I plan to blog about the following in the near future
- Colt Brennan's death
- this school year that's about to end being my first since 2005 that I didn't work in the school system
- maybe some other things too
Saturday, May 15, 2021
coming soon
Monday, May 10, 2021
The Latin, the o, the a, the e, the @ and the x
(note: I took Spanish classes but being that I don't live in a Spanish-speaking environment, I never gained fluency. Don't let my first name fool you)
image from
In the Spanish language, something male usually ends with the letter o, and something female usually ends with the letter a
For example:
- maestro (male teacher), maestra (female teacher)
- bombero (male firefighter), bombera (female firefighter)
- tío (uncle), tía (auntie)
Though some words are just gender-neutral, for example
- cantante (singer of any gender)
- presidente (president of any gender)
Plural can be -as(female), -os(male), for example
- bibliotecarios (plural for male librarians)
- bibliotecarias (plural for female librarians)
It gets tricky when it's a mixed-gender group. Traditionally, if it's a mixed-gender (even when females outnumber males), it still goes with the male ending. For example
- empresarios (group of business owners, whether it's all-male, or mixed gender)
- empresarias (group of all female business owners)
This has gotten many to take a hard look at the grammar of the Spanish language from many Spanish-speaking people in recent decades.
For example, here's an article about activists in Argentina calling for the use of more gender-neutral terms
In their situation, the activist call for the replacing the "o" and "a" with an "e", for example
In Spanish, a language in which all nouns are assigned a gender, the word for soldiers is masculine: “Los soldados de Perón.The lyrics Mira sang were different: “Les soldades.To most Spanish speakers, the “e” in both words would sound jarring — and grammatically incorrect.But here, teenagers are rewriting the rules of the language to eliminate gender. In classrooms and daily conversations, young people are changing the way they speak and write — replacing the masculine “o” or the feminine “a” with the gender-neutral “e” in certain words — in order to change what they see as a deeply gendered culture.
and also this
Not quite two years ago, Mira was scrolling through Facebook when she came across a post that struck her. A friend had written it replacing the “o” and the “a” with the “e” in words referring to groups of people.
The concept of a gender-neutral form of Spanish wasn’t new to Mira. She was familiar with the use of the “x” in written words, as in the now commonly used “Latinx.” She’d seen other examples too — symbols such as @ and æ for gender-neutral vowels.
But this new variation seemed like the most practical way to break with a system so patriarchal that plural words default to male. The gender-neutral “e” is not only more inclusive of non-binary identities, Mira says, it is also a powerfully symbolic way to protest the entire structure of the language.
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Back in the USA, people of Latin American ancestry are usually called Hispanic (for Spanish-speaking countries, but this would leave out Brazil which speaks Portuguese) or "Latinos" (which includes those from Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.
Male of Latin-American ancestry = Latino
Female of Latin-American ancestry = Latina
But people of Latin-American ancestry are usually called "Latinos"
So the o (the male alphabet) gets the emphasis, which is admittedly unfair.
So the temporary solution for gender inclusivity among US-based activist was the use the @ symbol for mixed-gender or gender-neutral terms.
So following the once-popular advice of some feminists, I went along with Latin@s!
For some intersectional feminist activists, the "Latin@" became "Latinx".
Now, this is where the controversy began.
Because the term "Latinx" became way more widespread than "Latin@".
Actually, the term "Latinx" became widespread in academia, media and activist spaces. Even to the point where Anglo liberals trying to sound "woke" now use the term "Latinx"
But in the general public? HELL NO!
The general public in the Latin-American communities NEVER voted on or even been asked to be referred to as "Latinx"
Outside of academia/media/activist spaces, calling anyone else of Latin American ancestry a "Latinx" is considered fighting words!
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A very popular meme that appears anytime the term "Latinx" is used on social media
Here's an article from the LA Times on the term "Latinx"
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-08-11/latinx-pew-poll-latino-hispanic-identity
The term “Latinx” has been embraced by 3% of Latinos in the United States, according to the first major poll on the topic by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, which closely tracks “Hispanic/Latino” demographic and social trends. The study, released Tuesday, also found that roughly three out of four Latinos in the U.S. hadn’t even heard of the term.
From the Washingon Post
The opposition to “Latinx” is often quotidian: The -x is hard to say in Spanish. Its plural derivatives, like “latinxs” and “amigxs” and “tixs,” are impossible to pronounce. For Spanish speakers navigating nonbinary gender in their day-to-day lives, the -x modification does not provide a road map for dealing with pronouns (el/ella) or gendered articles (el/la, un/una) in spoken Spanish. This English-language modification to Spanish-language grammar does not achieve linguistically what it hopes to achieve culturally: an expansive recognition of autonomy and difference that people can use in everyday life.
Spanish has witnessed several innovations to make it more inclusive. A growing number of LGBTQ communities here and abroad use “Latine” (la-tee-neh). Not only does it sound much less awkward in Spanish than “Latinx,” but the -e can be applied to other words in verbal Spanish very easily, in lieu of the masculine -o or the feminine -a. The gender-neutral pronoun “elle” (pronounced: ey-eh) has become a popular modification for “el” (he) and “ella” (she) when the person being identified is nonbinary. None of these has caught on in the United States, even as “Latinx” has become more common in news headlines, official public health communiques, medical discussions, corporate emails and glossy Instagram posts by social influencers.
In other words, many Spanish-speaking people don't like having a consonant (like "x") being where a vowel belongs!
So the US-based activists should've followed the lead of Argentine activists mentioned earlier and use the "e" instead of the "x"
The @, even though it never became widespread (how do you pronounce the @ in a spoken conversation anyways), wasn't nearly as controversial as the "x" because at least it's a merger of 2 vowels (the "a" and the "o") instead of a consonant!
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Linguistics expert John McWhorter noted that the term "Latinx" doesn't catch on because it's imposed by activists & academia instead of being from the grassroots. He also made a comparison between the terms "Latinx" and "African-American" (his ancestry).
Why hasn't the term Latinx caught on the way African American did in the late 1980s?
African American became a cherished replacement for black right around when Jesse Jackson embraced it at a news conference, in 1988. Latinx, fashioned to get past the gender distinction encoded in Latino and Latina, has not replicated that success since its introduction, in 2014. It has been celebrated by intellectuals, journalists, and university officials, and even used by Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. But in one poll, only 2 percent of America’s Latinos said they preferred the term.
The reason for the difference is familiar to linguists who study how languages change. Although it may seem that new elements of a language settle in when regular people imitate famous or prestigious people, more generally, new language comes from below.
and this
To black people, African American felt like a response to discrimination from outsiders, something black people needed as an alternative to the loaded word black. The term serves as a proud statement to a racist society. To Latinos, Latinx may feel like an imposition by activists.
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Or as this tweet that I saw yesterday
https://twitter.com/wil_da_beast630/status/1391206335845486597
Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630
The funniest thing about the "LatinX" controversy is that the pre-existing words "Latin," "Hispanic," "Spanish" or "Native," and "Latin American" are already totally gender-neutral.
3:40 PM · May 8, 2021·Twitter Web App
I usually would go with "people of Latin-American ancestries", though people usually go with shorter terms rather than longer terms.
So I can deal with "Latino", "Latina", "Latine" or "Latin@"
But the term "Latinx"? NO THANKS!
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In fact, the word "Latinx" is so foreign to people outside of academia/activist-spaces that to this day, I have NEVER heard a single member of my family (which includes Mexicans and Puerto Ricans) use the term "Latinx"
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And now, in academia/activist spaces, the -x has spread to the Philippine community. The Philippines, just like most of Latin America, was a former Spanish territory, and the people are usually referred to as "Filipinos" (for all male and mixed-gender groups) or "Filipinas" (all female). Some academics/activists now use the term "Filipinx" to refer to the whole community of Filipinos and Filipinas.
articles on this issue
http://kpfierce.weebly.com/blog/why-we-say-filipinx
https://philnews.ph/2020/09/05/netizens-push-back-against-filipinx-instead-of-using-filipino/
But get this, I grew up in Kalihi, a section of Honolulu that has many who trace their roots to the Philippines. And a year ago, I was working at a school where the majority of students had Philippine ancestry! And my current workplace (a fashion retail shop) staff is at least 50% Philippine ancestry even though the surrounding neighborhood has much less than that!
And yet, I know (as in I met them in person) of at most, 3 people of that ancestry that uses the term "Filipinx". 3 out of at least literally a thousand people that I know! That's not even 1%.
I never asked a single person of that ancestry about the "Filipinx" label, but I get the feeling most would look at me as if I had 3 heads if I even asked.
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