Latinx is a misnomer
November 5, 2019
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.