#LoNuestroEsArte & #Latinx have me thinking...a thread.

As a linguist, a gay man and a person with trans and queer friends & colleagues spanning my life and careers, I get the pronoun argument. It has historical and cross linguistic precedent. I’ll try to break down the jargon:

If you speak a European language, you already know the T/V distinction (English used to have *thou*)

In French, “tu” is for a friend, “vous” is for many you’s, but can also be used for a single person to be polite.

In Italian, the word lei means she, but Lei can also mean you.

In Portuguese and Polish, the words for Mr & Mrs can also mean “you” politely as though you were talking about the person to them:

“A senhora gostaria falar em português?” (senhora = ma’am & you)

“Pan chciałby mówić po polsku?” (Pan = sir & you)

Patience: I’m getting to Latinx

Portuguese uses “a gente” (people/folks) to mean “we”.

Haitian Creole uses “nou” to mean “we” but also to mean “y’all” which is a very grammatical & poetic way to show solidarity.
(I’d love to go on a tangent here about Nèg and Blan #Race, but I’ll stick to Gender & #Latinx)

Haitian Creole also has gender neutral pronouns: li means he or she/yo means they, no matter the gender

Spoken Mandarin also has gender neutral “tā” for he or she. When writing, it can be distinguished: 她 (she), 他 (he), 它 (≈ it).

In English, they has no gender implication

As such, even though it technically refers to 2+ people, we often use it for an unknown single person. When I was still closeted, back in the HS & college, I used “they” a lot to stop people from knowing I was talking about a guy without technically lying.

Now #Latinx:

What’s the difference between all the pronouns I discussed and the word Latinx?

The pronouns are pronounceable! Latinx is awkward & clumsy.

Spanish already has an established morphological system that evolved from the collapse of the Latin declension system.

Translation:

Spanish is a modern evolution of Latin, which uses -o/-a/-os/-as for grammar purposes. Those endings came from Latin endings, which were

A) not identical,
B) more numerous &
C) included a neuter ending (neither male nor female)

“Ellos son latinos” can be all male or mixed.

Likewise “hay gente latina” can mean all female, all male or mixed.

Whether it’s -o or -a is purely a grammatical convention.

In English, we have no such conventions. We’re being overly woke and completely inorganic by using “Latinx”.

We already use Greek & Latin nomenclature

...accurately in academia without reformulating their endings:

Alumnus/Alumnae etc.
Criterion/Criteria

We also superimpose French grammar into English constantly:

Née
Chanteuse
Fiancé vs Fiancée
Coup(s) d’État
Attorney-General (word order)

So with Spanish vocabulary...

Why can’t we extend the same respect of its established grammatical norms?

Or apply our native rules:

Cactus & cactuses
Spaghetti & Spaghettis
Etc.

X is the unknown variable, but it’s never incorporated into English or Spanish grammar.

So what are alternatives for #Latinx?

As I said, it depends on which language we’re dealing with...

If Spanish, I often see things like -o/as to imply all options, in specific contexts (eg. Niño/as)

Some have offered using -e(s). However, for o-stems it’s unnatural. Like telling Americans to say mans instead of men

Latines is just a pronounceable version of Latinx.

Or harken back to the old Latin neuter:

1 Latinum
2+ Latina

...also clumsy & pedantic- there’s no final m in Spanish & Latina is ambiguous.

It’s like telling Americans they have to say “kyne” (old English) instead of “cows”.

Or stadia instead of stadiums...

So, in English, we should use Latino as the generic adjective, specify others when applicable (Latina, Latinos, Latinas) and adopt the native option I mentioned above (Latino/as) when it’s not specific or needs to be generic.

Summing it up:

Pronouns are a natural intersection of gender and language with historical precedent across all human languages.

Latinx does not have that.

These are not mutually exclusive issues; however, they don’t need to be treated with the same discourse weight.

#LoNuestroEsArte #Latinx