Latinx is a misnomer

By Gonzalo López Martí   – Creative director, etc./ lmmiami.com

• I had been hearing and reading the “Latinx” neologism bandied about for quite a while.
• It is possibly just a fad in certain “progressive” circles.
• Next thing you know, politicians jump on the bandwagon.
• Namely Elizabeth Warren, who seems to be in dire need of a serious team of Hispanic political strategists by her side.
• Mind you, I fully support experimenting with language.
• It is possibly the best way to keep a culture vibrant and lively.
• Second only to bearing lots of children.
• Espanglish?
• I’m all for it.
• I am an avid user of frowned-upon espanlgish.
• Speaking espanglish on a daily basis t is akin to being an ambidextrous soccer player.
• It is fascinating, powerful and liberating.
• The worst thing we can do if we want to keep a language relevant is to fossilize it with stuck-up taboos or academic strictures.
• I am all for keeping the RAE (Real Academia De La Lengua Española) funded, relevant and prestigious as a body of research and orientation for the 400+ million Spanish-speakers across the globe.
• Then again, it would be foolish to pretend that the RAE has or should have any sort of enforcement power.
• They are a consultative body of scholars whose opinion is important but they have no real authority.
• At a risk of sounding overly alarmist, it is a matter of freedom of speech.
• Freedom of speech means everybody is at liberty of expressing themselves as they please.
• I cannot force you to speak in a certain way.
• I can criticize the way you speak though.
• And vice versa.
• Now back to “Latinx”.
• I agree: it is a bit cringy to read or hear a “Latino man”.
• Let alone “a Latino woman”.
• Nobody’s perfect.
• The former is a pleonasm (y’know: wet water or hot heat).
• The latter I wouldn’t blame on sexism though: it is just a misnomer product of monolingual ignorance.
• Speaking of which, “Latinx” is an unnecessary affectation.
• A solution to a problem that simply does not exist.
• A verbal flourish concocted by someone with partial knowledge of the Spanish language and too much time on their hands.
• If for any reason you don’t want to assign or be assigned a gender (latino or latina) you can always use “Latin” of “Hispanic”.
• Short, sweet and gender neutral.
• See, the letter x, both in Spanish and in English, implies anonymity, not gender neutrality.
• By the way, the Spanish language is usually, and unfairly, accused of suffering from a lack of brevity.
• People with limited command of Spanish claim it is difficult to be succinct when communicating in the language of Cervantes.
• Simply not true.
• The Spanish language can be powerfully concise through, among other advantages, its ability to convey the gender of most of its nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives.
• For instance, let’s translate “soy oftalmólogo” or “soy oftalmóloga” into English: “I am a male oftalmologist” or “I am a female oftalmologist”.
• Which language is more succinct?
• See?
• No need to go “Yo soy un oftalmólogo masculino”.
• The great poets of the English language – Coleridge, Keats, Poe, Whitman- would’ve given the arm the wrote with to enjoy this liberty.
• Why are we trying to stunt it?
• Ignorance, that’s why.
• Anyhoo.
• Let’s not be foolish.
• And let’s remember for the umpteenth time: there are more than 400 million native Spanish-speakers roaming this planet. Spanish trails only Chinese in the ranking of the most spoken global languages. English is a distant third. The Spanish language has a tremendous future in the “new world order” coming our way.