• dirthawker0@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Color me old and decrepit but why use 2 new terms when the language already has 2 terms that seem fine, Latina and Latino? Is this something akin to negro -> African American -> Black? I can kind of get Americans feeling that Latinx is more gender neutral, but Latine seems very redundant.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      5 days ago

      latine originates in south america and does the same thing that latinx does; but doesn’t carry the divisiveness of latinx because of that origin. (ie latinx is usually fine with americans who are latino; but latinos who aren’t american, or are newly american, sometimes don’t like it because it feels like cultural appropriation to anglicize a clearly spanish word that identifies them).

      also: latino and latina does not include people who don’t identify as either and is also cumbersome in english when you want to use inclusive language; latine gets rid of all of that.

      and i’m also old and decrepit; i still keep defaulting to latino too.

      • dirthawker0@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I didn’t know latine had its roots in the language. As an Asian American, cultural appropriation bothers me and I want to be respectful to the language/culture/people. Thanks for the explanation, I’m a bit smarter today thanks to you.

      • CM400@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Why not use “Latin”? Idgaf, I’ll call people whatever they want to be called, it just never made sense to me to add a gender-neutral term when one already exists…