Some of these suggestions are so euphemistic I wouldn't necessarily know what someone using them is trying to say... Plenty of cases where the client isn't actually the user, plenty of cases where saying something is "surprising" doesn't give the same subtext as saying something is "insane..." and that's just scratching the surface. GF is 100% Mexican descent, first gen US citizen, w/ advanced degree and she despises Latinx as a term (can't even pronounce it in Spanish she says).
I'll never forget how a Mexican on Twitter replied to those who use "Latinx": "Fuck off, pendejx."
Your girlfriend's attitude generally reflects those of Hispanics in the US, most of whom prefer to be referred to as "Hispanic". The rationale behind Latinx is that it covers both Latino and Latina, while also acknowledging the trans/nonbinary/genderqueer contingent. But I think the term "Hispanic" covers everybody as well...
"Latine" (with a long e) or just "Latin" works fairly well in the language if one absolutely must avoid the collective-o ending, as in "Latine intelligente." Still a tad awkward, but leagues better than "Latinx", which is such a blatant violation of Spanish phonotactics and aesthetics that it bugs me, a white AF grigo.
"Latinx" was so obviously created by an English-primary speaker.
Here's my suggestion: if you're an English speaker just say "Latin". Don't use any gendered suffix. It's literally the same word as "Latino" but in English. You don't call Italians "Italianx" or "Italiane" right? You just say "Italian". In context, nobody is going to mix up a conversation about modern Latin people and the ancient world.
I think that is kind of the point. The out-of-place x, by its very incongruousness, calls attention to and centers the LGBTQ constituent. You see it even with English words of Germanic origin, like spelling "folks" as "folx" or "women" as "womxn".
Nitpick: This may be true of “folx” and “Latinx”, but “womxn” (despite sometimes-similar connotations) seems to have originated as a way to highlight/signal feminism, and has only acquired queer connotations recently.
I'm aware of the form "womyn" from the 90s, but "womxn" appears to be more recent, and differentiated from "womyn" by its explicit inclusion of trans women and woman-like nonbinary people.
Edit: Wikipedia traces "womxn" back to the 1970s, but it seems unlike "womyn" it didn't get much currency in ordinary feminist usage, only finding purchase when the queer angle was added.
Hispanic is offensive because it focuses on the subjugation of the indigenous people by the Spanish Empire.
Latinx is much better. It (1) avoids acknowledging that Spain was once a world power, (2) intentionally introduces an unwanted misspelling of a common Spanish word that accentuates the Castilian lisp (3) intentionally misgenders the vast majority of people from those regions and (4) denies the existence of non-European South American languages and cultures.
> Hispanic is offensive because it focuses on the subjugation of the indigenous people by the Spanish Empire.
Let’s rewind 900 more years to the 5th/6th century and play madlibs: “English (demonym) is offensive because it focuses on the subjugation of the Romano-British people by the Angles.” Does this example still fit, or is it too far back in history to be offensive?
> avoids acknowledging that Spain was once a world power
As opposed to... checks notes the Holy Roman Empire?
> (2) intentionally introduces an unwanted misspelling of a common Spanish word that accentuates the Castilian lisp
That's just how the linguistics do. This is the same drivel that tries to argue chop chop and long time no see are somehow offensive, instead of just loanphrases from Chinese pidjin.
> (3) intentionally misgenders the vast majority of people from those regions
No, again this demonstrates a profound ignorance of how language actually works in practice. -o does not imply "default male" in Spanish. There's tomes on this stuff. Grammatical gender is not social gender. A mesa doesn't identify as female.
> (4) denies the existence of non-European South American languages and cultures.
Again, Latin/[aoex]?/ is better in this regard how exactly?
> The rationale behind Latinx is that it covers both Latino and Latina
The real rationale is one of imperialism: everyone should use a non gendered language. Like English, things would be so much more simple if everyone used English.
So going for latinx to erase part of a gendered language is a sneaky first attack on this language.
> GF is 100% Mexican descent, first gen US citizen, w/ advanced degree and she despises Latinx as a term (can't even pronounce it in Spanish she says).
I mean, the whole """Latinx""" thing is just non Latino whites replacing a Spanish word (Latino) with an English word, then telling the demographic it refers to to use this English word to refer to themselves
I have no idea how this dynamic doesn't manage to piss off more people
It does but it's the privileged upper class mainly white women pushing it. You think randoms like me have any say in that matter? At best you get treated like a dog with a lecture of internalized racism and misogyny or some other insanity for not buying into their bs.
Spanish words ending in "o" are, by default, inclusive. For centuries, it has been a linguistic idiom (not just in Spanish) that references to mixed-sex groups of people are done in the masculine. Women understood this perfectly and were not slighted by the custom, because it would not lead to an assumption that a group of people were homogeneously male or an assumption that women were "lesser" than men or excluded from the conversation. If a group of people is uniformly female then the feminine declensions can be used, and fluent speakers will easily shift from one to the other based on group composition.
It's very much the same sort of situation that we've used words like "mankind" and "peace on Earth, good will towards men" and women have always understood that "men" included them implicitly. It's only recently that women have chosen to take linguistic offense and rise up and complicate the language in search of manufactured equity.
