WHY WE SHOULD ABANDON
THE TERM LATINX
Opinion by Peter Aitken PhD
Spanish is a gendered language, meaning that nouns are either male or female and their spelling reflects this—typically the “-o” ending for male and “-a” for female. For example, libro (book) is male and mesa (table) is female. This applies to people too: thus, we have niña for little girl and niño for little boy.
The term Latino is often used to refer to people of Central or South American descent (Hispanics as I will refer to them). The “-o” ending can be taken to imply maleness, and of course half of Hispanics are female. So, in the interest of “gender inclusivity,” someone invented the term Latinx. There are several reasons why it is long past time to abolish using this ugly word.
- Latinx is not a Spanish word but rather an invention of politically correct activists. Many consider it to be a form of linguistic imperialism—non-Hispanic people promoting a word to be used by and to refer to Hispanic people.
- More important, only a tiny minority of “Latinx” people, 4%, prefer that term while 61% prefer Hispanic and 29% prefer Latino (Pew Research Center poll, 2020). In fact, 65% of those who have even heard of the term are against it being used at all.
- There are perfectly good gender-neutral words to use. Hispanic is preferred by a large majority. And Latine, with the gender-neutral “-e” ending, is more easily pronounced than Latinx and can be easily used in plural forms.
We Anglos should stop imposing our politically correct linguistic horrors on people who don’t want them.