explaining latino vs latina vs latinx vs latine

while people are spreading information and resources, it’s become evident that there’s some confusion over the terms above. i thought i would explain these out to clear things up !

disclaimer : some of this has to do with my own personal opinion. any group of people is not a monolith, and depending on who you speak to there will be different opinions on this “debate”

“latino” and “latina” are both spanish language words that refer to somebody from latin america. as with other adjectives in spanish, the words differ slightly to reflect what the word is referring to.

“latino” is the masculine word, and refers to males, masculine nouns, or, supposedly, a group of mixed company. (ex. el mundo latino, un niño latino) “latina” is the feminine word and is used exclusively for females, feminine nouns (ex, música latina, la mujer latina)

like i mentioned earlier, the masculine word is the default (like in many other cases in spanish). in an effort to be more inclusive, especially towards non-binary people, some are looking to change the gendering of certain words. this is where latine and latinx come in.

the biggest issue with the word latinx is that it was created by americans and follows english language rules around gender neutrality. while “x” may work well in english, this simply doesn’t translate well spanish as it’s a different language with different rules and cues.

latine, on the other hand, is a word that grammatically works well in spanish, and is what is preferred by people who actually speak the language. this is why it’s better to use latine !! listen to people when they’re trying to educate you on their own culture and language.

here’s a carrd with some info on gender neutral spanish language pronouns and more on why the word latinx stinks https://latinenotlatinx.carrd.co/ 

another thing !! people have been mentioning to me that this also applies to portuguese (since thats what’s spoken in brazil). the carrd i linked above has portuguese pronoun explanations too :)