What NOBODY is talking about when we talk about "Latinx"
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- čas přidán 16. 06. 2024
- Love it or hate it, people are now saying "Latinx" instead of "latino" or "latina." However, everyone is busy arguing over gender inclusion, nonconformity, and whether imposed language change is "ruining" Spanish and nobody is talking about what's actually interesting about the word latinx. In this video, I take a moment to appreciate that we might be seeing a grammatical animacy distinction develop in real time.
One point I didn't mention in the video: object marking in Spanish ALREADY respects an animacy distinction, as in "yo veo a ti" where the "a" is obligatory when talking about people, and absent when talking about things.
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I live in México and I never heard about Latinx or using a x for the gender distinction, what is mostly used for no-gender people is replacing the vowel for the letter ‘e’
Amigue, espose, compañere
This is definitely not a solution that people approve here and also it’s very hated, I actually IRL I don’t know anyone who approves it
Update: People are more open to the idea of using it, but not in a serious way, I use it when I'm with friends and not all are the same gender so I use "amigues", but other than that I don't use the -e ending for gender differentiation. Not that related but just starting the semester, a teacher when she was about to take the attendance, she said, "please tell me how you prefer to be call and if you have any other pronouns you can say it or tell me later in privite" as I said, it's not directly related, but still an important part of it which is people being more accepting and not really caring about how should be said or if it's right or wrong. I'm starting to think that this wave of -e ending it's ok, it can be fun to use it sometimes, but also, I don't think it's gonna be use as a standart in spanish vocab soon 'cause almost nobody takes it seriously.
I'm living in Argentina these days and lots of people do the same here - 'amige' par ejemplo. I don't know how the general population feel about it but I know lots of young people use it.
However, I also studied linguistics and I find it to be a really interesting question - about how this distinction isn't extended towards inanimate objects etc., and about how this might develop
This is for the elites and only two percent of people of Latin American background in the US like it. But 54% hate it!
yes but woke people say e ...
@silverkitty2503 The playing with latina / latino -> latinx or latine predates the term woke by years.
@aoifebrowne2302 As a non-Spanish speaker I had heard about Latine and glad to see it dominating over Latinx which is definitely a weird imposition by English speakers onto Spanish.
There are already Spanish examples- "La gente" comes to mind.
I've been in social justice spaces in the U.S. since about 2011, so I got to see the rise and fall of the term "Latinx" in queer circles. Now, it seems to be used more by organizations, corporations, and politicians attempting to be (or be seen as) inclusive, while the non-binary people in my life seem to prefer the -e ending in Spanish, which is infinitely more useable than -x.
Your animacy distinction still stands though! Fascinating, honestly.
Deff. It's become the mass produced bell bottom hippie jeans of postmodern conversation ;-) A la Umberto.
I'm not going to lie, whenever I've seen "latinx" I've always pronounced it "latinks" in my head. My native language isn't English or Spanish, so I've never actually used/heard it in normal conversation
yeah that's how I'd read it too
Me too. My native language is Italian
Not just you; I read it as "latinx" as a native English speaker.
It’s only the most vogue leftists who use that term.
Me too.
"Quit yelling at each other"
I would like to live in a world where "not yelling at one another" is a universal value
Well, if other people like it, that's their prerogative, thankfully, because it's a varied reality. But you can decide to not yell at people, yourself, that's your prerogative.
I think that's called a monastery.
As a native peninsular spanish speaker I'd say that the basis for distinction betwen animate and masculine-femenine already exists. The words on which "x" or "e" may be used are those which, in the present masculine-femenine split, allow for change of gender by changing the ending. Meaning, while you can change "amigo" 's ending intro "amiga" and get another valid word of the same meaning with gender distincion, you can't change "alegria" into "alegrio" and get something valid.
The excepcions would be pairs like "puerta-puerto"(door-port) which come from different latin words and look similar by pure chance, we are looking for pairs in which changing the ending gets us the same meaning with a gender diference. The words that fit this pattern would be those associated with humans, jobs and so on, and "beings" thought to have gender like domestic animals but also god and aliens.
Btw, also wanted to mention that the "x" affix and the "e" or "@" are develloping totally independent from each other, I'd bet that none of my friends in Spain know about marking gender with "x" while no one in not spanish-speaking USA seems to know that "e" is a thing, fairly succesfull given its goals, and that "x" aint really necesary and is a tad inconvinient.
The reality as of today seems to be that "@" is used in written text by political institutions but rarely by private businesses while "e" is the version used in spoken spanish, and for that matter other romance languages of Iberia, but it is used by few and rarely.
Eso de lenguaje inclusivo es una locura.
@@diariosdelextranjero Mate, just doing a descriptivist analisis of animacy categories in Spanish dunno what you be talkin' bout. Straight up impossible to learn shit if you just focus on fucking culture wars without trying to understand the underlying science.
this is a good point; there absolutely exist languages with gender systems which do not always allow for animate words to be altered in this way, even if they contradict the actual gender of the animate object. for example, in russian, there are certain professions which have only one grammatical gender, because the alternative gender would make it a different profession, or be more demeaning, or just a nonexistent or formally 'incorrect' word.
God as a “being” doesn't have gender, only in a grammatical sense; this is the consensus belief of Muslims, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for Christians when they imagine God without reference to the man they believe to be His human incarnation.
Puerta-puerto
Why is it that I consistently find linguists able to talk about incredibly polarizing subjects in such a great way? So rarely are the ones I find problematic. This is anecdotal and obviously isn’t representative of linguists as a whole, but I I love what I’ve seen so far!
I appreciate that sentiment, although trust me, there are plenty of problematic linguists 😂😂😂
@@languagejones6784 ya I’m probably in my safe little bubble of nonproblomatic ones lol
@@languagejones6784 Which is why I had to get blood pressure meds in grad school ;-)
I live in Guadalajara, Mexico, and local friends who are exploring gender neutral Spanish are following the movement in Argentina, which uses the already-existing terminal "e" as a gender neutral replacement for gendered "a" and "o". That makes much more sense than "x" - people here point out that the "x" was invented by academics for written Spanish, and it's such an unpronounceable choice that it will never move into common speech in the Spanish speaking world.
Even if you pronounce "x" with the Mexican pronunciation, which is like an aspirated "h", it is difficult to say as an "o" and "a" replacement, while "e" is easy. "Los chicos" becomes "les chiques", "los amigos" becomes "les amigues", "bienvenidos" becomes "bienvenides", etc. I have heard people play with complete un-doing of gender, and moving to "e" as a replacement for gendered "a" and "o" in all nouns while replacing "el" and "la" completely with "le". It's largely workable, right out of the box.
"Lxs chicxs" or "lxs amigxs" or "Bienvenidxs" are just not going to happen ever, outside of small pockets of earnest people who don't understand how new word changes become preferred usages in the wider culture. If both "e" and "x" are available - ordinary people will choose "e".
As a Mexican friend says, the use of "x" is pushed by arrogant academics, mostly Gringo academics, who don't seem to care about changing the language of common conversation. The point of working for gender neutral language, though, is to hear it in football stadiums, in the grocery store, at the barber's, or on a bus - the end goal is to change the daily language everywhere to make the language equally supportive of everybody.
And yes, in the meantime I try to be kind, and if someone wants to be called "Latinx" I'll do it without complaint. But I may refer to a Latine friend in the same conversation.
This is every comment I was hoping to see combined into one, thank you.
Can I propose a way to change society to make me feel better? I propose we remove the letter E. It just makes m3 angry and r3mind3s m3 of d3ath. I usually r3plac3 it with the number 3.
One nit-pick with this comment is that "Los chicos" is already gender neutral so there would be no need for "Les chiques"
I simply don't understand why we need to use Latinx if in the actual Spanish speaking countries the people that care about this are using "e". Latino, Latina, Latine.
And in English you could simply say "Latin", that is gender neutral.
It's a way for a subset of US citizens to have a unique word for themselves instead of the same one everyone else uses, I guess?
@@Call-me-Al Yep, they literally just want to feel superior and to appear to care about Latinos while actually ignoring Hispanic "voices" on this very issue. Hypocrisy masquerading as moral superiority.
Just use Latin American
He's Latin American. She's Latin American 🤣
@@ayszhang *enter Spain, glaring menacingly at you while holding a steel chair*
@@ayszhang Latin American means sth else already. It specifically excludes Spanish and Mexican for example.
The gender neutral to me is now "e" in Spanish. Super easy to pronounce and to remember. Besides some languages/dialects in Spain (Asturian or Valencian) already use "e" already so it just sounds exotic or familiar to some speakers.
In Valencian it's used for femenine forms, so when I hear "amiguEs" o "ChiquEs" it gets a little bit confusing because I expect them to start talking in Valencian but nop. Just a funny thing
Asturian and Valencian are utterly unknown to the 92% of Spanish speakers who are not from Spain.
@@poissonpuerile8897 And ?
@@supalognon And words ending in -x (/ks/) in Spanish have no future.
@@poissonpuerile8897 And I was talking about words ending in "E". 🤯 Very "useful" comment exchange then ! 🤣
This is such an interesting take on the topic! I wish there were more no-bullshit, to-the-point videos about linguistics on CZcams that are not rehashing grammar texbooks
the x isn't for speech
it's a stand-in character for an a, o, or e entirely for writing
Another native spanish speaker here, mexican spanish. You see, the problem with latinx personally is that it doesn't follow a spanish speaking logic, it's just a combination of english and spanish from the english perspective, it does feel like an imposition and shows how people from a basically non gendered lenguage misunderstand a gendered lenguage. Now for a more broad take on this subject i do find the idea of a gender neutral way to refer to somethings (mostly people of the LGTBQ community, or larger groups of people of mixed genders) it is actually very interesting, specially with the concept of "todos" which usually reffers to groups of only men, male gendered things or of mixed gender, but "todas" reffers to groups of only women or female gendered things. Feminist groups have interpreted this to show machistic tendencies in lenguage, while mexican linguists didn't really saw it that way, it has been a point of controversy for quite a while now. But i digress, the problems with "Todxs" and "tod@s" is that it makes pronunciation awkard, they may look good in writing, but actually speaking it out loud demonstrate how useless they really are: "Lxs mexicanxs apoyan a todxs lxs doctorxs" becomes a nightmare of "lequis mexicanequiss apoyan a todequis los doctorequis" when actually spoken, it sounds like a crazy child learning how to rhyme. With "@" is way worse. "tod@s" becomes "todarrobas" just complicating needlesly the whole thing. In the other hand "e" may have a better chance since it follows spanish lenguage logic more closely and can be pronounced way more easily, there already are a lot of gender neutral words that use "e" for example "estudiante" en español can mean both female or male student distinguished only by the pronoun "La estudiante". Following this "Latinx" exists basically in a vacuum. Is an english word, which is replacing a previous english word "latin" which was already gender neutral, which was replaced with "Latino" using a loan word from spanish while keeping a bit of spanish logic (since it's being use to reffer to all latin american people it has to be used in it's masculine version) but then using the english lenguage logic "latino" has to apply to both female and male persons individually. That and taking both feminist's takes on this topic and the inclusion of the LGTBQ community, the thing went full circle and in order to make it nuetral again... The "o" was replaced with an "x" which doesn't make sense in spanish anyway... It would have been easier just to return to "latin" or "latin american".
The X may have been invented by English speakers, but it isn't English grammar in anyway. It is algebra!
It is the common unknown / unspecified variable. so it is a Spanish borrowing + algebra, not even Spanish with English.
Again, I'm glad to see use of something else like -e making into common usage.
I'm not in the US, but in Mexico, so I can't talk about Spanish in the US. However, here we use the '-e' suffix to be inclusive. For example we would say 'latine/latines' or 'amigue/amigues' (although we also like to say 'amixe' /amikse/)
Mexican here, I use -e in Spanish, too. And yes, I'd say it's far more common than -x.
Im agender learning spanish and wondered a lot sbout this.. it felt disrespectful to ask people to use the E.. happy to read its actually being used!
As far as a grammatical concept, I'd argue the change is theoretically possible, but there are many obstacles to its usage that a competing alternative like "lenguaje inclusivo" doesn't have. The overall sound and rhythm of placing an "e" as opposed to an "x" is so much more pleasant to the Spanish ear. Also the "Latinx" thing tends to be coming more out of English-speaking North America, and is thus is largely unknown outside of Canada and the United States, again a disadvantage that "lenguaje inclusivo" doesn't have. That being said, even in Latin America, "lenguaje inclusivo" is largely controversial and has a negative and even joking connotation amongst many Hispanics.
I speak Portuguese and generally I always use “Latina” because it’s the right gendered term for people (pessoas = feminine, and it also works in Spanish) so “pessoas Latinas” just turns into “Latinas”, whether I’m speaking Portuguese or English.
I’d say the -e as a non-gender marker for nouns it’s definitely getting its way and we will probably see it more and more.
Same thing is happening in Portuguese and Italian. Italian case it’s even more interesting cause they decline with 4 of 5 vowels available on their alphabet so they started using a schwa -ə e.g compagno (m.sg.), compagni (m. pl.), compagna (f. sg.), compagne (f. pl.), compagnə (non-binary, sg./pl.)
I'm Italian, and although I have heard about this, I have never seen anyone actually use this. It's just so inconvenient, why would you use a letter that isn't on keyboards (not even the iOS onscreen keyboard afaik) to "solve" such a non-issue that already has a "conventional" solution? Do people actually get offended by this? I was refered to by feminine plurar when I was in groups with girls, although I am a male, and I honestly didn't care in the slightest
In Italy we're at square one with inclusive language.
The shwa is mentioned, together with the asterisk but it's not in use yet. I do hope it never will.
Standard Italian doesn't have the shwa sound. Italian learners of English need years to learn how to pronounce it properly, just to show how unnatural a sound it is for us.
I (Italian) have met many non-binary people and only one of them used schwa. They are also very politically active in LGBT spaces, so I think this definitely influenced their decision. Everyone else I asked used the standard masculine/feminine forms (more commonly the masculine one, among both AMABs and AFABs).
I think that since Italian cannot use "-e" as a gender-neutral ending, we will probably just use the masculine form as our gender neutral.
I've been several times in groups where I'm the only male and people tends to say "ragazze" and then correct themselves when they notice there is a male on the group saying "ragazzi" or "ragazze e [my name]". That only gives you the idea that people tends to think that being addressed as a woman when you're a male person it's something you should avoid linguistically. This is clearly politically motivated as the use of schwa is. I've never encountered a person that actually speaks using the schwa for all cases but it is being used more and more in political speeches, concerts in the oral form and in bunch of different contexts when written.
I'm not positive about using schwa per se and I even don't think is the best solution linguistically speaking. I'm only stating what I see and I understand the necessity of clearly mark the presence of non-male people in certain contexts.
@@ign4ki Only boy at the liceo linguistico eh?
Fun story... Many years ago in Italy there was a movement that managed to change the way we spoke, so that we would use masculine and feminine words when talking about someone's profession, according to gender rather than defaulting to masculine words. This was done to acknowledge professions where this distinction was not already in place and recognise women's accomplishments by not using masculine words.
So we started using words like dottore (doctor) and dottoressa (female doctor), avvocato (lawyer) and avvocata (female lawyer), and so on.
Fast forward 30 years, now women want to go back to using male words, as using gender specific words is now considered discriminatory as the current feeling is that by using masculine words women are being singled out, as words now make it apparent when a doctor is a woman.
Luckily there is no gender debate and the need to use a neutral language for now...
What a great insight that I generally did not see coming, but now I can't unsee it.
I'm a be kind type too. It's a little concerning to me, though that I have never come across a native speaker who uses the X though. I've never heard it used in spanish at all. Maybe it's just la communidad latina (which I'm guessing is still okay to say since it is describing the community, not people?) in my area, but the only time I use latinx are to satisfy the needs of non-hispanic people talking about being inclusive to Hispanic people. So am I really being kind by using Person A's preferred description of Person B? I'm not so sure. But I do it anyway (or avoid the whole thing as much as possible with comunidad latina or hispanic)
Actually an interesting set of points about this topic I've not seen brought up before.
I have seen quite a bit of literature about this topic, but only in Spanish. Even some academics of the RAE wrote a paper about this. Also, as a personal note, I think latinx is only used in written communication, because I have only heard people who use inclusive Spanish use latine.
My personal method (when speaking English) is to just not use ANY of the terms Latino, Latina, or Latinx. I prefer to always say Latin American, even though it's longer. I just feel it prevents any confusion. Well, there may be some with people who think the American part refers to the USA, but that's not the fault of the term Latin America. And I also don't use the word America that way.
I don't speak Spanish but I imagine I would basically do the same thing in that language. In fact, latino in spanish can mean literally Latin, referring to the dead language. So I'd want to avoid the confusion even moreso. As for the endings of words, I'm just lucky I don't speak Spanish so I don't have to deal with that.
I get the sense though that Mexicans are generally included in Latinx, but they are definitely not Latin American (but Central American). So how do you phrase it when you want to include Mexicans?
@@Wandering.Homebody maybe just saying Mexicans? 🤷♂️
@@ZaZaZoo22 when you want to include them, not mention them expressly :)?
@@Wandering.Homebody I’m a little confused, isn’t calling Mexicans Mexicans mentioning them expressly?
@@ZaZaZoo22 yes, exactly. what's your point? So my question was how he would include them, when he DOESNT want to mention them expressly . Since Latin America and central America are different, but inhabitants of both are Latin.
I ve lived in a Spanish speaking country until recently, for many years, and my day to day life/ reading/ relationships there were conducted almost 100% in Spanish, and I ve never heard or seen this word used there, ever. I ve only come across it in a US American context. But sure, if somebody wants to use it, they should go ahead, why not.
In this context, it's important to specify the country. There is notoriously a large amount of variation from one country to another. In Chile and Argentina, for example, feminists, LGBT people, and leftists have been using -x as a gender-neutral suffix for at least the past decade, well before I ever saw it used in the US.
What a shame 😢
@@borisguillen31 True, no matter how hard others try, I only believe in 2 genders, and there are many distinction between the 2, which are also reflected in language
@ in Spain. Maybe my friends weren't woke enough? Although they were vegan activist types etc!
@ cual X? Les feministes argentines dicen diputades, no diputadxs 😂
diputadxs es impronunciable
In Argentina what's commonly heard lately in more feminist/non-binary circles is the e: les niñes, for example. It's weird, my brain won't get used to it, but kids are growing with this new "gender" so we'll see how that evolves. The x didn't work because it doesn't work well with Spanish pronunciation. We need vowels. And the e is not attached to gender, unlike a and o.
Hey! I have a burning question! I want to go into linguistics academically but for now I’m learning French for fun. I’m at about A2, and i mostly use comprehensible input to acquire more vocabulary and grammar understanding, but it’s hard to find content that’s simple enough but also interesting. Also, I feel like constantly listening to very simplified French makes me feel like I’m missing out on cultural nuances, phrases, and slang. What do you recommend to engage with a language regularly? (I have one friend who speaks French, but I can barely string a sentence together and I don’t understand basic phrases sometimes so I’m too embarrassed to talk to them...)
Can't address the French part, but academically, Linguistics and what? Linguistics on its own renders you unhireable. You can go all the way like this guy & his awesome channel but that's an insane amount of work. If you have other interests, the way to lessen the damage is through a double major, most probably (I'm making assumptions, take w grains of salt)
As a person who learned French starting in 2nd year of Secondary I (US 7th Grade, FR 5e) and have achieved C2, I never tried to find only simplified materials. I just listened to authentic audios (TV, Radio, CDs), read whatever I could (literature, manuals, news…) and talked with whomever I could find who was a francophone. Personally, I say ditch the « simplified French » and just use whatever is being produced by actual francophones. If you want to practice your writing skills, start with journaling every day in French. To improve vocabulary acquisition ; do the activities that you already do and enjoy just do them for 30+ minutes per day in French (PlayStation, Xbox, Cellphone, Computer, Tablet, Sports vocabulary and rules, etc.) ; if still in classes arrive in class with a question each session, especially about vocabulary, grammar and culture that interests you… or look up the answers and if you still don’t find the answers ask a native speaker ; memorise poems, verses, dictons, etc (which will help you to internalise the grammar instead of trying to memorise grammar rules… it will sound right instead of trying to memorise the conjugation etc).
Than you for the video. -x is just wrong and could be argued as Anglo colonial pressure on Spanish. Spanish already has -e, which as suggested in your video would lend itself to language change to a 3 gender, or not in Spanish. However, when I teach Spanish in elementary school I am to teach amigos y amigas, not amiges.
I definitely think of -x as an Anglo colonial pressure on Spanish (itself another colonizer language). And yeah, I think if you already know the language you can start working with the e endings, but learning Spanish, insisting on speaking that way would be a significant handicap
In true first-gen american latinx fashion, I spanglish that thing when using it aloud - "latine" is pronounced 'correctly' (spanish-accented? spanish phonemes? Crap, I really don't know how to distinguish in text) and "ex" is the english "eks" which does make some elders cringe, but seems fairly acceptable/grockable for my particular social group (first or second gen USAians, bilingual at home, college educated, large-city urban, queer; TBF I think the queer bit probably accounts for most of the linguistic flexibility. Like you say - it's just manners to go with how people tell you to refer to them!)
Technically les escribe una carta a sus amig@s already uses les regardless of the gender of the indirect object, and for that I don't think it would be marked or changed, it already doesn't have gender. I could imagine a world where people use an intentional leísmo for the direct object to have some gender ambiguity, because it's already used in formal situations, it's not too much of a stretch for people to use, I think. Like I could imagine someome saying le besé instead of lo/la besé, for example. Some speakers might even default to it already since leísmo is common already in some places. I'm only a second language speaker, I'm only speculating, and I'm not a linguist, so take it with a grain of salt, but those are my two cents.
It's also worth noting that while it's not popular in Latin America, it's really common among the hispanic LGBT community in the US. People do use it. I'm willing to bet LGBT latinos invented it. So as long as people are using it, it is possible to see those changes, at least in US heritage born variants of Spanish.
I speak swissgerman and it wasn't until I had a nonbinary person at uni that we can't talk about people without using the genderet "the". So I couldn't say "Jones said ABC" but I had to use "The Jones said ABC" (de Jones het ABC gseit) or in repying "as the Jones said" (wie de Jones gseit het) and for woman it would be the female "the" (d Jane het gseit / wie d Jane gseit het).
Since then I'm fascinated how the gender-diskussion makes me realize things about my own language (and others). So yeah.. if there have been any papers in the meantime, would you maybe make an update?
I am new to your channel. Do you speak German? And if so, have you encountered the "Gendersternchen"? This video has me wondering what your thoughts on that approach to gendered language are.
By the way, I do pronounce latinx kind of like sphinx. And I didn't realize that it's something that goes beyond the english language. My Spanish skill are barely enough to introduce myself. And neutralising gender with x seems like a very English thing to me.
I don't speak German (although I spoke some as a child). I will look into "Gendersternchen"
hm, so in Argentina we're actually using "e", not "x", so "Latine", no "Latinx". "Algunes de mis perres", etc.
The "x" stuff failed miserably years ago.
And it's actually "Les escribe una carta a sus amigues", "una carta" doesn't become "une carte" as it's inanimate, that's correct. For the dogs I'm actually not sure what's the current trend :)
Tonto
Animals can't adopt a gender, so you're to refer to their biological sex, I suppose.
@@enmanueloliveros3596Yeah but what do you do when referring to a group of dogs. I'd go with "les perres", and not "los perros", for example.
@@eicidbrein Oh I see. Uhm... flipping hell. It's tricky. Can we use the Latin term here? 😆
@@eicidbrein Una jauría, o una manada canina. Folks who use/promote non-binary terminology suggest to use group-words whenever possible, that do not show a gender-preference from among the group's constituents.
Would you do a video about the natively-spanish ending -e instead of x?
Great video. New 'grammar' is interesting to observe. There is a new vocative case in Russian now as I'm sure you know.
Not what you were talking about but I'd like to make one point about the word latino itself. To what extent do 'latino' people outside of the USA use this word about themselves? And if they do, have they just adopted it under the American influence? I read an interesting conversation once in which Americans were struggling to realise the racial diversity of the population of Latin America and had trouble accepting Latin Americans of Japanese decent or of African descent or blond haired/blue eyed Southern Brazilians and Uruguayans etc as latino because they didn't 'look latino'. I presume because Spanish speaking Americans are from a more limited background geographically and racially and they are who Americans both Anglo and Spanish associate with the word 'latino'.
as a latina myself (born and raised in colombia, still living here) who has interacted with many other latinos (people from/living/who have been raised in latin america) online and in person, we called ourselves "from latin america" more than "latino". as you mentioned, it's a term we use more when speaking about our ethnicity in reference to other people. and what you said about spanish speaking people from the us or people of latin american descend it's 100% true. people who were born or raised in the us are not necessarily considered "latinos" by people who are actually from latin america because our perspectives on many things are very different, one of them being race and ethnicity, and they have a really hard time understanding that for us being latino includes being black, white, asian, jewish, christian, indigenous, and all sorts of races and ethnicities, or that being latino includes brazilians, who aren't even spanish speakers (also, there are many indigenous communities that don't even speak portuguese or spanish but their native indigenous languages) so it even goes beyond speaking a certain language. for me (and this is a very personal opinion so if you ask someone else from latam they might say something very different), being latino is IN PART attached to the geographical location. you might not know what being latino is if you haven't lived through our cultures, our history and our struggles, how the past has continued to impact our present and shape our societie. in fact many people in the us don't even care to learn about any of that and still claim to be latino without knowing what it means, some of them even want to speak about that identity over people here in latin america, and that's frustrating. so yeah, hope that kind of answers your question a little bit.
@@isabella3971 Thank you for that fantastic and fascinating reply.
As a preclean skin Cherokee a lot of people don't think i am Cherokee because i am not reddish brown or dark skin color, hell the majority of people don't know what a actual native looks like instead they just call me white with interesting facial features and eyes as my facial features are actually the bone structure of a Cherokee. Hell my Dad's dad was 100% Cherokee it just so happens his mon was German and Irish
There are linguistic-political issues beyond just gender, as well. A criticism I frequently hear from friends from other latin american countries (I live in Mexico) is that regardless of the suffix -- latino, latina, latinx -- the word itself is a misnomer used to give the appearance of hegemony to a vastly diverse collection of people from many countries based on a common language, i.e., spanish. When, in reality, there is very little similarity between, for example, your average argentino and your average mexican and your average peruano, and that we don't really live in a world of "averages" anyways. Basically, there's an argument (that I do find convincing) that the prevalence of this term often does more harm than good in that it creates erasure - despite the perhaps well-meaning intentions to make the word and its gendering as inclusive as possible.
Gracias por hacer este video, it's an interesting and unique take on the subject. Y me gusta leer sobre la idea usar "e" para indicate either gender neutrality or animacy. La intercambio entre estos dos idiomas, Spanish and English, is a fascinating thing to watch. A mí parece que los dos idiomas van a ser un par en el futuro. Ha sido un par en este continente durante siglos, y ahora el hecho es que the melding of these two languages is only going to become more intense con tiempo. No soy latino, and so my perspective en el tema no es tan personable, ¿verdad? Although, voy a declarar que me encanta ese idioma, es parte de mi alma! Even if I don{t have a drop of Spanish blood en mis venas.
They borrow words like language always does but I doubt that they will ever mix quite to that degree when I hear them mixing it is usually someone who speaks spanish as a second language even though they were born american and they think it makes them look cool or it's people who speak spanish as a first language and when they are speaking in inglés the word escapes them and comes out in Spanish
My ex-wife preferred to use it. Her pronunciation, and therefore mine was to pronounce the first 5 letters as you would in spanish, and elide the 'x'.
The evolution of the language should come naturally. We can not speak for a culture we’re not a part of. Personally I see Latinx as just white people forcing a name on an entire group like they did Indians/Native Americans. They share a lot of Latino blood. Can Latin America just identify as Americans? They were here first and the land theyre in was named the Americas. That takes care of the gender thing if they were just known as Central American or South American. Then again theres Mexico thats part of North America.
In the USA Separating indigenous as “Native” Americans even adding African Americans while white people are simply American. Dont natives have more right to be called just American. Why single out African Americans and call white people European American? Seems like just another way to separate people. Words like “Persons of Color” just another way to say “Not White” In conclusion let Latin America define themselves and be called what they want.
With all due respect, what if I told you that the -x or -e endings were created in Argentina by natives, and are used in common natural language, when needed of course because the reality is that people don't go all day refering to colective groups of people, and most of the population is gender conforming. Would that make your view of all of this issue change? I'm really curious.
In another note, Latinx is not a problem of latinamericans because we are latinamericans or Latinoamericanxs, the problem is with gringos whose parents are from Latinamerica and what they call themselves, and their need to "protect their culture" and speak in behalf of Latinamericans without even ever stepping foot on Latinamerica.
@@pablito4578 I cant find your claim. Sources would be appreciated. As far as I can find it all originates back to American colleges. This doesnt change the fact that plenty Latinos dont like it. Like I said the evolution of the language should be natural and not just because you want it to be changed. If you think the problem is The Latinos you mentioned that didnt grow up in Latin America. Then imagine how much worse non Latin Americans forcing Latinx and thinking the entire Spanish language is wrong for being a gendered language.
@@pablito4578 That is nonsense. These are woke terms invented in the US and exported to the woke students in Argentina. None of this originated in South America and is rejected by 95% of society
I'm no expert on Spanish or woke political debates, but my Hispanic acquaintances (of differing Latin heritages) all seem to mock, disdain, or in one case virulently object to "Latinx" as unwieldy, improper, disrespectful to Spanish linguistic heritage--or as an alien imposition. (Cultural colonialism at work?)
A few have suggested "-e" as a more reasonable but still unnecessary lesser evil. Not a scientific sampling, granted, but interesting that to a one, they find the "-x" to be silly, unworkable, unpronounceable, or offensive. I respect them by using the traditional endings.
Was about to go on a trip to Spain including a sports-festival near Bilbao. The Spanish people who organized the festival used gender-inclusive language and as a beginner it confused me at first because other than "Latinx", which I pronounce the English way, I hadn't come across it before. But it wasn't hard to figure out and it made me kind of happy to see them using it. Wanna add that German and French are also developing gender-inclusive language (and at least in Germany with the same sad conservatives-driven debate about gEndER kILLinG oUr LAngUaGe which is, of course, ridiculous)
As an interpreter I’ve worked with people who were so smart they made their way back around again to dumb… for example in the medical setting I’ve often told doctors “please speak directly to the client.” They look at me like they have no idea what I’m talking about and continue to talk directly to me… this is what’s happening with academia and language.. latinx is not a word..it’s not a thing.. people want to exclude themselves then create their own made up word and then forcefully change the language and everyone who speaks it just to feel included. And truth be told most of the time it comes from entitled liberal white academics who see fit to change the language of a culture they don’t even come from and slap on the label of inclusivity.
There's definitely a sense among some people that others are saying "we're going to fix your culture for you, you just can't see how bad it is from inside it." I commend people for working to be inclusive, but sometimes I think we want an easy way out -- a way to signal inclusion without having to engage with or listen to other cultures. It's a hard trap not to fall into!
Just keep the language original as possible, no need to work with this inclusive waste. It would be too much effort. I'm a native speaker of Portuguese myself.
Although I'm not a fan of grammatical gender (not for ideological reasons, but because I find it to be a completely useless/padding information), people tend to be extremely conservative to their native langs and probably (if not definitely) they won't accept complicating their grammar more than already is.
If you were to convince people to change the way they speak, the reasons should actually be logical/useful grammatically. Easifying it, instead of complicating it even more.
I personally would love to get rid of grammatical gender, but since this ideological bs is getting more evident (and everybody I know hates it, myself included), this dream is big time far from becoming real.
@@languagejones6784 I can assure you this tendency can and has been known to develop independent of liberal anglophones trying to fix Spanish (which I'm learning about here for the first time, although it doesn't surprise me). Many monolingual Spanish speakers in my native Argentina are aware of the limitations of traditional Spanish morphophonology and its effects in culture and politics and try to use 'lenguaje inclusivo' (which I think is a bad name for it) out of their empathy and activism. I have never seen criticism coming from people who are politically committed, it's mostly a "grammar nazi" thing
@@user-rt6fq8wk1d You know you can't keep language "original" change is just a part of language. Personally, I think languages will evolve, this is certainly a discussion that while I doubt the older generation will care to change, if this propagates enough, it might just become part of the language dichotomy.
Not sure I get the connection you're making. Talking through a third person that you're supposed to ignore is just weird and contrary to every natural impulse you have when communicating. It's only normal that people struggle with that. I worked as a conference interpreter for about 15 years. Mostly on the European institutional circuit. It's understandable to have certain frustrations related to the job. But you're a fool if you think those people are dumb. Have you ever had to use a consecutive interpreter yourself? If not, you should try it some day. You'll see just how weird and uncomfortable it is to be on the other side.
wow so i heard of latinx as the name for the new way of more inclusive language and my first thought was that sounds like an american named it, however when i saw people discussing it they simply used e i believe, i didnt realize some intended to add x into the worlds as a replacement because that just sounds so much more complicated 😂. im amaerican but grew up with many people who spoke only spanish since my mother spoke spanish and we also traveled to mexico on weekends often to see her friends.(currently fully teaching myself spanish at in my 30s)
el problema se produce en los pronombres y en las flexiones verbales con genero marcado.
I'm curious that 'latino' and like constructions may be a survival of Latin neuter in Spanish, as in 'lo importante es...' with 'o' as a neuter as well as a masculine ending. I learned that 'lo' and 'eso' and other like words survive in Spanish but not in other Romance languages. It's about adjectives and pronouns of indefinite reference. 'Home of the brave' or 'lo bravo', 'Lo que quiero...' , etc. And it certainly seems latinx is something Anglos came up with and it's an imposition. Our names for other groups are a cause of resentment, and here we (or the people inventing this) are at it again.
I don't say it at all.
Am I the only one who pronounces it /ləˈtɪŋks/? I've always said it like that, it sounds more intuitive to me, but I hear more people say /ləˈtiːnɛks/ or /latiˈnekis/ basically pronouncing the name of the letter X in the alphabet instead of treating it like a letter in a normal word, kinda as if it were spelled "Latin-X".
I don't say it out loud, but in my head I definitely pronounce it "latinks" which is obviously incorrect.
I live in LA. While not of Spanish ancestry I'm fluent in Spanish because I went to a bilingual school and where I grew up.
Few native Spanish speakers in LA use Latinx. In fact it's far more likely that a native Spanish speaker will complain about the use of Latinx than will use Latinx in conversation.
Please make a video about the science of language acquisition!
Too much snake oil on the internet (looking at Mr. learn in 3-months)
I refuse to pander to the delusions of some people who expect the world world to change language for them. There are two genders as people everywhere have always believed, as also reflected in languages.
This is probably a great topic for a video, as there are 2 main biological sexes (with a small, but present grey area in most species), but definitely more social genders than that in various human societies, and once we use "gender" to mean "noun class" languages can have up to at least 17 of them (I'm thinking of Zulu). The fact that "gender" now means 3 different things is definitely a source of controversy.
@@languagejones6784 Gender is merely the behavioural aspect of sex, so there's as many genders as sexes, but "with a small, but present grey area" as you aptly pointed out about sex. Behavioural aspects that have no correlation to sex are not part of gender, and those who do have such a correlation are part of gender. Culinary preferences, for instance, are probably not indicative of gender, but choices of hobbies probably are. You can't really choose your preferences and your character (as your nurture is determined at a young age, and your nature is unyielding), which is why you cannot choose your gender; that in turn means that cis-gendered people can't choose to be trans-gendered and vice versa. If you are a man but your brain is wired in such a way as to make you show more feminine than masculine behavioural traits then your gender is feminine even though your sex is male, but this statement makes sense only exactly because that is a rarity and in most other cases the concept of masculine and feminine traits is observable. If no correlation between sexes and behaviour existed the concept of gender would make absolutely no sense to begin with, as we'd be talking about types of characters and not sex-based behaviour, right?
At least that's how I see it. Unfortunately it's difficult to have a discussion about topics like this because there are a lot of bad faith arguments from both sides. Regardless, the way our societal beliefs are reflected in language is interesting and your observation about the creation of a new animacy distinction (should these gender neutral suffixes catch on) is fascinating and I enjoyed watching your video.
@@karlpoppins yeah? behavioral aspects that have no correlation to sex are not part of the gender?
So why they dress boys in blue and girls in pink?
@@karlpoppins There are two biological genders determined by chromosomes. You're confusing "gender" with "gender identity". They are two absolutely different things.
One is a matter of human biology, the other is a social construct. The fact that both contain the word "gender" is unfortunate as it clearly causes confusion.
Anyone (you, me or anyone else) claiming that gender is the same thing as gender identity is either uninformed, ignorant or a liar or perhaps they can't conceive of the concept of "context".
You're little babbling about "behavioral aspects" applies to "gender identity" but has exactly zero to do with chromosomes which are hard biological facts that cannot be changed by a person's opinion or even their own self-delusions.
@@chandie5298 I'm not going to get drowned in semantics, or be baited by your petty insults, so just so you aren't intentionally or unintentionally creating a strawman of what I'm saying, here's a recap without using any trigger words (sex, gender, idenitity, etc):
The species of homo sapiens has two special chromosomes, X and Y, the combinations of which create two distinct subcategories of the species. Those two main categories are defined by the combinations XY and XX.
On average, individuals of the XY type have a few distinct _physical_ features (determined by their genetics) that make them categorically different from individuals of the XX type. When two healthy individuals, one of each type, mate they can produce offspring, whereby the XX individual carries the labour. However, it has been observed that individuals of the same type mate with each other, though that process cannot produce offspring.
On average, Individuals of the XY type also have a few distinct _behavioural_ features (determined by their genetics) that make them categorically different from individuals of the XX type. However, there exist rare individuals of the XY type who, as a result of either genetic or epigenetic complications, exhibit behaviours which are far more associated with the XX type, and vice versa. Moreover, it is even possible for XY individuals to have physical features of the XX type (and vice versa), particularly as it pertains to their reproductive organs. Lastly, it is also rare but possible for individuals to have an additional third such special chromosome, which can (but does not always) result in physical and behavioural features which do not align strongly with either the XY or XX type.
"Quit yelling at each other and pay attention and pay attention to how interesting what's going on really is." This adage should embordered in gold and hung on walls everywhere.
I get the weird though and could argue either side with some force. Gender inclusion in language sets up the terms of discussion of things at a very basic level. Yet the comfortable flow of language as we've learned to hear it avoids a lot of mental annoyance from brain skipping wen people want to focus on what's being discussed, instead of the language. People who know conventions by ear may find change so jarring that it's hard not to instantaneously judge others out of frustration with the conversing process. Bitchy-language-convention brain is a state of being one does not easily adjust, even if you want to in principle. So of course people are going to care and get polemic.
Linguists (or archaeologists) have documentation on Romance language-related stuff all the way back to 4000 BC??😲
nice
I don’t say it at all because it’s stupid
Huh I've always assumed it was pronunced latin-ks in English, without the biginning e-vowel of the x! Interesting! But that's probably coming from my German-Italian background.
I'm Polish and I took the exact same assumption
I'm british and I assumed it was latinks too
EVERY Spanish speaker I know (it’s a lot) hate this. The only variance is how racist they think it is.
Yeah, there's something super sketch about an "improvement" to a language that operates counter to the language's natural rhythms and spelling/pronunciation conventions. Imagine trying to improve Hawaiian (a CVCV language -- offhand I don't know if Hawaiian even has gender distinctions that way, but if not then imagine some other "improvement") where the improvement was to make a consonant string, which AFAICR doesn't occur in any part of the language. Same in Japanese.
That's the biggest argument against it, I think, and why I decided not to try to adopt it (despite trying to update my language as I go to account for various new inclusivities). Never a great sign when a culture in power decides to update another culture's language for political reasons.
The thought of the feature being linguistically interesting does make me want to study it a bit now, though. But perhaps I'll wait until my Spanish is better.
Native Spanish speaker here. Suffice it to say, every Spanish speaker I know hates this x malarky, it makes no sense and it grates the ear. Definitely invented by white North America in a pathetic attempt to appear inclusive. It only pisses people off, and accomplishes the opposite. And this is coming from a queer person.
Both men and women have had to take on each other's "gender" for centuries with no complaints, so I don't understand why non-binary people should be treated any different.
The very word for 'person' is feminine and the most macho of men have ZERO problems being called as such.
Men don't even have a masculine plural to call their own (besides 'hombres' I guess), because 'latinos' can include women, yet 'latinas' can never include men. All of this is totally unnecessary, makes no sense, is counterproductive, and will never work for romance languages. I shudder to think of the heavier backlash this must be causing in French.
Thank you for the info
- a language amateur
I like pronouncing it as if it were a french word, "la tanks," because it's funny.
In portuguese, the last letter does not define gender, what denifes the word gender is it article. We have many exemples:
- o motorista
- o dilema
- o cinema
- a tribo
- a moto
- a foto
If I was supposed to formulate a neutral gender word for Latino, I'd suggest the use of a third article for neutral gender, such as in German. It would sound more natural, because we are already used to have feminine words ending with -o and masculine word ending with -o 🤔
My friends used the termination -e for gender neutrality. But I would rather have a third gender with another article than changing all words to have no gender. Because english is a language with almost no word- gender.
Imagine I have a girl friend who is latina
What is the neutral form to say it?
"Eu tenho uma amiga latina"
It would be "eu tenho umx amigx latinx"? Because there is no gender neutrality if I say latinx and don't change "uma" to "umx" and "amiga" to "amigx"
That's not how it works in Portuguese. Like in other romance languages, gender is lexical and has to be memorized. Also like other romance languages, the article doesn't determine the gender, but it does indicate the gender of the word. Spanish happens to have a little less consistency than Portuguese for phonological reasons (A água = El água, A alma = El alma) but the gender is still feminine. "Tienes el água? Sí, la tengo."
The examples you listed are exceptions for etymological reasons: "cinema" and "dilema" are Greek words ending in -ma, thus masculine. Also true of "idioma," "problema," etc. This becomes generalized for all words that end in -ma, like "o pijama."
"moto" and "foto" come from "motocicleta" and "fotografia" which both end in -a, but lost their endings. "tribo" is feminine because it was feminine in Latin, same with "a mão" which came from "*mano" in Latin (also ending in -o).
In case no one else has mentioned it, hispanohablante doesn't have a tilde. :) I don't feel I can have a real say, as a white person who learned Spanish, but I don't care for the x ending. And I don't want to be forced to use it. The local community college photography department had a call for photos to enter the gallery exhibition called, "Chincanx", and I was wondering how many of my fellow students (younger than me, a lot of them are Mexican American) actually use those terms, or is the department just trying to be politically correct. I tried to read up on it, and found there is some traction in Latin America.
Sooo my problem with suffix "-x" is that is impossible to pronounce. If you want to be inclusive in spanish, do as spanish speakers do an use the suffix "-e". No more latinx, from now on only latine.
Exactly 💯
as a Norwegian who took spanish as an elective in middle school, where I doodled in my notebook while my teacher tried to get the rowdy 2/3rds of my class to be quiet enough to let her teach, my brain wants to pronounce latinx as latniks. I know that's probably very wrong and that I with my rusty early beginner spanish have no say in how it should be prenounced.
my brain always reds it as latinks, rhyming with lynx
Gendered nouns and adjectives are a nuisance in crossword puzzles (ie English puzzles referring to a gendered word in another language). The times when you KNOW what “Spanish for ‘lazy’” 8 letters is, but you don’t have a crossing word for the LAST letter. So is it “perezosO” or perezosA?”
Without any other information it is just perezoso.
Latinx (pronounced La-tinks, or at least should be) is only used by so called "woke" Americans who have the audacity to tell a large portion of the world that their own language, a language they don't even speak, is somehow "problematic". The absolute nerve of those people.
I have seen it used by native speakers or people that I presume to be - cannot remember if I've actually heard it but do remember that it was used in conjuction with a community workshop I attended that was conducted in both English and Spanish. I'm pretty sure I've only seen it used by those with community-relation or community-facing jobs who probably don't want to get attacked on social media. I never hear it in ordinary every day speech, and even though I'm not a great listener, probably wouldn't notice declensions with 'e', but I definitely think I would notice something so awkard as the -x. Hate it.
In my mind I read latinx like in Spanish saying “latin x” in Spanish, but amigxs I say like “amigis” in my head 🤷🏼♂️
It’s a truly awful word. I absolutely hate hearing it. Triggers me almost every single time and I always make it a point to correct people that use it weather on social media or in person. It’s just so cringy. It’s unnatural! I hate it! A lot of those who use it get shocked when I tell them to please not use that word when describing me or my people because they think they’re being inoffensive when quite the opposite is true at least where I am concerned. Gender is inextricably tied to our language. It even extends to inanimate objects as I am sure you know. I can’t wait to watch this video and hear your perspective. And I still say it’s an awful damn word.
The only substantive objection is that it's a conlang and conlangs are dumb.
The actual Spanish speakers, at least in Mexico (where I live), don't use "~x" or "~xs" because it's phonologically impossible in how onsets, vowels, and codas work in Spanish syllabification. Instead, their inclusion tactic uses the suffix "~e" and "~es", to at least preserve normal syllabification and so that native speakers could at least eek out meaning in speech or text by making the relevant substitutions. But, if natives have to force themselves to make the vowel substitutions to interpret these inclusive utterances, then the whole thing is a waste of both locutors' time.
The same thing happened with "womyn" in English in the 1990s. Just a fad attempt at forcing an inclusive lexicon that died out almost as soon as it was introduced.
Omg I was literally thinking about womyn! Still makes me laugh. The whole argument is that man is in the word woman and thus somehow sexist. I always argued that if this line of thinking was valid that men should be upset because man came from woman. Just as valid an argument as woman came from man. It really doesn't matter what you call people, as long as you're treating them equally is what I think.
What I don't understand is why Americans think they get to decide what other people do with their language. If you really feel like you need a word for this, why not just use "Hispanic"? It already exists, nobody has to get offended, and it's English (that's the language you are actually speaking). You can use "Hispanic man" for "latino" and "Hispanic woman" for "latina".
I understand that Americans think they own the world, but I got news for you, America ends at the American border.
Porque es Estados Unidos, una nación fundamentada históricamente en la segregación, ya sea racial o de géneros. Muchos de Sudamérica ni siquiera conocen el término "latino", más aún la gente que no es de ciudad; pero a los gringos descendientes de mexicanos les llena de orgullo reconocerse como tales🤷♂️
In southern Quintan Roo, The Mayan "X" is pronounced "esh" as In Xcalak. or Alux, a Mayan leprechaun . . .
Comrade, methinks thou dost protest too much. The more we try to make language less sexist and more inclusive, the more commentary and lecture from fellow expert comrades like thou. Change in language is grass roots, not top down!
As a native English speaker although British rather than North American, I have always read and pronounced it as 'latinks'. It doesn't feel particularly natural to me to say 'latin x'.
“persona” is neutral so it does not make sense to change it… is there “persono”? wrong take
My question, though, is: is it really happening?
Because right now it seems to be talk-show fodder and not a real thing.
In Germany things are more advanced. Journalists and politicians are essentially forced to "gendern" that is to say something along the line of "wait:ress" to mean waiters, waitresses and non binary table-waiting persons (I chose this strange English example because the original German would be obscure for mosts).
I've heard that there are universities where professors downgrade essays if the student is not "gendering" correctly which I hope isn't true.
Finally, I really wish I could take your advice and be kind to people. Being kind is, generally speaking, a good thing.
But language is something so intimate and personal that I really don't like being told that I should change my grammar because someone decided the way I normally speak is not respectful. It angers me.
In Portuguese instead of using "x" or "@", we use "e" at the end of some words to make it more inclusive, for instance the word "Todos" - Everyone - we would use "Todes".
I read Latinx like la-tinks but I've never had a conversation about it IRL so I dunno... most hispanohablante people I encounter would call themselves by the country they're from
Latinx is so anglo-imposed that I as a bilingual English-Spanish speaker have never thought of latin-equis LOL. To be fair I spend about 98% of my time speaking English and hardly speak Spanish outside of the home and we don't need to have these gender related conversations at home so I just have never been in the proper social context to _say_ latin-equis. But I like it lol.
Crazy how my mind wasn’t blown…i kinda figured that if idioma inclusivo caught on, a new grammatical system would arise, but I don’t really have much faith in it catching on
How can you NOT have talked about Toki Pona, yet. Srsly, that would be great.
It is linguistically interesting, I suppose. I mean, now that you mention it. But I left the U.S. a long time ago, and this isn't really an issue I've encountered in my life. None of my Spanish-speaking family, friends, or students are "Unitedstatesers" (translating from the Spanish estadounidenses; most of them ARE Americans) either have never heard of this or roll their eyes at those "pinche gringos locos". And by that way, I didn't think of it until just now, but it's interesting that these latinxs are trying to be so inclusive with their genders, but they still apply "americano" specifically to people of the United States, while ignoring the people of some 34 other countries, not to mention additional territories. They do just the opposite with other continents (e.g. calling someone with certain Eastern Asian features as "Asian" rather than bothering to find out which specific country they are from). I'm not suggesting that they change that, but rather that it might be an idea to just let languages do what they do and leave them alone because in trying to be so completely inclusive, they are going to find it far too big of a task actually including everyone. As for audience design goes, I do that by just choosing not to talk with those people, and they are mostly easy to avoid, simply by staying out of the United States, which I'm pretty sure they appreciate. This militant inclusion is unlikely to spread outside of the Anglosphere. Most of us have enough problems, so we don't go looking to create new ones.
Does Latinx forecast the de-gendering (?) of other romance languages? Les francais et les francaises would become what? francaix?
At least that wouldn't be so difficult to figure out how to pronounce at the end of a French word. I soooo don't understand why activists chose 'x' over 'e'. E would just make so much more sense.
I doubt that will happen because spelling is secondary to speech. We all learn to speak first. And in French, there's a difference between fʁɑ̃.sɛ and fʁɑ̃.sɛz where the feminine is the full plural form, and the masculine has the final consonant deleted.
A bit late bc this video was posted 11 months ago, but the term for the replacement of noun endings in favor of other letters to include more social genders in Spanish is "inclusive language". As far as I know they're also trying to introduce it into Portuguese and French.
czcams.com/video/gJ9hDjZW3WM/video.html
czcams.com/video/SBD26JpgPts/video.html
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Here are some videos about it, they're in Spanish but it's what you referred to at the start of the video. There is also a very good one by DarthThunder but it's about recent language "destruction", as he calls it, in general, and has a small bit about it.
The controversy in the US generated from multiple institutions and some activists trying to use the "-x" ending when referring to the Latino population in the same fashion as English "they", and have recieved backlash with multiple reasons behind, main one being that they're trying to change the language to their world view. The problem is that they stopped there and stayed with the thought that it was their invention, when it was not. Nobody knows who actually invented it; it's clear who popularized it though. We have to thank Spanish, Argentinian and Mexican feminists for it. They even appeared on news stations around 2018-2020 and were ridiculized all over the internet, however their intentions were far from what people use inclusive language now for. Due to Spanish's feature of generic masculine for gender neutral expressions, hence "it only talks about men" (in the Hispanosphere we have a very binary view on gender), they wanted women to be included aswell, solving the supposed inconvenience of having to refer to both genders separately (which according to them and some studies, it's pretty alienizing, see third video).
Most people have I would say 3 problems with inclusive language: a) it's almost impossible to talk normally while using it (what this whole video is about), it's even admirable how the very little number of people who can, can; b) we don't care about it, that's just how we are here in the Hispanosphere, and same for the very little number of people on TikTok trying to assign themselves neopronouns, from the reactions I've seen I would say the general thinking is that they are priviliged kids who want to feel like they are struggling, bc for some reason most of them don't go past the age of 20 and occupy the higher socioeconomic classes; c) the people promoting its use have been very rude, and naturally they turn off the public (part of the reason the Internet pisses all over them).
I'll never going to do that, in my culture telling lies is just "not done", so if you want to lie don't do it so openly. As in confusing genders, gender is not a "choice", it is in your DNA. Get over it!
I have never heard Latin-X, I have heard it as “Lateen-X’ and “Lateensh”
x is an american thing only, people who speak spanish uses -e. Many US latinxs Don’t speak spanish to begin with so maybe it works for them? It would have been nice if the people who came up with the x asked first instead of assuming that spanish speaking people needed help to deal with an issue that we already figured out. Then again, latino as an identity only makes sense in an american framework.
I don’t say it at all as it wasn’t something that Latinos were asking for and feels like Anglo-hijacking. There may be a small group that likely desired it I suppose, but to my ears it is like hearing your clutch grind while driving. I get why some people like or dislike this, but all in all I don’t see the reprogramming of an established language being done by people who aren’t members of the community to speak that language seems a wrong. There’s history and culture in a language that gets ignored when someone alien to it says “hey, wouldn’t this be better if…?” But at this point getting angry at people for it is moot. Personally, I’ll speak Spanish the old fashion way I suppose, but who knows, this de gendering of the word Latino could become more of a thing and definitely change the language. I doubt it will be for a long time but change isn’t bad since language is supposed to keep up with the users of it. However, to that end, if 98% of hispanohablantes are saying this doesn’t represent them, then maybe it will eventually stop being a thing. Who knows.
I never thought it would be "lainex". I thought it's "latinks", even pondered if it wouldn't be "latinz", or maybe even like x in pinyin. Never thought it would be "ex".
Hi! Please allow me to point out some confusion in your explanations and reporting on this:
1. The gender-neutral or inclusive inflection, while it is true that it doesn't apply to inanimates, isn't so much motivated by a distinction in animacy but, for lack of a better term, "individual person•ness", of which gender is a subset feature-"individual" because it doesn't apply to collective persons, like or . This explains why speakers are sometimes motivated to use it when talking about pets, as they are often personified. A different kind of motivation, which I personally find fascinating for psycholinguistic reasons, is that of overcoming a morphological restriction imposed by "traditional" Spanish (between quotes because languages, insofar as we try to force them into discrete molds, are intrinsically traditional), which 'woke' speakers intuit - with some empirical backing - can result in eliciting gender-biased interpretations. The fact that it seems to happen exclusively with (individual, person-like) nouns and related elements (determiners, adjectives, etc.) that already exhibit binary gender marking in traditional Spanish is, I think, evidence of this (compare the inflected ~ with the invariable ).
2. When you wonder what would happen in the case of indirect object pronouns, that isn't really a problem because that job is invariably done by and for singular and plural IOs respectively (it's the one case of gender-neutral pronouns in traditional Spanish). Where there is variation is in the DO, where some variates of Spanish - Paraguayan for example - go neutral le/les while others go lo/los/la/las (and some speakers go for a neutral 'lo/s').
3. Finally, although I think you were joking, there would be no need to write "personxs", for the reason stated above, and most certainly no need for "sxn", as the in isn't even morphemic. Again, I'm pretty sure you were joking with that last one (or maybe some other language interfered with your Spanish) but there's already so much confusion fueling reactionary opinions I just wanted to point it out. Oh, and of course there's no is (where, incidentally, the is invariable because prefixes don't inflect for gender).
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ALL of that said 😅, the question of pronunciation remains, even if one settles for the more "readily pronouncable" -/e/. Speaking and listening are mostly reflexive acts and it's hard for adult speakers to consistently implement such a change at the morphophonemic level. I think a deep cultural change needs to happen before this innovation can take root, so it's bound to continue to encounter resistance. But that doesn't mean that a change at the symbolic level, even in writing, can't do its bit. And we actually have evidence for writing impacting cognition so who knows!
nobody uses this x in spanish countries. I have seen tod@s and similar in writting. But there is a strong movement, which I agree with, to ban these usuages in government and education. Anglo wokeness has no place in latino culture and is cultural colonialism
I would also like a video about how the 3 gender system evolved.
0:33 I don't
Yo tampoco
Spanish student for over 50 years. Don't care for the "X". Minimal research suggests that many natives aren't cool with it either. Regards from Indiana!
My wife is Dominican and referred to Latinx as "white people bullshit."
Framing the adoption of an artificially-engineered overhaul of a morphological system as "being kind" is asinine.
I can't stand the term latinx just because of the issues you mentioned at the beginning. It's English-based, awkward to say in a sentence, and is formed like a brand name not an actual word since it pronounces the NAME of the letter X instead of pronouncing its phonetic value. (some English letters already do both, like "i", and it would be nice if we could not make the mess of English spelling any worse)
And in English at least, it's also entirely unnecessary since we already have the neutral word "latin" which everyone understands (Latin America, Latin music etc. Everyone knows we're not talking about ancient Romans). I've been using "latin" in place of "latina/o" for a couple years now and no one has ever misunderstood me or even seemed to find it an unusual term.
My understanding is that native Spanish speakers who want a gender neutral term are going for "latine", which is a vastly better solution.
I hate the neutral imposed language where it doesn't exist. If the historical and traditional ganders bother a really small fraction of a language speakers, from the grammar stand point I think it would be much easier and better to "kill" both ganders and simplify the language rather than introducing a new gender X (or whatever). For example: instead of LatinO versus LatinA, just use LatiN with void ending (and LatinS, in the plural). If the people don't like the manner they speak currently, by emphasizing if it male or female words, simply don't say it (example: "Person es mi amic y es latin"). So if the simplification glues, then the future grammar will adjust itself the the live speech.
Yeah. Felleskjønn. Plus hankjønn and hokjønn and inkjekjønn. You gotta love that nynorsk shit too ;-) So I'm an old guy and I don't go all 'x' on people when I'm talking. Like with all the Latinamerican folks show up every year at the Dayton Hamvention. Ain't met anyone yet who goes amigxs on me. Argentines, Borinqueños, all that. Not yet heard anyone 'x' out. So I ain't changin' 'cause, as my wife will tell you, I am not nice to my audience. Curmudgeonly old shit that I am. However, as you say, it is kinda interesting to see this happening 'in real time.' (My own take on unreal time is how everyone now uses '[insert name or pronoun] and I' in the oblique/object. Like 'Frank gave the book to Sam and I.' 'Cause, as we all remember from Sister Merry Discipline, you don't ever put yourself first. And when I hear that ''[insert name or pronoun] and I' in the oblique/object' shit, I just bust out in Tok Pisin. Mipela givim buk long Sam na yupela olsem. Plus any other 'breaking of the rules' that I can dish up. Me seen he gived a book to Frank.
I like what you're doing with the channel, by the way. You make this language/linguistics stuff fun . . . like it otter be. I don't get to talk with folks about this stuff any more. Retiring was part of it. But COVID did a number on the way folks converse. Stay sane, amigo!
I just always say latino/latina... I'll either use the right one, or say latinos and latinas, same way as english.
We Germans: *laughing in das.
This is taken as a joke in the Latin American world.
only by transphobic ppl
Most Spanish speakers (including myself) prefer -e over -x. Most hate -x
"latinx"nessa palavra nao tem que existir me lamento mas nao nada quer dizer