Switching to “Latine” from “Latinx”

8/19/22
By Ruby Sofia Lopez, QTPOC Programming & Spanish Access Coordinator

Out Boulder County, in our efforts to be as linguistically inclusive as possible in both English and Spanish, has made a conscious effort to start replacing the term Latinx with Latine.

Here is why:

Latinx

The origins of the term Latinx, a gender neutral term to refer to people from Latin America, are unclear but more than likely the term was coined by English speaking people of  Latin American decent in the U.S. and quickly spread to American academic, feminist, and queer communities in the early 2000’s. 

Romantic languages are inherently gendered in a binary way. Spanish and other languages originating from the Iberian peninsula use “-o” as masculine and  “-a'' as feminine. So the term Latinx came about to fufill the need for a gender neutral way for transgender, queer, and non-binary Latin American people to self-identify without saying Latino or Latina.

There was a term that preceded Latinx, gaining brief popularity in the 1990’s that deserves an honorable mention, and it can be traced back to the femisist and civil rights movements: Latin@. Latin@ was an early attempt at moving away from defaulting to the masculine as Spanish tends to do, however this word could only be read and not pronounced easily and still only represent a combination of the gendered binary identities of Latino/Latina. So then, Latinx came along and essentially replaced the Latin@

Latinx was more inclusive of people that didn’t identify as Latin@/Latino/Latina and it can be pronounced in English, usually pronounced lah-TEE-neks, lah-tin-EX, or la-TEENEX by North American English speakers. The concept of replacing a letter with the letter “x” is a practice that’s been used in American English before, especially during the women's and civil rights movements or the 1960’s-80’s. Another example similar to Latinx is the honorific “Mx.” (pronounced “mix”), for which “x” replaces the “-r” in “Mr.” or “-s” in “Ms.” Latinx was certainly a step in the right direction, but the use of the term is limited in its linguistic utility because it only really works in English, and gives little consideration as to how it would be pronounced in Spanish. As it so happens Latinx is unpronounceable, in any intuitive way, in Spanish.

As a result, queer communites in Latin America and Spanish-speaking Latin Americans living in English-speaking North America have begun to reject the use of the term Latinx because it’s problematic to have a term that centers English and English-speaking North Americans and is inaccessible to the people it describes; it ends up feeling like a linguistic imposition that devalues Spanish-speaking Latin American LGBTQ+ people. So as an alternative, the word Latine has come into popularity.

Latine

The word Latine, is a Spanish word  that comes from queer Latin American communities so Spanish rules of pronunciation apply, even when speaking English. Latine is pronounced la-TEEN-eh; think Latino, but replace the “o” with the Spanish “e” sound. 

Latine serves the same purpose as Latinx, in that they are both ways to refer to someone from Latin America or identifies as having familial origins in Latin America. However, the word Latine presents something more ubiquitous and utilitarian than Latinx because Latine can be conjugated. Latine is not a stand-alone phrase like Latinx, the word Latine introduces a revolutionary and incredibly organic and simple gender neutral way to say ALL gendered words in Spanish by adding an “-e” ending instead of the traditional “-o” for masculine (ie. Latino) or the feminine “-a” (ie. Latina). In this way, Latine is so much more than just a gender neutral way to refer to someone of Latin American descent, and it rolls off the tongue of any native Spanish speaker. It sets the linguistic precedent to move away from an inherently patriarchal language structure that always defaults to the masculine and makes the feminine secondary at best (or invisible at worst). It does this by presenting a third option, gender neutral. So los niños (a masculine word for “the kids”, regardless of how many girls might be in the group) can now be said les niñes (a gender neutral way for saying “the kids”). The possible applications for this new way of congregating words in Spanish are as vast as the Spanish language itself. Even better, this is not even a new concept - it's already a part of Spanish grammar. There are some words that are already inherently gender neutral and exist within the Spanish language. For example, estudiante (student) or inteligente (intelligent) are already ending in”-e” and are gender neutral. So really, the main thing the Latine movement seeks to accomplish is to expand the application and usage of the already existing gender neutral “-e” conjugation of words.

Ultimately, we are shifting to the use of Latine, instead of Latinx, because it prioritizes accessibility and use for Spanish speakers, it results in better comprehension, and is infinitely more adaptable. 

Try it out some time! It’ll definitely take some time to get used to at first, but it really is more intuitive than you think. Keep practicing, and by time you know it, you’ll be speaking gender neutral Spanish!

¡Gracias por leer amigues!

Examples of gender neutral Spanish:

“¿Quiénes son elles?”
“Elles son les amigues de le señore Cristian” 

“Nosostres les latines somos un grupo muy diversos”

“Te ves muy bonite”
“¡Gracias queride!”

“Le prefesore Alex, la profesora Ruby y el profesor Juan, están en reunión de profesores”

“Yo soy Toni y uso los pronombres elle y le”