this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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A bit ignorant take. Grammatical gender does not always imply the actual gender of the subject, and Spanish can easily form gender neutral-nouns or sentences. For example: "persona no binaria" is entirely made with "feminine" words, but it's meaning (non-binary person) is entirely gender-neutral.
This is also why most Spanish speakers make fun of anglophones who use "latix". It's embarrassing, condescending and completely unnecessary, it shows a lack of understanding of how Spanish is actually used by it's speakers
Here's another common way to make gender-neutral Spanish, while making it explicit:
Take the sentence "The workers are radicalizing." Workers is "Trabajadores" a masculine-plural word. The Royal Academy of Spanish Language, clarifies that the maculine form of any noun includes participants of any gender, so to say "Los Trabajadores se están radicalizando" would be grammatically correct, and no Spanish speaker would really asume you only have male workers. However, to make inclusion more explicit, it isn't uncommon for companies to use double articles: "Las y los trabajadores se están radicalizando." Notice that the noun has remained in masculine form, instead the articles have been used to make it explicit that the writer does see gender as a binary. You would see this in office-settings, but as you can hopefully see. Doing it like this actually reinforces the binary perspective, rather than the other way around.
TL&DR: Use "Latino/a" or "Hispanic", instead of "Latix" if you don't want your maid and gardener to laugh their asses off at your expense. Also, all words in Spanish have gender, that doesn't mean all people have to as well.
Hispanic here, absolutely hate Latinx, feels like a term made by English speakers on behalf of us for "inclusivity"
It's not though. That's a myth. It was created by latine nonbinary math nerds on old internet message boards. Since they were math nerds, they used x to represent a variable that could be anything. They only designed it for use on message boards, they never thought about how to pronounce it. You're allowed to think those latine geeks did a bad job, but calling them English speakers is factually incorrect.
Source? I wanna see the old message board post! Just out of curiosity, genuinely.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0921374017727850
you know, sometimes I do think the world is cool
I've seen latine used by some Spanish speakers. It seems like opinions are certainly more positive about it than Latinx, but that's a low bar
Latine is at least pronounceable, and doesn't sound like you're describing your former spouse from South America.
Even as a boy in latinamerica I found strange that my cousins where "las primitas" when I was not included and "los primitos" when I was. Like, what gave me so much power to change the gender of a group of 9 girls? Anyway, since 2005 or so, my small communist mailing group was discussing the way we use gendered words, being influenced by Spanish feminist groups. We were like 10 guys and a woman on the mailing list, and after a lot of discussion we decided to start using feminine gender for everything, given that "nobody" care.
The irony is that in wanting to include their variable/neutral gender via x or @ instead of 'o' or 'a', people that use screen readers usually get excluded, as the programs don't recognize "latinx" or "latin@" - same applies to Portuguese
Similar issue in Italian. Neutral gender in Latin consolidated in the male gender. It is what it is. There are some English-speakers who have really hard time to understand that different languages work in different ways, somehow.
That said, there are discussions about using both articles or more weird stuff like "*" or even the Ə character to replace the ending, which most people are not used to yet, though.
Yet that does not logically imply that it is as it should be. And if it should be as it isn't, then the fact that it is what it is tells us that it should be improved.
Sure, but my point is:
In fact, what I mentioned above (about * and the schwa) are processes that exist among speakers to address what some perceive as a problem in the language. However this is something that for obvious reasons only applies to written language as both of them are not pronounceable.
Different languages also have a different prescriptive vs descriptive balance, hence changes happen differently.
You simply can't transport English "solutions" to problems (I.e. neutral words) to Spanish (or Italian), because neutral for this language is the same as masculine. However, for speakers, gender is not perceived in the same way it is perceived in English. It is completely obvious (I can speak for Italian, but given the similarity I am sure the same applies to Spanish) that both "umani" (humans) and "persone" (people) include everyone, even if the first is a masculine word and the second is a feminine word, grammatically speaking. Nobody thinks of the gender of the word as the gender of the concept, because that's not how the language works. When you want to do that, you add context that make it semantically obvious. This is apparently how English works instead, because gender has basically no other function, so you get things like the one in the screenshot, that doesn't make any sense.
Doesn't mean the current attempt is actually doing a good job at improving the situation, tho
The current attempt is Latine. What's wrong with E? I thought everyone generally liked it.
You still have to deal with the "el/los" and "la/las", because that depends on the word's gender. Should it be "el latine" or "la latine"? Invent le/les to comply? And when it comes to quantity, un latino, una latina, uns latinos, unas latinas, un(?) latine?
Proposal: either smoosh them together (eg: ella / loas) which preserves the historical gendering of the language while creating a non gendered article Or Create a separate non gendered article that can be used
Language is made up by and for the speakers of the language. Rules of grammar are not actually rules but just what the collective speakers generally agree upon.
As neat as that'd be, ella ([ɛlə] not [ɛjə]) was already a word and got shortened to la.
As in ella agua, ella manzana, ella persona.
Not to say we can't repurpose things, but it was already a preexisting feminine word.
The suggestions were just that. All it takes is speakers agreeing with a word for the use and to use it to the point where it becomes the standard.
No different than how gruntled has reentered the English language after being lost. It also changed meaning upon return so there's that similarity as well.
I dunno but those all sound like solvable problems and I think latine enbies will do great at solving them as long as latine binaries listen to them instead of calling the enbies anglos.
Any linguistic problem is technically solvable, just invent new words, add more rules and call it a day, you can do that for any language. Getting people that grew up and have used it for decades to accept is one hell of an uphill battle, especially as many will say the changes "are making up words to please half a dozen people"
That's why it's very important for all of us to be positive towards attempts to improve language.
My fav response to that reasoning: all words are made up words. That's how languages work
every time i see a /u/mindtraveller post I'm like "that's correct but i hate it"
Thank you, that means a lot. Remember that consensus reality is a social construct produced within the conditions of patriarchy and white supremacy.
You mean "Latinx"? That came out of the trend for slapping Xs onto words to make them inclusive. The problem is that it can't conjugate properly, which is why POC activists now prefer the term "Latine".
Latines, can't be conjugated either, the problem is Spanish requires gender and number to match in each element of a sentence. Pretending to use "latine or latinx" ignores the fact of what comes after or before.
Take the sentence: "Los latinos son revolucionarios." (Latinos are revolutionaries.)
Let's try with "latines": "Los latines son revolucionarios."
This sentence is grammatically incorrect, gender and number between adjective, articles and nouns do not match. Do we make up new words? A new way of conjugating? Replace all terminations of all words with gender neutral ones?
How about just realizing that no one would assume you are talking only about males, unless you explicitly stated: "Los hombres latinos son revolucionarios." (Latino men are revolutionaries.) Notice how the same is true for English?
The point is Spanish does not need a neutral gender. Partly because it does have one, but it's only used for some objects and adjectives. "Este cuadro captura lo ominoso que vio en su pesadilla." (This painting captures the ominous thing they saw in their nightmare.)
"Ominous" in this sentence is being conjugated in neutral form, and using a tacit subject leaves the gender of the painter completely unmentioned.
I don't doubt there are people who use latinx and latine, my point is, most of the time that's a sign of ignorance and of not having done due dilligence. Token inclusion.
Thank you for your BASED take bro
The term latinx was first recorded on brazillian protests on 1900, but popularized on academic papers since de 2000
https://www.theactuarymagazine.org/should-i-call-you-latinx/
latrine
So would you use Latina or Latino to refer to a non binary person?
In theory? I would use Latino, as in terms of pure grammar this is the correct answer, it's not about the gender of the person, it's about constructing the sentence following appropriate grammar.
In practice? I would just ask what they prefer. Lol
But if you were to say that you were Latino or Latina, the sentence would be grammatically correct either way. The only difference is in your gender identity. You have to assign a grammatical gender to yourself to construct the sentence, and that is where your gender identity comes into play.
And that's ultimately the crux of the joke in this post. Somebody says that they are neither masculine nor feminine (i.e. nonbinary). They are then given two choices of words to describe that aspect of themselves and instructed to choose one based on whether they are masculine or feminine.
Again, this is only true if you know nothing about Spanish. Saying "Soy una persona latina" says nothing about the gender of the speaker. Males, females and enbys are "personas latinas". So no, you don't need to assign yourself a gender to speak.
My point was: It's an ignorant joke.
That's ignoring my point. You introduce the word "persona" in order to describe yourself in a nongendered way. In Spanish, this is necessary because many adjectives need to correspond in gender with the object they are describing. If I'm describing a person directly, I need to assign them to some gender in order to properly form the adjectives.
That is, if I wanted to say precisely that "I am American", not that "I am an American person," I could say either "Soy Americano" or "Soy Americana." The former means that I identify with the masculine grammatical gender, and the latter that I identify with the feminine grammatical gender.
Well, as somebody that identifies as a man, I'd go with the former, but it ends up saying more about myself than the English version of the sentence does. How do I specifically say, "I'm American" without relaying my gender identity or assigning myself to a category such as "person" (well, perhaps I could speak authoritatively to somebody about their native language, and that would be enough to convey the idea). In practice, this doesn't matter, but I'm speaking very narrowly about semantics. Semantically, it's hard to express that concept in Spanish with as little information as I'm able to provide in English. I either have to express my gender (or at the very least, one gender that I do not identify with), or indicate that I'm a person.
I mean yeah... You have to use different words if you are communicating different information. Lol.
Sadly this does not work for other neolatins languages like Italian, we have to stuck with tutt@ and other similar solutions
What about the nonbinary workers? Les trabajadores?
"Les" doesn't exist. Just use "Los trabajadores". It means everyone, doesn't matter their gender.
Good news: language is made up. Les exists now. It can be used.
Les is already a word in Spanish used for other things, though.
Not really that much of a difference honestly. My point still stands. Language is made up. We can use whatever words we want to use to convey the meaning we want as long as the people talking agree with the meaning
You are correct but missing a key point: Language is indeed made up, but it works because we agree on how those made up bits are meant to be used. That's why there have dictionaries and we are taught languages in school. So yeah, you can use any sound and word you like to communicate, but that doesn't change the fact that the noises you are making are not "real" (as in with a communally agreed meaning).
Read the last part of my comment again. I didn't miss it. If two speakers agree on a new word and its meaning to the point it becomes adopted by a wider population of speakers, guess what, it becomes a standard word. By how you're describing it, dictionaries are the progenitors of language. You have that backwards. Dictionaries are records of the language and what words are being used.
The only languages that do not behave this way are dead languages.