You might've heard latinx growing as a popular gender neutral replacement for Latino or Latina. However in many areas for Hispanic Latinos, it can be a bit difficult. Before you jump to conclusions no, I don't think it's "imperialistic" to add an "x" to the end of things or to make Spanish gender neutral suffixes (that's going veryyyyyy far). But a lot of Latinos both in the US and Latin America think an "x" is not the right way to go about it.
(Brazilian Portuguese and Haitian creol/French have their own things and while people from those places are Latinos, this page will be focusing on Hispanic Latinos specifically!)
Latinx was not intended to be a pronoun in the first place.
Latinx was first coined in Puerto Rican protests as a way to reject putting masculine pronouns before anything. (If you don't know what I mean, in Spanish if there is a group of boys you say niños and a group of girls just called niñas however if there is a group of children, even if it's mostly girls and one boy, they are still called niños). So they held up signs crossing out the "o" in Latino, making it seem like Latinx! There have also been protest signs combining the a and o into Latin@ and that is also unpronounceable lol. Which is pretty awesome how they caught on and started a whole thing to try to add gender neutral language to Spanish :)
However the x is literally unpronounceable in Spanish lol. You can say it like "Latin-ex" in English but there's no way to pronounce things like Latinx, hermanx, etc in the actual language of Spanish. This can also be very confusing to older generations and even more unpronounceable to people with speech problems.
"Latino is gender inclusive already grrr"
No it's not :).
Using Latino for everyone has been used for centuries because of the Spanish patriarchy and it (and overall putting men before women) being passed down to who are now known as "Latinos" during the colonization of the Americas. In fact, many languages native to the Americas already had a variety of genders and pronouns for them!
I've also seen some Latinos, in their ignorance, saying that making gender neutral language is "colonizing Spanish" but how can you colonize a language that is literally colonial lol.
For the most part you can use Latine!
Latine is already a fast growing word used in many parts of Latin America by their LGBTQ+ communities and allies!
PLEASE note that if a Latin American person wants you to refer to them as Latinx, of course you should be respecting their pronouns, using Latine is just a rule of thumb because most Hispanic Latine prefer it.
Examples of gender neutral conjunction!
(Instead of - Say this)
Hermano, hermana - hermane
Amigo, amiga - amigue or amiguis
Prima, primo - prime (I think) or primis
Ella, el - elle
La, el - le
Todos, todas - todes
As you can see, you can add an "-e" or "-is" to most words to make them gender neutral! (If another Latine person wants to make a suggestion or correction please comment here).
Remember, the point of introducing gender neutral language in English, Spanish and plenty of other languages is to make non binary people feel comfortable and accepted so we should all be listening to them primarily.
Also if you are a gringo or in general not Latino/Hispanic, please remember you are here to learn! And some things are not your place to argue on :)
Thank you for taking the time to learn new things with this book!
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Learning Spanish
Non-FictionI made this for anyone trying to learn Spanish! Since learning cultures is a big part of learning a language, I have included different traditions/food/phrases/etc. from countries in Latin America and Equatorial Guinea. Notice: I am Salvadoran so I...
