• nublug@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    i know that every time ‘latinx’ comes up online it gets spammed with ‘rich white libs made it up’ replies but i’ve also seen deep in those comment chains people claiming to be latin american trans people and that the term was created by the latin american trans community itself.

    also, typically those replying with the above knee jerk ‘white libs’ response tend to be far right when i dug into their histories. on youtube and reddit over the years, that is. haven’t seen this discourse on lemmy. also i don’t have any sources for the origin of the term, just thought you might want to reconsider potentially being hateful to the latin american trans community if that wasn’t your intention.

    and tbh, even if it was some dem focus group in new york that came up with it, it’s pretty easy to see that trans people might take the above kind of response to that term as one rooted in hatred.

      • nublug@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        my understanding is latinx and latine are pronounced exactly the same, just different spelling. you’re using latine while saying latinx is dumb and made up by shitlibs?

        • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
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          5 months ago

          So in Spanish you have a word like Oaxaca or México, where the x is in the middle of the word and is pronounced like the h in ha.

          When x is at the end of a word its pronounced like k+s.

          Or when it is the first letter of a word, its basically an s sound.

          So, we get three possible pronunciations rooted in Spanish:

          la-tin h (i don’t think this really works at all unless you just trail ‘tin’ with some kind of soft … consonant only sound?)

          la-tinks (arguably this is the most correct pronunciation strictly following the rules of Spanish)

          la-tins (works but only if you do not follow Spanish rules for how x is pronounced)

          é or e is a vowel pronounced like eh, tbus:

          la-tin-EH or la-tin-eh

          which is different from latino (OH) and latina (AH).

          If latinx and latine are pronounced the same, then that would indicate that a word has been made up which breaks the otherwise quite strict pronunciation rules governing Spanish, introducing an English style ‘exception’ where this particular word is pronounced this particular way for no apparent reason.

          This is a big reason why many (but not all) do not like this term. It either only works when written or to a person familiar with English, who usually pronounce it la - tin - ecks.

        • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’m Latino, latine seems more plausible based on how I grew up. I just hate how it’s a single letter off from latrine.

          Do we jump the rules for something really new to our society? Maybe. I personally think a lot of this is rooted in people’s limited understanding of how postfixes work in Spanish, American education for example explains that anything ending with a = feminine, o = masculine, but that ignores context and etymology which I won’t go into here.

          I’d equate it to our initial minor discomfort with referring to humanity as ‘mankind’, anyone with more than trivial education understands the word to be non-gendered.

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            Actually English native feminists and leftists tend to avoid using the word “mankind”. The more time passes, the more that word is considered a relic of a misogynist past that’s no longer relevant. You still see that sort of language in old books like The Lord Of The Rings, where humans are referred to a “men”, regardless of gender. And it’s jarring to modern readers who are native speakers. People aren’t used to it anymore.

            English speakers are improving our language to remove sexism and Spanish speakers are too. Language is a tool, it’s supposed to help people. If it’s not helping people, it needs to be repaired or upgraded.

            • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Missing the forest for the trees here. This is a perfect example of outsider dissipation of our energy in making a conclusive decision on how to proceed.

              Read my comment again, you’ll notice what I’m equating the discomfort to as it currently stands.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Historically, “man” is absolutely neutral, meaning “human, person”. You then have wif for woman and wer for man and also wifman and werman. I think it would’ve been better to go back to those terms, already tried and true just fallen out of use after the Norman conquest, than to try to haphazardly and awkwardly declare the use of the term “mankind” sexist. Cudgels and shibboleths invented by the performative faction to have a way to deem themselves morally superior.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  5 months ago

                  If I had meant that then I would have said that. But I don’t, so I didn’t.

                  Also I resent the implication. Don’t pretend you don’t know what performativity means in this context.

                  • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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                    5 months ago

                    You said something intentionally vague that I suspect to be a dogwhistle. And now that I’ve asked what specifically you mean, you’re refusing to be specific.

        • Belastend@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          it doesnt sound like that at all and latrine isnt even a spanisch word? Thats like complaining about the korean 니가 (sounds like neega) being to similar to the n-word. Or the eveb funnier discussion of american youth discovering the German “Digga” and immediately coming to the conclusion that this must be the n-word in disguise.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            “Digga”

            For the uninitiated: Probably via “mit jemanden dick sein”, “to be thick with someone”, meaning to be good friends, probably related to “mit jemanden durch dick und dünn gehen”, “to go with someone through thick and thin”, meaning exactly what you think. “Proper” orthography would be Dicker but as it arose among workers in Hamburg that’s nowhere close to the actual pronunciation so it’s usually rendered “Digga” or “Digger”. Pronounced the same, we don’t do rhotics at the end of words and all the German I mentioned should probably be Low Saxon or at least Missingsch.

            If you want to translate it to English… “thiggy” I guess?

            Bonus: Europeans who use the term “BIPOC” unironically in a European context. With, you know, the “I” referring to literally the vast majority of the population. Over here the term you’re looking for would be “autochthone minority”.