Yes, i finally found my way home from the store, and i bought the milk like i promised i would!
No binarie el compañere.
EDIT: la compañere? Shit, back to square one.
Le compañere? Maybe. Articles in Spanish are rigidly male or female, the gender sometimes determines the difference between identical words.
El radio: the metal radium / La radio: the radio (AM, FM, shortwave, etc.)
El cometa: the comet / La cometa: the kite
Yeah then they would claim it was made by latin alphabet people
It's just a thinly veiled try to appropriate our Spanish language
For those who aren't directly from Spain, the Spanish language is one of colonialism so I really don't care if we want to re-adapt it which most lands that were colonized by the Spanish already do.
Yeah you can't actually tell a whole population how to talk
Contrary to what you guys think, you don't own us
Huh? No one is telling a whole population how to talk. And I don't even know where your last comment is coming from.
I'm Mexican, and think the argument is silly. Whatever someone prefers to be referred to is how I will refer to them.
The spanish language isn't the heritage of the Central and Southern American people. That was mostly stolen from us by the Spanish.
I don't see most of latam talking in quechua or in warao. Do you want to force them as well to talk in those?
…Latino, Latina, Latinx community…
-NPR
(Actually can make sense when you include all three cuz enby)
Here in Argentina, we tend to use the "e" ltter at the end. To be fair, only people who use what we call inclusive language use it. It ends up being "no-binarie" which makes more sense.
"We" as in the minority of people. "Inclusive language" in spanish is one of the dumbest things I've seen in the past few years and it's (thankfully) not very widespread.
There are dumber things. Javier Milei and it's government, for example. And those who voted for them. It's like voting for Trump. Thankfully, for you, no one forces ypu to speak inclussively.
Jokes aside, I think the correct one should be "binaria" because it's "persona no-binaria", where "persona" being a female-gendered word still includes everybody (persono doesn't even exist).
Really, if you replace "gender of the person" to "gender of the noun", ChatGPT is correct.
It's people who can be little more picky about pronouns and stuff
Precisely. It is “el género no binario” or “la persona no binaria”. It has nothing to do with the person, just the nouns. As “binario/a” is an adjective, it has no gender on its own.
This legitimately trips up learners. How if the noun is female, it's correct to use feminine articles/pronouns/etc regardless of the person's gender, even if you know they're male. (or vice-versa).
That and plurals defaulting to male.
Just be careful, because the person can be the noun, then the adjective takes on the person's desired gender.
It might be, you know, hear me out, that "grammatical gender" is a historical misnomer caused by linguistics initially practically only looking at Indo-European languages, which tend to have three noun classes with the word for "woman", "man", and "thing" all being in a different category so they became known as feminine, masculine, and neuter, with words assigned to them pseudo-randomly via phonetics. But really noun classes are a much more general thing, Bantu languages have up to 20. Persons, fruits, plants, locations, such things.
At least in Indo-European languages it's mostly about ease of reference: "I see a cup and a table. She is broken". Assuming that cup is female and table male (as in German) that is a very clear and concise statement.
plurals defaulting to male.
Except when referring to a group of women. Like “Dos profesoras”
And if the noun is a person's name? Then how do you determine whether to use the masculine or feminine version of non-binary?
•
it's incredible that you can frequently make chatgpt correct by changing some of the words to make it correct.
Native speaker here and no, that wouldn't be correct as a general rule. The most typical would be talking about or someone else like "yo soy no binario/a" and "yo" would be a he or a she depending on who is saying that. If you're talking about someone else it's "el/ella es no binario/a" for example.
The point of being non-binary, though, is that they are neither "he" nor "she". Hence the post.
On one hand, you're right. On the other, Spanish does not work like that. There's no gender neutral term for people.
Also a native speaker here. You can also just not specify "el/Ella" because the context isn't relevant. I.e. "es no binaria". You can also just pluralize the person to get around gendered wording, I.e. "ya llegaron" for "they have arrived" rather than "el/Ella ya llego" for he/she has arrived, but this is informal and may sound odd to someone of a different dialect from me, but I think this should at least be intelligible to Latin american Spanish dialects
Except that in spanish we don't have a gender neutral term so you either explicitly or implicitly have to say el/ella. But yeah, in hindsight it does make sense (semantically) to say "binaria" as if you were referring to them as "personA"
Not only informal but a bit disrespectful, by saying ya llegaron to one person, it's like adding disdain to them.
It's easier to say llegó + nombre de la persona
ie: llegó Juana, llegó Pedro
And so on
I'm digging how Japanese is just context based. The same sentence that says "He's cool" is the same as "She's cool" and "It's cool." What changes its meaning is the context you're using it in.
Turkish has only one third person pronoun that encompasses he/she/it. Gender is similarly indicated with contextual clues.
But they have gendered first person pronouns. Like Watashi is neutral, but Atashi/ Atakushi/ Atai /Uchi is only used by women. Ore/ Jibun/ Boku/ Washi is mostly used by men
And for secondary personal pronouns Temē/ Kisama are only used for men, but those are very rude.
As a native Spanish speaker, I must tell something: that's the de facto (I think) right way to do things. Most people in my IRL environment, including myself, disprove the use of the "e" (although we don't care about the "@").
Clarification: That's IRL in my own POV only, maybe someone has a POV that is exactly the opposite. IDK
But don't you dare mention the e or @ or heaven forbid the dreaded x, because accomodating identities not traditionally considered in a language's common form is "white people shit"
Every single American born person of hispanic heritage, every first gen Spanish speaking immigrant I have ever known or met, as a friend, momentary acquaintance, or as a social worker helping to aid the homeless...
...every one that I have met in the real world either thinks latinx is laughably stupid (as in they literally laugh when the topic is brought up), or they are visibly confused when they read or hear the term.
And of friends and acquaintances, I know they ranged all over the political spectrum.
I wish no ill will on whoever came up with the term, but it just is not sensible to anyone who is not terminally online.
Hablo un pocquito español, so... as far as I can tell, there is at least existing precedent for the e ending, but I'll leave it up to the actual members of the language group and its culture to come up with a term (hell, there may be many different local or regional ways to accomplish it, as Spanish varies considerably by region and locale).
Actual members of the language group and culture did come up with a term, they came up with the x, and the anti-queer-machismo undercurrent in Latine society drove the lot to hysterics about the end of the spanish language and the gringoification of Latine culture.
Every time I see someone try to excuse this shit they'll spin some variant of "let them decide what term to use", and I'm like, why isn't the same right afforded to the queer folks who came up with those terms?
What about the greater Latine culture gives them a superior right to the Latine queer community to decide what letter to use? Why is not listening to the language community in question suddenly ok when it means overriding what the Latin Queer community outright told y'all they wanted in favor of appeasing los machismos who are all suddenly heads of the spanish academy and grammar experts as soon as it's convenient to be so to shout down some gay math nerds who wanted to be clever and punny in their chatspeak representation?
The Anglosphere didn't have the right to tell our queer community what they were gonna be called, why should we respect the hispanosphere trying to say they have that right?
Look, if someone wants to identify as latinx, I'm not going to stop them, and I will use that term in reference to them, no problem.
If the term was, as you say, invented by gay latinx math nerds in chat rooms then sure, it works for them on internet chatrooms or in the real.
There does seem to be significant contention as to where and how the term arose, as well as its usage, and that's from LGTBQ writers, activists and academics.
Some are for it, some are against it, and its not just because of machismo. I'm seeing a whole bunch of articles from a quick search of people writing arguments against latinx from differing perspectives such as X is a product of settler colonialism, it erases blackness, it erases femicides, etc etc, and again this is coming from LGBTQ magazines.
My point was that in practical usage, specifically when serving in a non profit assisting the homeless, the term is a point of confusion, and more generally, it is basically an online term that works when written, but not when spoken.
Sure, if you grew up knowing English you can probably pronounce it, but a Spanish only speaker usually looks at the word and thinks it is a misspelling, as generally latinx does not result in an easily pronounceable sound following Spanish pronunciation rules.
The only similar analogy I can think of in English is the rainbow of pronouns invented by Tumblr.
I have no problem calling a NB person 'they/them'.
But when it gets to things like xer/xem or bun/buns or fae/faer or some of the other, wackier pronouns I've seen... its often words that are very awkward to say aloud, and they just seem ridiculous.
As a native straight Spanish speaker, I'd like to thank you for so eloquently explaining many of my problems with this way of referring to people's genders. There's no way the language would survive if we were to adapt to these gender neutral modifiers. Spanish is a gendered language and if we were to adapt to these non binary gender terms, we'd also have to apply it for about half our vocabulary. We'd all have to agree a washing machine for example is now no longer a female lavadora, but rather a lavadore or lavadorx. It'd be impossible to gather the entire Spanish speaking community across dozens of countries to agree on the general way standardize this.
Fuck them nonbinaries just wanting to not be misgendered every single day of their existence, right?
As opposed to your stance which is fuck people who don't want to have their language massively rewritten. I think it's far more reasonable to make individual accomodations for the non-binary folks that we interact with and accept that language has limitations and can't be changed overnight.
Confused about gendered pronouns in English?
Don't worry, its pretty simple, just use boolean genders!
It's quite common for 'he' to be replaced with 0 or FALSE , or 'she' with 1 or TRUE in modern English speech!
This will be updated soon with the advent of Quantum English which will introduce an indeterminate number of indeterminate words for an indeterminate number of identities which cannot be observed without directly interacting with every individual simultaneously!
wackier pronouns I’ve seen
I made a point out of being able to fluently use "any/all" pronouns in language. As in "Any is here, wearing all green scarf".
The fact that not seeming silly is more important to your sense of right and wrong than accepting someone's chosen identity on their terms and potentially saving their life by doing so, is why nobody wants to listen to your opinions on queer people. Jerk.
I mean, I am a queer person, but ok.
If you are gonna decide to guilt trip me by saying someone might potentially kill themselves if I refer to them as... them or he or she instead of bun or jae, then I'd say you're being emotional abusive.
Also, judging by the votes I've gotten so far, it seems you're gaslighting me when you say no one wants to listen.
Its not that neo-pronouns seem silly.
Its that they convey no useful meaning to anyone who does not already know that person, personally.
Sometimes you have to write things down in a manner that conveys useful information to say, apply a person for a government grant or aid of some kind. Sometimes these things are gender or sex specific.
Sometimes people who don't know a person need to read things about them and make decisions that could prevent them from starving to death, being murdered from a domestic abuser or living on the streets.
Writing bun repeatedly in correspondence or on a government form isn't going to work.
You cannot have a potentially infinite list of pronouns that you somehow expect everyone to just learn, and make this work in any kind of wide system where people don't know that they even are pronouns.
Pronouns are kind of a fundamental, fixed element of English.
Its different with a noun or adjective as there are many of those, and it is far, far easier to learn new ones and use them correctly.
Like, I'm an anarchist, but not to the point of total linguistic anarchy.
He/She/They is fine, and won't confuse the hell out of everyone. We have pronouns in English that are not gender deterministic, nor dehumanizing, and they are They and Them and Their and Themself.
Hell, when I was managing the databases for the non profit I worked at, I went through a ton of work to add in the ability for clients to be able to indicate their preferred pronouns and have it be reflected system wide.
No one, out of thousands, used it. Not one, and that includes tons of people who identified as trans, gay, lesbian, bi, pan, asexual.
After 6 months we reverted to he/she/they because, in addition to no one using it, having 4 open string fields instead of a key value indexed to a lookup table was slowing down the server and potentially a security risk if someone decided their pronouns include ;"DROP TABLE *" or something like that.
If neo-pronouns are ever going to make sense, they are going to need to have agreed upon and fixed definitions.
If you want to say that ok, from now on, She and He are for straight cis people, and i don't know, Je and Ke now refer to lesbian women and gay men, and you go on like that, as long as these terms actually have fixed agreed upon meanings, so on, they aren't easily confused with existing words, then maybe something like that could work.
You would need a defined system capable of being taught to PreK through 5 students such that they could learn it.
I don't see anything like that. I see a tiny minority of terminally online people making up new pronouns, unable to define them, and often changing them at a whim.
On a personal, colloquial, relatively close relationship level, neo pronouns can work the same way and inside joke or lingo amongst a tight knit group of people can.
Not on the scale of millions or billions, not without meaningful, at least initially fixed definitions.
EDIT: I just now realized you are the passive aggressive anti-realist solipsist, "I believe in magic but I can't define it" person who argued that atheists are jerks by telling them what they define magic as.
Nothing quite seems to irk my autism like people who break language, congrats I guess on riling me up again.
If I could, I would hug you and give you a pastry. Thank you for being amazing, giving good explanations and keeping your cool in the face of that dumbass jerk. Hell knows my queer, autistic ass just can't cope.
Language is important because it helps convey things. If a language is mangled to the point where it can't be understood, it is no longer a language at all, and the person you have been responding to seems to either be a troll, too profoundly stupid or actively unwilling to engage in proper communication.
You cannot have a potentially infinite list of pronouns that you somehow expect everyone to just learn
Ackchyually yes, we do, they're called names. A bit different, they're nouns not pronouns, but functionally there's gigantic overlap and best of all if the name is short enough it's actually not much of a bother to never use pronouns to refer to that person. Most of all, it's regular because we already conjugate names ("bun arrived", "bun's pants", "the letter is for bun"). "bun brushes bun's hair" not to mention "bun dresses bunself" sounds a bit strange but is perfectly cromulent.
...still if you get your panties in a twist over being addressed "they" instead of whatever you're used to or, strictly speaking prefer, I think you're off the mark. I'm cis call me they all you want: Being generic doesn't take away from anyone's identity. It's like being upset that you're being referred to as a human instead of a barber.
Also the point of personal pronouns isn't to communicate information to others. It's to validate the person who has the pronouns. Your giant wall of text ignores the entire argument I actually made and the entire point of pronouns. Maybe you should try caring about trans people instead of worrying about everyone else, and then you'd understand the point of trans pronouns.
Every trans person I have ever met uses he or she.
NBs use they.
I've literally gotten in brawls defending trans people where I was the only person using their preferred pronouns and this pissed off a whole gaggle of people who were assaulting them.
Your argument was that I could potentially kill (apparently you were referring only to trans?) people by not using their preferred pronouns.
Not only is that not a thing I do, not only are you incapable of understanding my apparently too nuanced position for you, I have literally done the inverse of what you claim of me, and have risked my life specifically over properly using a trans person's pronouns, and may have saved their life.
Do you remember when I said your view of the history of magic, along with your rhetorical tactics, are quite similar to fascism techniques?
I guess not.
Fundamentally, the use of pronouns is to point towards something. And the more information is loaded into a pronoun, the better it can point. They arent here to validate the person, but to convey information and to point towards them during conversation.
People choosing their own personal pronouns, thereby choosing the way theyre pointed at, has the added benefit of validating them. But from a linguistical standpoint, all they do is change the pointer and the informations and assumption tacked onto that pointer.9
What the person above wants to express is: While neopronouns can be used in personal conversation, its not feasible to include them into the curriculum for anyone and the chance of your specific neopronoun ending up as a widely used one within your native language are near zero. I think your friends and your immediate surrounding should definitely address you by them. But especially with rapid changing pronouns or those that contradict the phonology of a language or that are close to existing words, they wont see much use. People will fall back to other pronouns, because it simplifies communicatiom for them.
I'm not a solipsist, I'm an antirealist. I believe things are real, but that reality is a social construct and must be abolished.
Anyway, as a willful misgenderer of trans people, you may have a queer identity, but you are not part of the queer/lgbt movement. You have to be an ally for that, it's a choice. So personally, yes, you're queer, but socially, you're not. Try actually respecting other queer people if you want to be queer.
Oh, telling me what I think and do again!
How original.
Let me know when you find the part of my text where I say I willfully misgender trans people.
Fuck, I've nearly been killed over defending a trans person and their preferred pronouns.
But you're the arbiter of reality, so I guess nah, actually I'm awful.
Oh well.
That's a lot of text trying to justify not just calling people what they tell you they want to be called.
Also, "settler colonialism" just taking us back to that whole "recognizing queer rights is just white people shit" angle, you just fucking troyed yourself. "In your soul." "That's racist." "In your body?" "That's gay?" "That's homophobic." "That's Black." "That's Racist!"
Talking about it erasing blackness also flying dangerously close to that boundary, and "femicide" looks suspiciously like all the TERF Island rumblings about "erasing womanhood".
If someone goes out of their way to specifically tell you how they want to be referred to, just fucking do that instead of being a little crying bitch baby about it. It's some letters, you can ask them for a pronunciation if it's really that hard to sight read.
Every second you spend on trying to justify intentionally putting down how someone wants to be referred to is infinitely more effort than was ever necessary for anything, and continuing to try and justify this childish tantrum throwing is exponentially more effort than that.
Just respect how people want you to refer to them. Just do that. It's not nearly as hard as you're trying to excuse it as. Just be a decent person already.
That's a lot of text trying to justify not just calling people what they tell you they want to be called.
You evidently cannot read, as I explicitly said, in the first line, that I have no problem calling someone latinx if they tell me that is what they want to be called.
Anyway, I am not actually promulgating the arguments you are critiquing.
I am saying that the term latinx is contentious, amongst hispanic LGBTQ people, amongst academics, as well as amongst the reactionaries you seem to want to label me as.
As the term is contentious, and I am not a hispanic LGBTQ person, I am not going to tell people they cannot label themselves as latinx, nor am I going to insist use of that term instead of others.
I am bewildered as to how you have decided that I am a crying little baby bitch who is throwing a childish temper tantrum.
I am not a hispanic LGBTQ person, my only relevant experience or credential or whatever is interacting in my relatively basic level of Spanish with many people, most for the purpose of attempting to help them get housing or some other kind of assistance.
I used to design the online and offline forms used for intake and other various functions, and I am basing what I've said on my experience and the many experiences of the employees using said forms, as well as myself when I did outreach.
My personal opinion is twofold:
-
Latinx basically either doesn't work as a word or is confusing following Spanish's own rules.
-
I have interacted with (directly and by proxy via constantly receiving feedback from the intake crew and other employees at the nonprofit) hundreds of Spanish only speakers, and they are generally confused by the word latinx, likely due to part 1.
Again, since I apparently have to make this clear, if someone tells me they identify as latinx, I have no problem with this.
You're the one who compared it to neo-pronouns as if expecting people to respect either if presented with them in a social context is ridiculous.
Its the closest analogy I can come up with, though it is not linguistically perfect.
The closeness of the analogy is that neo pronouns and latinx are primarily used by terminally online people, rarely used in most people's day to day real world experience, that the terms are viewed by many as linguistically awkward, confusing and/or cringey.
I don't know what to tell you if you think that talking to an average Spanish only speaker and using the term latinx, or an average English speaker using neo-pronouns, that the average person is in the real world is not going to find this confusing and strange.
They are thus both examples of terms that seem normal/acceptable/understandable only to a person who is terminally online.
Oof, this comment has a lot of correct content individually, but as a response, undoes all your previous points.
Nah, what I've said stands, this is fundamentally about the right to have your own identity be respected, and how queer folks have had to fight tooth and nail just to even get so much as singular they/them accepted in the anglosphere.
There is literally no good reason for there to be a fight about this. You can learn new pronunciation, you can ask for reminders, you can do whatever, but everyone coming at me about "but da X is dum do!" is siding with "but I don't waaaaaaaaaaana!" at the most benign, and "if I see someone using that X I'll burn them alive myself!" at the far end, and yes I have personally seen that sentiment expressed, and not even in the present age of reddit collapse, this was shit from before the pandemic.
Just because society moved on to different means of communication doesn't mean we don't have lessons to learn from why we had to move on and what highly toxic cultural forces were behind pushing that move, lest we have this conversation about why the e was bad and stupid and dumb 10 years from now.
Not to mention the wildly patronizing reflex of some D&I folks to try and say "actually bigotry can be ok if it's the 'global south'™ because being disgusted by bigotry even when 'the good people'™ do it is colonialism or something."
As if those values aren't literally a direct product of missionary colonialism.
if someone wants me to specifically refer to them a latinx, ill comply. I dont see it getting any traction outside of this niche as an acceptable genderneutral form of declination. Latine fits better, since a lot more spanisch paradigms end on -e, from a linguistical standpoint. -x, i.e. /ks/ or /eks/ is very unusual according to Spanisch Phonology. And the vast majority of speakers will use the phonetically easier version, if they wish to change their speech patterns at all.
Are you sure it was actually created in the Latin American world by Spanish speakers and not in the USA by English speakers with Mexican ancestors that keep saying they're Mexican even though they've never been to the country, can't speak the language and the last person in the family to do so was their grandpa?
Because this seems 100% an American invention by people who can't speak the language but still need to feel superior by pretending to do "something" for the queer community.
I don't think I've ever heard any of this outside of English speaking forums comprised mainly of Americans. Not in real life, not in Europe, not in Latin America.
Do you even speak the language? Because I'd argue that before trying to change something, you first need to have a deep understanding of that thing, especially for languages.
Love the clinging for dear life to "n-n-no! Inclusivity is "gRiNgO sHiT!" narrative.
To such an extent that you've nearly set up layered positions to move the goalpost to that'll eventually allow you to try and claim anyone who isn't a Zapatista is basically just a white english only american anyways.
No, it's not about inclusivity or lack-thereof, it's about you needing to at least KNOW the language before proposing changes to it. I don't need your ignorant opinion. No one needs it. We have enough people talking about shit they know nothing about from their smug high horse, as if their opinion is just as valid as truly knowledgeable people. Learn Spanish, speak it fluently, and then come back.
Or maybe you are one of those people that are flabbergasted when they hear the word "negro" in Spanish?
Don't worry. At least you tried. Met some English speaking folks who expect everyone to talk in their language... In a country of Spanish speakers. To be fsir, here in Argentina we hsve mandatpry English classes in High School. Its a subject on its own right. So we have some people who can speak English pretty well.
The German classes haven't been en vogue for almost 80 years right? Fucking joking de acuerdo mon ami.
One of my Spanish teachers in high school was Argentinian, so I learned that the ll is pronounced a bit differently as compared to many other Central/South American forms of Spanish, not a more pure y as a consonant sound, but sort of... zhy...?
Not sure how to represent it textually, but I've found that these and other regional differences can be a fun point to banter about when getting to know native Spanish speakers.
I would love to be able to visit, or maybe even live in Patagonia someday. Similar climate to where I grew up, absolutely beautiful country.
(Obviously I would need to brush up on my Spanish a bit first... It has always astounded me that many or most Americans just expect to be understood in English no matter where they go...)
The e is really used (at least in Mexico) The @ was used in my times (millennial) but it was mostly to avoid writing twice: niños y niñas -> niñ@s but the e really incorporates a neutral plural
x I've only seen it from corporations and white people
Might have seen more of it if y'all stopped being allies with the bigots who terrorized the latine folks that came up with it into silence.
Seriously, the "inclusivity is white people shit" is so strong even queer PoC have internalized it to the point of trying to justify the absolute vitriol a single letter got that "just happened" to be one queer latine folks came up with to represent themselves.
Your anger is righteous, dudex, but I don't think the person you're replying to deserves it
It was meant as a text only placeholder and the poor enbie math nerd who came up with it is probably traumatized for life because of the machismo fuckasses that made hating it their entire reason to be.
Yeah it's dumb. But maybe hating on it is wrong. The latinx enby who came up with it tried their best. (And I'm calling them latinx because that's the word they invented for themself). It didn't work as good as latine, but so what? Who cares? We found a better option and most people use it, so there's no need to keep being mean. Only people who benefit if you keep being mean are the transphobic assholes. What do you want to help them for?
Missing almost the entire ass point. You're being that person who says "yeah but games journalism is actually pretty unethical tho..." in a gamergate discussion.
The practicality wasn't the reason it got targeted, the attempt at inclusivity from within the community is what got it targeted, the practicality is just the excuse they used to seem like they were being completely reasonable while terrorizing the early queer community that originally came up with it into silence.
You can disagree the letter worked while still not trying to shoehorn that point into a discussion about how that was not even remotely what drew so much hate to it when it was at peak attention.
...What? This person is not shoehorning in any conversation about anything.
They are saying they are exactly the kind of person who could identify themself as latinx and that they hate it and prefer latine.
You are arguing against things people are not actually saying.
I think its closer to
"I am a black person and I think we should be talking about the term african american vs black"
to which you replied
"Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech where he said that we should identify as simply Americans, but he was actually racist against black people so therefore historilinguistically we should use the term african american."
Because we don't want non-speakers rewriting the grammar of our language based on sensitivities that are not ours.
"non-speakers", "not ours" as if you have any right to decide or judge.
Clinging for dear life to "it's not disgusting bigotry! ItS jUsT oUr CuLtUrE!", unless you're out here admitting you have the weakest spine on the planet and immediately turn with the social winds, how other people speak a language ain't gonna change how you speak it.
Only way you could ever accuse it of harming latin culture is if you fundamentally believe being inclusive to queer folks is destructive, in which case, you are literally the exact low-down slime I was warning about in this whole thread, and I welcome you to the stage as the freakshow example you deserve to be seen as!
Trying to impose your value judgement on a culture you don't know or don't understand. Acting like a true colonizer. I'm a queer Hispanic, I don't need you carrying out a moral crusade in my name.
The thing is they, colonizers, need it. That's the only way they can justify in their heads how they see us all as uneducated inferiors
Hey friend, cool back a few notches maybe.
I'm cishet, but I consider myself an ally of the community.
That said, the Latinx shit is dumb. Do you speak any Spanish or can you use an accent? Latinx is unpronounceable in Spanish. That's why people of that racial grouping say that it's some bullshit. It is bullshit.
My friends and coworkers from Mexico, Central, and South America prefer Latino, Latina, or even, believe it or not, Spanish. Gender neutral!
One of my professional mentors is from Nicaragua. He lives in the US, calls himself by an anglicized first name, and when people ask where he's from he says he's Mexican. Granted he's older and he's just trying to get by. He doesn't give a fuck about any of this identity stuff. I'm not saying people should emulate him, just giving a silly example.
Bro, just borrow from Nahuatl, Latin-"ehe", or Latin-esh, you know, like the ways they pronounce the oh so unpronounceable, oh so unbearable to the spanish speaking tongue X that sits in the middle of the name of the largest Spanish speaking country in the fucking world?
It really isn't the tongue obliterating challenge all los machismos are fitting and moaning over it being.
Anyways this isn't even about how people should be using it anymore, it's about recognizing the true reasons behind why there was a fight to begin with. Nobody, has fought so hard to resist a linguistic change, as the bigots do to resist a change that accommodates trans/NB identity.
You know what came closest to this kind of resistance in a widely adopted change in English? Singular They/Them, it's been around since literally before America and yet we still have the armchair grammar nazis insisting they/them can only be a plural pronoun, with I am sure zero ulterior motive aside from just hating trans people.
The backlash to the X was rooted fundamentally in transphobia, and understanding and expecting better than that queerphobic undercurrent in Latine culture is nothing wrong or neocolonial or whatever the fuck other excuse someone trying to excuse the hate out of their ass tries to pull to dogwhistle the "gringo shit" narrative.
You're not entitled to people just forgetting how you wronged them just because you were able to bully them into "moving on" from it.
I like Latine. If the people of Spanish speaking countries accept it I think it's great.
I didn't mean that X is unpronounceable in Spanish, it's just absurd to be at the end of a word in Spanish.
Everyone uses singular they but for some reason they don't like it as a pronoun. "They went to the store," "What did you do for them?" Etc. I don't get it.
But really I understand that you're angry and you have good reason to be. You don't need to change my mind but if you chill back a bit maybe you can change others like the people who might be reading this exchange.
Like I get that you probably aren't personally accusing me of bullying people, but if I was less empathetic or maybe not as proficient in English I might think you were calling me a bully there.
Gendered languages are quite confounding; one day I hope those languages become more accommodating to those who realized they didn't identify with a gender and threw it away. Or worse, got their gender pickpocketed in a seedy part of town, because some tossers were quite desperate!
It's just one more thing to memorize when trying to learn them. I'm not going to intuitively know what gender a chair is...
I've asked the following question before and I've never gotten a good answer - why do the words need a gendered suffix at all? Why can't the final O and A letters simply be omitted from all words that aren't inherently gendered? Like the word for library is 'bibliotheca", so why can't it just be called "bibliothec"?
The long and short of it is that it was decided on however long ago and now the people who learn the language growing up are used to it and they decide the rules that are followed.
English (and any non-native language) does many weird things that native speakers are just used to and will get upset if you try and change it.
That's sort of exactly why i as an individual don't understand why they don't do it, because I'm a native english speaker and there's a lot i would like to change about it. Like imo in spelling, almost all the silent letters that don't effect pronunciation should be eliminated. Debt should be spelled det, night should be spelled nite
You do realize that this is kinda bad, right? No english spelling reform ever took hold because of the vast difference in english pronounciation. your "nite" might completely differ from the aussie version of "night". so you'd have to declare one dialect to be the supreme one. That'll be fun :)
Secondly: Gender and gendered terms are sociallinguistic conventions. And they do not follow stereotypical gender norms. Often they radiate outwards from gendered terms for humans and then encompass things that follow similar sound structures. sometimes gender is historically motivated: Spanish generally divides things along the lines of "does it end with an -a or -o" and then assigns gender. But terms like "diversidad" stem from female latin words and retain their gender. "problema" seems feminine, but stems from a male greek word and is therefore male. Not because "tHe MaLeS aRe ThE PrrObLeM", but because ancient greek sound structures classified this as "male-sounding" and Spanish ran with it.
In German, "das Mädchen" (the girl) is neutral. Not bevause all girl are secretly enbies or equivalent to possesions, but the diminuitive "-chen" turns things neutral.
all that to say: "Why dont they do that" can always answered with a resounding "Why dont you have feature x?". Why doesnt English use eventiality or cases or dual and trial numeri or tones or different conjugations depending on registers? Because the language didnt develope that way.
In German, “das Mädchen” (the girl) is neutral. Not bevause all girl are secretly enbies or equivalent to possesions, but the diminuitive “-chen” turns things neutral.
There's actually a somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal to solve the "Doctor/Doctress" problem by turning absolutely everything diminutive. Das Präsidentchen, das Bundeskanzlerchen, etc.
there are soooo many proposals, but thats actually one i like. of course, it would render the entire diminuitive meaningless, buuuut its cute uwu
I pronounce epitome as epi-tome and refuse to change it no matter how many times I'm "corrected"
I think the answer to every "Why doesn't this language work like this" question is "because it doesn't work like that".
Also since the definite articles (e.g "the") is just the vowels, you lose them entirely. And words would just sound weird cause it would create sounds that don't really exist in the languages
Genus isnt sexus. The chair isnt female in Spanish because ancient Spaniard thought it might have titties, its feminine because of its phonology. La silla ends with an a, so it gets the la article.
Why does English still use actor and actress? why do you use definite articles instead of marking definiteness with prefixes? Why do i have to "i saw Mike steal your bike" instead of included something inside of the verb "see" to mark that i witnessed it?
Language is just that. An evolution of changes that happened throughout millenia and rarely was any pressure applird to that change.
I’m not going to intuitively know what gender a chair is
There's phonological rules. Just don't try to ask a native speaker about them we have them internalised and thus intuit everything, actually look them up.
i know that every time 'latinx' comes up online it gets spammed with 'rich white libs made it up' replies but i've also seen deep in those comment chains people claiming to be latin american trans people and that the term was created by the latin american trans community itself.
also, typically those replying with the above knee jerk 'white libs' response tend to be far right when i dug into their histories. on youtube and reddit over the years, that is. haven't seen this discourse on lemmy. also i don't have any sources for the origin of the term, just thought you might want to reconsider potentially being hateful to the latin american trans community if that wasn't your intention.
and tbh, even if it was some dem focus group in new york that came up with it, it's pretty easy to see that trans people might take the above kind of response to that term as one rooted in hatred.
I am both latine and trans and latinx is fucking dumb lol so heres another one for the anecdote
it doesnt sound like that at all and latrine isnt even a spanisch word? Thats like complaining about the korean 니가 (sounds like neega) being to similar to the n-word. Or the eveb funnier discussion of american youth discovering the German "Digga" and immediately coming to the conclusion that this must be the n-word in disguise.
“Digga”
For the uninitiated: Probably via "mit jemanden dick sein", "to be thick with someone", meaning to be good friends, probably related to "mit jemanden durch dick und dünn gehen", "to go with someone through thick and thin", meaning exactly what you think. "Proper" orthography would be Dicker but as it arose among workers in Hamburg that's nowhere close to the actual pronunciation so it's usually rendered "Digga" or "Digger". Pronounced the same, we don't do rhotics at the end of words and all the German I mentioned should probably be Low Saxon or at least Missingsch.
If you want to translate it to English... "thiggy" I guess?
Bonus: Europeans who use the term "BIPOC" unironically in a European context. With, you know, the "I" referring to literally the vast majority of the population. Over here the term you're looking for would be "autochthone minority".
my understanding is latinx and latine are pronounced exactly the same, just different spelling. you're using latine while saying latinx is dumb and made up by shitlibs?
So in Spanish you have a word like Oaxaca or México, where the x is in the middle of the word and is pronounced like the h in ha.
When x is at the end of a word its pronounced like k+s.
Or when it is the first letter of a word, its basically an s sound.
So, we get three possible pronunciations rooted in Spanish:
la-tin h (i don't think this really works at all unless you just trail 'tin' with some kind of soft ... consonant only sound?)
la-tinks (arguably this is the most correct pronunciation strictly following the rules of Spanish)
la-tins (works but only if you do not follow Spanish rules for how x is pronounced)
é or e is a vowel pronounced like eh, tbus:
la-tin-EH or la-tin-eh
which is different from latino (OH) and latina (AH).
If latinx and latine are pronounced the same, then that would indicate that a word has been made up which breaks the otherwise quite strict pronunciation rules governing Spanish, introducing an English style 'exception' where this particular word is pronounced this particular way for no apparent reason.
This is a big reason why many (but not all) do not like this term. It either only works when written or to a person familiar with English, who usually pronounce it la - tin - ecks.
I'm Latino, latine seems more plausible based on how I grew up. I just hate how it's a single letter off from latrine.
Do we jump the rules for something really new to our society? Maybe. I personally think a lot of this is rooted in people's limited understanding of how postfixes work in Spanish, American education for example explains that anything ending with a = feminine, o = masculine, but that ignores context and etymology which I won't go into here.
I'd equate it to our initial minor discomfort with referring to humanity as 'mankind', anyone with more than trivial education understands the word to be non-gendered.
Actually English native feminists and leftists tend to avoid using the word "mankind". The more time passes, the more that word is considered a relic of a misogynist past that's no longer relevant. You still see that sort of language in old books like The Lord Of The Rings, where humans are referred to a "men", regardless of gender. And it's jarring to modern readers who are native speakers. People aren't used to it anymore.
English speakers are improving our language to remove sexism and Spanish speakers are too. Language is a tool, it's supposed to help people. If it's not helping people, it needs to be repaired or upgraded.
Missing the forest for the trees here. This is a perfect example of outsider dissipation of our energy in making a conclusive decision on how to proceed.
Read my comment again, you'll notice what I'm equating the discomfort to as it currently stands.
Historically, "man" is absolutely neutral, meaning "human, person". You then have wif for woman and wer for man and also wifman and werman. I think it would've been better to go back to those terms, already tried and true just fallen out of use after the Norman conquest, than to try to haphazardly and awkwardly declare the use of the term "mankind" sexist. Cudgels and shibboleths invented by the performative faction to have a way to deem themselves morally superior.