.

Take satisfaction in being yourself and some people will be with you. But not everyone...

Now I'm going to have to look up the original thread! Take care.

[old as dirt]

6. It does kind of grate on the nerves a bit.

And I have no idea how to even pronounce it.

[TexasTowelie]

7. It is said as Latin - x (three syllables).

The term is used to refer to a person regardless of gender or sexual orientation so it includes straights, gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. It is also less cumbersome to write Latinx, than having to refer to Latinos and Latinas. The English language has constantly evolved over the centuries and I see this as another evolution within the language and frankly not much different when the use of Ms. developed as an alternative to address a woman rather than guessing whether a woman was either Miss or Mrs. A few were offended by the use of Ms. and if they relayed that to me, then I would gladly substitute the title that they preferred.

[old as dirt]

8. It works fine as an English word.

But whenever I hear it spoken, I keep wanting to change the spelling to somehow match the pronunciation.

In Spanish, unlike English, words are usually spelled the same way they are pronounced, and my brain keeps wanting to interpret it as a Spanish word.

[TexasTowelie]

9. I took a couple years of Spanish while in college,

but I am not fluent and rarely have the necessity to speak more than a few words in Spanish. While I know the pronunciation rules for consonants and vowels, don't ever ask me to roll an "r" in Spanish because it isn't going to happen.

If I was speaking to a group using English then I can see using the term to avoid a gender bias, likewise I would probably avoid it if I was speaking Spanish.

Now to present the other side of the story, here is another video from the James G. Martin Center (Martin was a former GOP governor of North Carolina) that urges the rejection of the term "Latinx." Considering the source, that may provide some impetus to use the term more frequently just for the pleasure of spiting conservatives.

It will be interesting to follow whether the terminology will become more acceptable in the future, particularly among English speakers. Just as I have become uncomfortable using masculine pronouns as the default choice in English when a group may also include females, I do see the use of this gender-neutral noun becoming more prevalent in the future.

[old as dirt]

10. My Spanish is awful, and it's only gotten worse over time.

I blame my wife. Her English is too good, so I don't get much practice.

To make things more difficult, my wife uses "Vos", as in this music video.

[TexasTowelie]

11. The best thing about taking Spanish during my last two years in college

is that it provided a powerful reinforcement of English grammar, particularly regarding verb tense. The last time I had studied English grammar was in 7th grade and my brain wasn't wired to absorb that information at the time.

I consider myself to be fortunate that my grammar skills improved in my professional life since my career ventured into legal, medical, insurance, and computer terminology. I even received a few compliments on emails that I wrote because I was successful with the use of technical jargon to technicians and executives so that both could comprehend what I wrote. Rule #1 was to make the point within the first paragraph and preferably within three sentences. If the reader was interested, then the remainder of my emails contained the details, options, explanations, and suggestions in subsequent paragraphs. It was appreciated that I got to the point rather than waste people's time.

I still need to work on the issue of procrastination though. I usually don't have a problem writing or suffer from writer's block once I get rolling with my thoughts and obviously it is much easier to organize sentences and paragraphs using a computer than my old method where I wrote everything in my rough draft, then numbered each of those sentences so that they were stated in a logical sequence.

[old as dirt]

12. I always say that...

…everything I know about English grammar I learned by studying Spanish.