The Truth About 'Latinx' - Gender-Neutral Language in Spanish

A primer on 'inclusive language' in Spanish that refutes some pervasive myths

Latinx
Latino
Hola, my Latinx friends!

[Gusativo]

An interesting development in the past months: PSL (Bolsonaro's former political party) passed some laws prohibiting gender neutral language to be used in by public servants (e.g., public school teachers), claiming they would be violating the official language of the country. The Supreme Court has recently declared such laws unconstitutional and claimed linguistic diversity (be it in dialects or sociolects) should be protected.

[liamgonzalez]

Its funny that in the chad meme the argentinian is a blond white guy lmao

[MrDoomedtofail]

I worked with some Argentinians who were teaching me a little Spanish and they taught me about the inclusive 'e'. They just said it was something that some younger people were choosing to use and most other people didn't care about, and it's up to me what I choose to use.

[nromk]

The problem here is that the USA believes it's the center of the world, and like it's crazy to find out that the civil rights Era of the 60s in the USA, didn't happen in a bubble... Like several minorities around the world fought for their civil rights including in Canada, the UK, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia but the way the USA teaches its civil rights Era, you'd think that only the USA had a black civil rights leaders or gay rights movement or feminists movements... It's called American Exceptionalism

[patrickchoque]

I’ve seen a lot of people write things like “Latin@“ where the “@“ can represent both “o” and “a”. Of course, that only really works in writing.

[noejaun]

I've just always thought the "-x" looks goofy and forced, which lent itself to the "lingual imperialist" narrative. The "-e" feels alot more natural, I'm glad there exists an alternative for gender neutral language.

[ryebreadthewhite]

That’s like in French, one of the big dictionaries added the gender neutral/non-binary “iel” and all the francophone conservatives are super pissed lol

[redhausser]

As a spanish speaker in one of those "more socially progressive countries", I've only seen gender-neutral language in publications of student councils and the like. Nobody uses it on every-day talking, at least afaik

[lamikiminach]

I feel like nobody would be even talking about this if e was used as a gender neutral replacement instead of x. Using a non vowel as a replacement for a vowel is extremely awkward and only works in written form.

[VileLasagna]

As a Portuguese speaker, the way it feels to me is that though the discussion of inclusive language by means of the introduction of a neutral gender in the language is a valid and interesting one but the SPECIFIC form of signalling with an X DOES feel like a weird import from the US.
It also brings accessibility problems as, for example, with it being impossible to vocalise, it doesn't work for screen reading software, and it also detaches the written form from the spoken language which again is a bit troubling.

Though feeling a bit weird and awkward (as any change as central to a language as introducing a whole new gender into it would be) the "e" as a marker is much more natural in many ways, though being a bit of a weird nerd I'd go as far as say I'd be happy to see the triumphant return of æ (the ae if you have busted fonts) for this specific purpose

[gaiusjuliuscaesar]

As a more "official" example of inclusive language, you could point to a lot of the political programs/manifestos used during the election for the Chilean Constitutional Assembly

[patrulhasirius]

Would like to add that in portuguese the using of the "e" ending, although common, has the slight problem that "ele" means "he", so some people prefer the use of the "u" ending (as in "elu/delu"). Its another Latin American originated solution to the same problem.

[deldarel]

I always thought latinx was the disposition imposed by English and Latine was the actually usable response to this.
But apparently not even that was the case. Apparently both are from Spanish speaking areas and Latinx is preferred by writing, especially in English, and Latine is more spoken, especially in Spanish, but also for distinctly non-binary people who think 'My x is for nobody to fill in but me'.

[danielajazminsss]

ahoy, filipina from canada here

a few months ago this popped up in philippine national-level news which was in tagalog. they were discussing the use of “filipinx, pilipinx” instead of in “filipina, filipino, pilipina, pilipino” in philippine english and philippine languages. it was discussed (dismissed even?) as something that “north americans use more, ” and i was surprised that there was no discussion of gender neutral concepts that are already in the philippines.

many philippine languages that are malayo-polynesian like tagalog don’t have gendered third person pronouns or gendered articles. tagalog only has a gender neuter third person.

philippine creoles of spanish (chavacano), which i do not speak but only read about, have a ton of regional variation on pronouns. one thing they seem to have in common is they don’t (usually) have a gendered third person pronoun. some regions say “ele”, some say “él, ” other regions say “eli.” it seemed to have been adopted from the portuguese masculine to adapt to the neutralness of philippine languages. these creoles also just don’t use the article “la” as much, so it’s common to hear “el mujer” but people may still say “las cosas.”

philippines creoles are a good example of how languages transformed by the people speaking them over hundreds of years. philippine creoles did not have the same historical institutional control as language academies on spanish, french, etc; when people needed to describe something, they crafted the language to describe that thing. what intrigued me the first at most was the singular third person neutral pronoun, which was probably there because philippine languages just did not have that differentiation. when i was trying to learn spanish in high school, i was always curious, as a filipina, if i could integrate these little things when i speak spanish to other spanish speakers. like hey, i could refer to my non-binary friend as “ele” with no hiccups.

[hrrishwk]

"Language is something that evolves, it's not something to be protected."
**Académie Française has left the chat.**

[gualminican]

As a Latino in the United States I never heard someone use gender neutral language but I have warned up to it after watching this video. I still don’t like when gringos use the term, it feels weird when gringos talk about the “Latinx community” when the majority of Latinos would never even use the term like that or “Latinx” in general.

[XsomeoneXelseX]

Great video, love that you addressed my main gripe with gringos using the word "latinx":
ITS NOT FUCKING PRONOUNCED LATINEX

[cesarperez]

Thank you for making such high quality content in english on LATAM issues and perspectives.

[unamless]

Gender neutral language? In my gendered language? Now that's bollocks.

[MakiPcr]

I've learned from talking to people who hate "Latinx" that many of them think "Latine" is a completely separate thing. Like you here, I use words with gender neutral "e" as an argument for Latinx, so it made me realize these people are having a completely different conversation than we are