Wow! A whole threadful of people who want to tell me what words I can use to talk about myself and erase my gender identity and/or ethnicity!

Yes, it looks weird to native speakers. No, that does not disqualify a word. I have seen bilingual people around me almost universally adopt "bacon" instead of the word they tried to teach me in high school Spanish, "tocino," and decide that despite the English origin and lack of gendered suffix, "bacon" is male. "Hey, da me un bacon." Nobody is in here crying about how a bunch of white people forced us to say "bacon" and it's either racist or "woke."

What we have here is not a debate among linguistic scholars who demand grammatical purity (which does not exist in any language), but a combination of a desire not to learn new ways to respect people and total gender panic. Nonbinary people are a minority, but we'd like the same respect for our identity that the majority gets. Like we don't tell people, "I don't have to acknowledge you're a Yaqui because there aren't very many of them."

I prefer the "x" suffix at the moment, but I don't use the damn thing in mixed company because if I do the whole conversation is going to become about the "x" suffix. People have extremely strong feelings about gender neutral grammar in this context! Apparently having to go a couple inches out of your way on a keyboard to hit a different letter and pronounce this letter instead of a vowel sound is some kinda threat.

It's pronounced Latin-ecks, and the letter functions as a blank or placeholder. You may also use Chicanx or similar if the spirit moves you. If you have a better grammatical fix for misgendering folks on the regular, please start using it and see if it gains any traction.

Of course we don't need gender neutral language any more than we need a grammatical gender in language. We are using a structure which has evolved over time and it will continue to evolve. If you do not wish to participate in the evolution of language, your new grammatical format will be chosen for you.

Nonbinary people exist. People with Latin-American heritage exist. We're not going away because it's inconvenient. We're not all going to agree on how best to talk about ourselves, and it may change. You may have to learn many new words over the course of your life - I know, that's super hard. But we exist! Because we exist, we need words for us. And people get to pick how they talk about themselves.

Now da me un farking bacon.

IHadMeAVision: HotWingConspiracy: Let me guess, they do it to virtue signal?

I personally don't have a problem with it but the thought crosses my mind that the speaker feels self-conscious of not being Latin enough and is trying to overcompensate. Maybe they're really white, didn't speak Spanish at home, didn't grow up eating "traditional" foods, some combo of those 3.

/shrug

Jesus.

Yes. Now a blanket term for people of Latin-American heritage which is mostly used in the US by people who come from, say, California instead of Michoacan or Guatemala, is OVERcompensating. Latinx looks SUPER Spanish! Darn that cultural machismx!

It's a term which is first identified in academic use from a university in Puerto Rico. The usage of "x" has a history of being used to make Spanish more Latin-American via the Nahuatl language. It's used mostly in the North American diaspora which happens to include Puerto Rico, as a US territory. It's one of a few competing gender neutral options. They are all funny-looking to people who grew up speaking Spanish, because Spanish has grammatical genders.

Spanish, not unlike English, happens to be a language of colonizers which squashed and absorbed many other unique, beautiful languages. Neither are pure or consistent. You're looking for Esperanto.

Again, nobody is having fits about "bacon," or "soda" or "jumbo jet." Oddly, it's just this effort to make the language more inclusive that's a threat.

cman: DoBeDoBeLurk: "Stop that. We don't gender English. You're Latin."

We don't call Italians Italianos or Italianas. We call them Italians. So let me fix that for you

If you honestly think you can get away with saying this to someone who has just said they are Latina/o/x... I don't want to invite you to be that big of a jackass, but you will probably get what you deserve.

g.fro: If you don't expect people to read your dribble, why write it?

Hey, guess what, FARK is not for your eyes only!

g.fro: Are you aware that the Spanish language has an actual governing body? We don't need to guess what is and isn't kosher in Spanish; the Royal Academy of Spain decides that. I don't know what their position is on the -x suffix, I suggest you ask them.

Ask them about jumbo jets, bacon and sodas while you're at it, and then go 🍆 yourself, because they're not going to stop people from using whatever words they want, especially as loanwords. The colonizers dictate what is and is not language? Fark that. We've kicked out the Spanish before and we'll farking well do it again.

g.fro: As for English, sorry, no grammatical gender here. I would think that would be a point of celebration for the gender-warriors, but apparently it's more fun to create a windmill to tilt against.

We're talking about gendered language for PEOPLE, and we do also have grammatical gender, see above. Usually objects are female.

g.fro: The use of "Latino" or "Latina" in English is a borrowing. But it's just as easy to use "Hispanic" or "Latin" which avoids the whole issue. And they are words which already exist in the English language, so there is no need to make a new one.

Based on his tweets, I invite you to look up Danny Trejo and tell him he doesn't need another word for "Hispanic" or "Latin." Mr. Trejo, this internet rando doesn't see why you can't just self-identify with the people you see as oppressors. Have fun with them.

g.fro: English doesn't need a gender-neutral replacement for anything, because English doesn't have gender. So you are trying to import a foreign idea into the language, just so you can then fight against it.

OMG. You don't even want to be asked to call women "Latina" if they want? "Latino" will do for everyone, even Needless above, who prefers "Latina." English has no genders! Give back all the loanwords and their associated grammar then. You will need to come up with a replacement for blond/e, among many others which have nothing to do with gender but do come with their own rules. Enjoy speaking the Queen's English. We don't want no foreign language here.

g.fro: And anyone trying to argue that the use of "Latin" to refer to people from Latin America is either new or confusing is either misinformed or deliberately dishonest.

Context! If you're going to replace the grammatical function of "Latino/a/x" entirely with Latin, you will be using it in new and exciting and dumb ways! And here you are telling people who use Latino, Latina AND Latinx to get farked.

Show me someone who uses the form "I'm a Latin!" and "Latins" to talk about themselves and our culture and I will apologize for insulting their identity, otherwise you're making it up. And you are completely ignoring the use as a suffix in Spanish-speaking countries and for other gendered loanwords.

And you are still trying to tell multiple people what to call themselves!

Needlessly Complicated: Let me summarize this and every argument about Latinx:

White people: "Latinx" was created by Latinos themselves and non-binary people.
Latinos: Most Latinos don't use this, a lot don't like it. It's fine if non-binary people or others want to use it, though.
White people: We will call all of you Latinx and you'll like it! If you don't like it, you're the racist!
Latinos: ....

Can I suggest something? Just ask the person you're talking to what they would like to be called. You aren't being "woke" or "respectful" assuming stuff about a large number of people.

Have you read the thread? Show me the white people who are demanding I use "x" and like it. I am also not seeing a lot of people asking me what I'd like to be called. I am seeing folks saying we don't even need the word "nonbinary" and that anyone who says "I'm Latinx" is a token, or not of Latin-American heritage. And some surprising irritation that people who know how Spanish words are pronounced have the GALL to pronounce them that way on the news. Oh, and Danny Trejo, of all people, trying to police my use of "Hispanic" and "Mexican."

Some of us use X! "Nonbinary" is not a designation that exists entirely outside of "Latino." Would it kill ya to write Latino/a/x? If some of us don't like it, they don't have to call themselves that! But I'd like the option for myself, thanks. Unless you've got something better.

ShutterGirl: THIS!

It's nice to hear. But this obviously isn't the thread for politely including others.

This is a thread for... Jesus. Cultural imperialism via linguistic imperialism, I guess. Which is a thing. "Latinx" looks weird and apparently most people who'll bother to click on a thread want to express that they hate it and hide behind the idea that it's racist if challenged.

Language doesn't care. Only people do. Fast forward a hundred years and we'll see if this wannabe Newspeak (the point of Newspeak was to reduce the ideas it's possible to express by reducing language, if you'll recall) faction has had any effect. Trying to reduce language has not gone very well in the past, it just keeps growing in all directions. "Latinx" may not make it, but we're going to come up with something.

Ragin' Asian: ell that to our "mother tongue" or the following:

God bless America.
Land that I love.
Stand beside her,
and guide her

And so on and so forth.

Also a boat is "she." We still use aviator/aviatrix to as gendered, but dominator/dominatrix have become very different things. Oddly, in terms of female gendered nouns meaning "puta," the divergence for that is similar. Although your dominatrix certainly won't bang you unless you behave. Actor/actress. I see chanteur/chanteuse getting used in English. Werewolf is gendered via the etymology - a lot of people don't know that one!

But there's little point. When it suits us, we will insist Santa came down from Heaven and gave us language, and we're not allowed to change it to include more people. Sorry, it's just that we're not allowed.

Language originalists, much like Constitutional originalists, can go 🍆 themselves.

g.fro: You live in your own world, don't you?  Do you think blond/blonde has any meaning in English? It doesn't. Gendered words are a feature of Romance languages (among others), so if you want to import words from those languages, but retain their original grammar, you will have to use whatever rules they use in their own language. And before you start playing around with the construction of the Spanish language, you might want to consult la Real Acadamia, because Spanish, unlike English, is a prescriptivist language.

So close! So close to understanding the use of a loanword vs. a word in its native language! We have to use whatever rules they use in their own language... except when we don't.

The evolution of blond and blonde, with a discussion of gendered loanwords: https://www.cjr.org/analys​is/blondes_b​runettes_chaperone.php

We DON'T retain the original grammar of loanwords, we use them however we want. They are loanwords. We have made them English. People are having scholarly arguments about whether it's spelled "chaperone," because regardless of the original source, it's being used in English as English now.

When women who are in any way Hispanic are addressed with a gendered loanword, most of them prefer that you modulate the gender. You can get all snotty and yell, "WE DON'T USE IT LIKE THAT HERE! O/A HAS NO MEANING IN ENGLISH!" and... I don't know. I'd say about half will be so caught off guard that you get away with it and the other half will unload on you. Or you can behave like a human being and treat people like they ask to be treated.

"X" is a gender-neutral suffix that's being used in Spanish-speaking countries AND in the USA with gendered loanwords. The reasons are the same, but either language may end up using something else, or two different constructs. It is a made up suffix. All language is made up. A pencil does not self-identify as a gender or care. A person does care.

If you're going to be a language Nazi and cite purity, there are a lot of words and structures English needs to stop using, and you will be telling a lot of Latinas, "Stop that. We don't gender English. You're Latino." Also, for Spanish, all the indigenous influence on Spanish in Latin America has GOT to go. You WILL start using "vosotros," and a "taco" will not be a tasty snack, but a drywall anchor or a chunk of something.

Language doesn't care. You're not going to freeze language and I don't see you trying. "X" and"@" and "E" and all the rest are not doing any more damage to Spanish than "jumbo jet." You're running so fast to defend an abstract concept that you don't seem to care about the actual people who are asking to be included.

But it's not as if I expect you to read this. You didn't come here to read.

gar1013: DoBeDoBeLurk: [cdn.facilityexecutive.com image 503x300]
Wow! A whole threadful of people who want to tell me what words I can use to talk about myself and erase my gender identity and/or ethnicity!

Yes, it looks weird to native speakers. No, that does not disqualify a word. I have seen bilingual people around me almost universally adopt "bacon" instead of the word they tried to teach me in high school Spanish, "tocino," and decide that despite the English origin and lack of gendered suffix, "bacon" is male. "Hey, da me un bacon." Nobody is in here crying about how a bunch of white people forced us to say "bacon" and it's either racist or "woke."

What we have here is not a debate among linguistic scholars who demand grammatical purity (which does not exist in any language), but a combination of a desire not to learn new ways to respect people and total gender panic. Nonbinary people are a minority, but we'd like the same respect for our identity that the majority gets. Like we don't tell people, "I don't have to acknowledge you're a Yaqui because there aren't very many of them."

I prefer the "x" suffix at the moment, but I don't use the damn thing in mixed company because if I do the whole conversation is going to become about the "x" suffix. People have extremely strong feelings about gender neutral grammar in this context! Apparently having to go a couple inches out of your way on a keyboard to hit a different letter and pronounce this letter instead of a vowel sound is some kinda threat.

It's pronounced Latin-ecks, and the letter functions as a blank or placeholder. You may also use Chicanx or similar if the spirit moves you. If you have a better grammatical fix for misgendering folks on the regular, please start using it and see if it gains any traction.

Of course we don't need gender neutral language any more than we need a grammatical gender in language. We are using a structure which has evolved over time and it will continue to evolve. If you do not wish ...

Thanks for letting us all know you came to a thread on a message board and feel put upon for being asked to read words! How dare I!

If you need a shorter format, may I suggest Twitter? Or GIS?

Dryad: DoBeDoBeLurk: Cultural imperialism via linguistic imperialism

[Fark user image 290x174]

"Via." So it's not so much that they're fighting, it's that one guy is picking another guy up by the ankles and trying to beat a marginalized person to death. Of course, now I'm fielding responses from people who want to gender and perhaps fark a box of ashes, so it's time to go.

g.fro: DoBeDoBeLurk: ...

g.fro: As for English, sorry, no grammatical gender here. I would think that would be a point of celebration for the gender-warriors, but apparently it's more fun to create a windmill to tilt against.

We're talking about gendered language for PEOPLE, and we do also have grammatical gender, see above. Usually objects are female.

..:

That's not grammatical language; ships are, in fact, female. But landlubbers like you will never understand that.

You've attempted to fark several ships and think you've succeeded, don't you?

Jairzinho: I'm the biggest lib ever but I believe trying to make Spanish gender neutral is the stupidest idea:

First in Spanish, not only the nouns are gender specific, then you have the articles (few exceptions) and most adjectives that come with it that have to match the gender of the noun so it is grammatically correct, otherwise you may end up with something really silly like:

Lxs Latinxs son muy atractivxs y orgullosxs de ellxs mismxs
(Latinxs are very attractive and proud of themselves)

"e" is also in use in majority Spanish countries. Les Latines son muy atractives y orgulloses de elles mismes.

But this is about two different languages and they both may choose a different solution or none at all. I prefer "x" right now in English for use with loanwords. I'm not out to anyone who speaks Spanish to me so I haven't had to make that choice.

We add and get rid of whole letters and pronunciations, as well as adding and messing with new words. The only limit to what a language can do is what people are willing to use. "Bae" is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Emojis may not be far behind. And we're going to crap ourselves over a letter we already use as a placeholder all the time? As in : X-factor, X-ray and Animal X. "Mx." is also in use as a gender neutral prefix.

It's not a matter of language structure. Men are blond, women are blonde, and that's OK. Spanglish is OK. "Da me un bacon" is OK. This is about who we include. And I am just beginning to realize how farking uncomfortable my existence makes others.

g.fro: DoBeDoBeLurk: ...

Some of us use X! "Nonbinary" is not a designation that exists entirely outside of "Latino." Would it kill ya to write Latino/a/x? If some of us don't like it, they don't have to call themselves that! But I'd like the option for myself, thanks. Unless you've got something better.

So once again, what is wrong with using the word "Latin"?

Latin-America. Latin-American. Latino/a/x.

Latin.


You wanna reclaim "Latin" so you won't have to learn a new suffix, you are free to try. You will also have to sell Danny Trejo on "Chican," not to mention "Norteamerican" and perhaps "rubi" for blond/e people. And as far as the structure looking weird to native speakers, that also looks extremely weird.

And are you white at all? Because I understand you telling me what to call myself is particularly rude from a white person. Not to ignore it being rude otherwise.

Needlessly Complicated: Well, that whidbey guy, for example. He calling eeeeerrryone a bigot up in here. He doesn't speak for me, he's not standing up for me (or anyone, really) and I don't think he's being respectful.

Did you read the thread yourself? What I'm saying and what I've always said is that if you like and want to use Latinx, feel free! Just, maybe, can we accept that not every person of Latin American origin necessarily accepts/likes/recognizes or even knows that term. You have a preference of what you like to be called and I respect that (and will note for future reference), I'm just asking for the same respect. I don't like Latinx, I would like to be called Latina, if I must be referred to by ethnic background.

And, no, people aren't asking what people like to be called, and it's a problem. I think asking or telling what your preference is is really the best way to handle things, like with people's pronouns. Then again, I'm cis-het so my experience is different than yours. So feel free to disagree.

Whidbey speaks for whidbey and is inviting FARK funnies for yelling at many people, including some who are not qualifying their dislike of "x" with any indication they'd use it if asked. Also at people saying only white people use it, which is a dumb thing to say as one can fine multiple instances of non-white usage. That farker has me on ignore and is often not very smart, but telling me what words I'm allowed to use for myself is at the very least patronizing as hell.

"o/a/x" on a form is not radical, and certainly not eugenics or doing any harm to a culture, like someone is actually tying to argue above. If you're going to acknowledge what I (and people like me) would like to be called, then you should include it as an option. So there's a third category which you need to consider before going off about how white people call Latinos racist.

Also Latino/a/x: I use this either for myself or people I know who prefer it, and I'd like to see it included. Not used as a replacement in every instance, just included as a gender neutral option.

You're excluding other people of your ethnicity to pay attention to some white folks. You don't necessarily need to involve white college professors/students to have this conversation, not when people who are not white college professors/students still use it. You don't use it for yourself and you will if other people ask you to use it for them. Okay. So you don't need to make a value judgement of the word or fence it off as something white people are trying to force on us. It looks funny, but it has a purpose and you say you're okay using it.

The only trouble we're going to run into is "x" being used by itself as a gender-neutral option for groups - on protests signs, forms, and other places where space is at a premium. In Spanish, "o" is accepted to include "a," but that looks weird in English, and we don't have a decision on whether "o" includes "x" or "x" includes "o" and "a." It may shake out differently for English vs. Spanish.

But we're not mature enough to have that discussion of grammar in here, where people are horselaughing at the idea that I could prefer "x" just for myself and complaining that I use too many words to talk about complicated things.

Uncontrolled_Jibe: That's not happening here.  Use your own words.  There is no need to change the words for the other 99.4%
Demographics

it's a beautiful language that binds the diverse parts of Latin-American culture together when most of everything else changes.

Also, the Spanish were kicked out of Latin America like the British were kicked out or North America.  They weren't   Simón Bolívar was of European ancestry, and influenced by the Enlightenment.   He wasn't  unique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo​_O%27Higgins

Some are more Indio, but Mestizo, Olive skinned Euros, and Blancos are in the mix as well.  It's a mix of old and new.   The countries gained Independence, but the Spanish culture is flows throughout it as well.   It's the glue that holds it together when there was intertribal warfare before.

Languages do evolve, but it a natural process, but you're applying linguistic eugenics.   The question is, do you speak Spanish as a native speaker?

I'm not a native speaker. And? I'm not asking you to use my words to talk about you, I'm asking you to include me when you talk about us. So, yes, I would like to see a "/x" on forms, and I would like not to be excluded on the basis that I was born in the US and went to English-speaking schools. WTF is the matter with you? You're talking about me using language eugenics when you're after a linguistic race purity that's unattainable.

I'm part of the natural process - I use language!

Language is not frozen and non-native speakers will use it. That's how we get pidgins and creoles. That's how the Romance languages diverged from Latin in the first place. That's how we got Spanglish. That's how a white man in Minnesota knows what a chimichanga is, even if he pronounces it weird. "Chimichanga" wasn't even a real word - but it works fine as one now!

You know, I have seen actual college professors and students on FARK, and so far none of them have rolled up to tell any of y'all that you need to use "Latinx" or you're racist. Still seeing lots of people who seem to think my asking to be included is going to HURT you somehow.

g.fro: DoBeDoBeLurk: ...

That's not grammatical language; ships are, in fact, female. But landlubbers like you will never understand that.

You've attempted to fark several ships and think you've succeeded, don't you?

I haven't farked your mom; doesn't mean she's not female.

Her ashes are in a box in the ground mixed with those of my stillborn twin sisters. You really want to go there? I'm not super attached to a box of ashes, but the police might have a word.

Lifeless: DoBeDoBeLurk: Show me someone who uses the form "I'm a Spanish!" and "Spanishes" to talk about themselves and our culture and I will apologize for insulting their identity, otherwise you're making it up.

I changed the nationality to specifically indicate where you're butchering English in addition to Spanish.

"Hispanic" is the word you're searching for which fulfills that function, and that's why it annoys Danny Trejo (the tweets are a few pages back now) when I use it to identify myself, because I am not literally Spanish. It can be used to include places the Spanish colonized, however.

You have just underlined why "Latin" cannot replace "Latino/a/x." They serve different functions. You are ripping up language just as much if you use "Latin" instead, and we are STILL avoiding the issue of gendered loanwords.

---

IHadMeAVision: I tend to use Spanish for words I came across in Spanish first via my mom's family (mostly for foods less common in the English speaking world like flan, platanos, gandules, pernil, etc) but I don't switch to full-blown Spanish accent for it, it seems a bit pretentious. If I realize the person I'm talking to doesn't know Spanish I'd try to correct myself.

Give Telemudo or Spanish radio a listen with a critical ear. It's less obvious because all the words are over-enunciated like that, like we don't notice it as much when it's just English. It's announcer-voice. In a conversation, it's weird as hell. On the news and radio we expect it, but when we switch languages it sounds weird too. I guess that's another possibility, maybe bilingual newspeople are used to doing announcer-voice in Spanish for different media, so when they use it in Spanish for their news job, they sound like they're about to bring out the ladies on Sabado Gigante.

IHadMeAVision: My comment was in reference to hammed up Spanish accents in the midst of an English sentence, I edited out previous responses so people don't need to see the same wall of text for the 8th time but in retrospect I probably should have left the context in because it was kinda off-topic.

This is still not great. It's a decision you have to make when you're bilingual or even just understand how the words are pronounced. Am I going to say "flan" (American) or "flan" (Spanish)? I usually modulate depending on my audience, but when I get self-conscious I skew American, because of that thing you think. I know you're going to think I'm faking it, and my accent isn't going to be perfect if I use it, so I'll act whiter because that's considered the default and I grew up using English.

Depending on your community, your newspeople may assume they're going to be addressing a partly Spanish-speaking and bilingual audience, and depending on their heritage, Spanish words may just look like they need to be pronounced like that. Newsperson-talk is its own dialect anyway, highly unnatural even in English alone.

Watching English and Spanish-speakers who weren't local trying to say "Port Hueneme" was always great fun, because it's taken from Chumash. Local news knew it. Whenever something happened there that warranted national coverage or even from LA, it was about 50/50, and tourists had no idea. "Where's Hwee... Hunem..." "Port Hueneme? Okay, you're almost there..."

Jairzinho: DoBeDoBeLurk: "e" is also in use in majority Spanish countries. Les Latines son muy atractives y orgulloses de elles mismes

Well, it looks like French that way (NTTAWWT). It may work in written language but I tried to pronounce it and sounds really weird. I'm sure if I say something like that out loud on a street of some Latin city, they would think I'm having a stroke.

Also, I have never seen the "e" in use for that purpose but the @, at least not in the Latin countries I have visited. It must be a niche thing.

You've got options. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik​i/Gender_n​eutrality_in_Spanish

I don't have a dog in this fight because the Spanish speakers in my family I'd use it with are pretty darn conservative on gender and sexuality. Many of them are quite liberal on social issues, but not gender and sexuality. And abortion. Like, that's the big three. I'm not gonna send my abuela a card with "Felicidades en tu cumpleaños niete sin género! Wow!"

Lifeless: DoBeDoBeLurk: g.fro: DoBeDoBeLurk: ...

Some of us use X! "Nonbinary" is not a designation that exists entirely outside of "Latino." Would it kill ya to write Latino/a/x? If some of us don't like it, they don't have to call themselves that! But I'd like the option for myself, thanks. Unless you've got something better.

So once again, what is wrong with using the word "Latin"?

Latin-America. Latin-American. Latino/a/x.
[scu.edu image 425x500]
Latin.
[the-low-countries.com image 850x495]

You wanna reclaim "Latin" so you won't have to learn a new suffix, you are free to try. You will also have to sell Danny Trejo on "Chican," not to mention "Norteamerican" and perhaps "rubi" for blond/e people. And as far as the structure looking weird to native speakers, that also looks extremely weird.

And are you white at all? Because I understand you telling me what to call myself is particularly rude from a white person. Not to ignore it being rude otherwise.

[encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com image 300x168]

Context! Again, if you want to use Latin as a gender neutral replacement for Latino, you will be calling groups of people "Latins" and "Latin people." Latins would be a new usage, same as Latinx, and you are welcome to try. Latin people or peoples has an unclear meaning - which I am basing on the fact that if you plug "latin people" into Google you get Romans as your first result, then Latin Americans and Latinos, all of which are different. Latin GRAMMY is obviously related to Latin America, because it's a modern thing. You are also ignoring the fact that it's meant to be used as a suffix. "Elle es muy flac," is not a huge improvement over "flacx" or "flace."

And remember, it is still super rude to tell people what to call themselves! I'm not going to roll up and announce, "I'm a Latin!" I'd sound like goddamn Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons. That usage doesn't even have the 3% or so of people who use Latinx to recommend it.