I know that the term “Latinx” is meant to be pronounced “La-teen-ex,” but given it doesn’t crop up much in spoken conversation around me, my brain tends to read it as “La-tinks.”
I know that the term "Latinx" is meant to be pronounced "La-teen-ex," but given it doesn't crop up much in spoken conversation around me, my brain tends to read it as "La-tinks".
I do think it's a cool neologism, though. pic.twitter.com/Z77tiCwc07
— ***Dave Hill (@Three_Star_Dave) March 6, 2020
I still think it’s a cool neologism, though. The Boy has been learning Italian and Latin in college, and is being thrown a curve by the gendered nature of those languages. Just as in English we’ve been tackling gendered aspects of our own tongue, languages built around gendered nows (and then verbs and other parts of speech that have to echo them) often incorporate sexual bias and traditional expectations.
“Latinx” is an effort at a collective noun that, unlike “Latino,” doesn’t seem to exclude half the people involved.
Do you want to know more? History of the term and push-back on it from some quarters