Third ones the charm? Latino, LatinX, Latine?


The term LatinX is an American English term that is used to refer to Latin Americans in order to be more gender inclusive, but is it offensive and forcing American ideals?


So what is so offensive about the term?

Well, many Latin Americans who are native to Latin America and are non-english speakers say that the X makes no sense, and it makes sense. The pronunciation of the letter X in the Spanish language makes an S sound or even a H sound such as the pronunciation of Mexico (Me-He-Co). Those in Latin America say that the X makes no sense to native speakers and argue that it is actually not inclusive because it fails to consider native speakers and seems like an overall attempt to enforce American-English linguistics onto them.


So who uses LatinX, well not that many people in a 2022 survey done by the Pew Research Center found that only around  2% prefer the term Latinx, but it could also be attributed to the fact that 76% of those who are from Latin America do not know or have not heard of the term. Which is ironic for a term that is meant to describe and represent the population.


This has led others to generate a new word LatinE which seems to be a response to fixing the awkward pronunciation of X but it is still not fully adopted by many. Many believe that the E at the end is more gender neutral and more inclusive to native speakers such as the word (estudiantE)


Overall the terminology LatinX seems to not be liked among many native Latin Americans, especially because they feel that it is an attack on the language by hyper-woke individuals making the Spanish language discriminatory. Many Latin Americans have come to say that they don’t need defending and the only truly offended people are white Americans who want to make a political statement. Many have even come out to say who are white Americans to categorize all Latin Americans as Latinx. This type of commentary has been seen on platforms such as Twitter, tik tok, Reddit, and many others

(I’ve chosen not to link these because many of these posts show a lot of hateful/fowl language towards white Americans but you are welcome to look that up on your own) 


News platforms such as NBC have touched on the topic, the video was not taken lightly by many in the comments section have voiced both their concern and dislike of the term.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XenO2suvvU4


So what is your stance on the issue is LatinX inclusive or does it actually exclude Latin Americans?


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