> Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language non-binary community, originally for use in Spanish, neither (AFAIK) by “well-paid academics”.
This is disputed, both sides have evidence for them and no one really knows.
I'm fluent in Spanish and have a hard time seeing a native Spanish speaker inventing LatinX. There's no good Spanish way to pronounce it, and inserting the English pronunciation of the letter 'x' is an odd choice for someone who's paying attention to identity politics—you would think they'd try to find an alternative that feels less anglo.
> I'm fluent in Spanish and have a hard time seeing a native Spanish speaker inventing LatinX. There's no good Spanish way to pronounce
There's no good English wsy to pronounce it either. Its a deliberate linguistic transgression. (Aesthetically, its why I personally like Latine better for the specific purpose of explicit inclusion of non-binary identities, but, being neither Latin nor non-binary, I don't weight my aesthetic preferences heavily on the issue.)
EDIT: Really, the problem of how to identify a group in a way inclusive of a subgroup to whose existence the broader group is at best, as s whole, ambivalent is the real issue, and the origin stories, and more to the point the attempt to impute malign motives based on particular origin stories, is a way to avoid reaching the issue.
It's still a deliberate linguistic transgression that borrows from English. Its English pronunciation ("Latin-eks") is awkward but not completely foreign.
It's a word designed to convey an inclusive Spanish-speaking identity. Why would a native Spanish speaker choose to invent a word that is far easier to pronounce in English than in Spanish?
> EDIT: Really, the problem of how to identify a group in a way inclusive of a subgroup to whose existence the broader group is at best, as s whole, ambivalent is the real issue, and the origin stories, and more to the point the attempt to impute malign motives based on particular origin stories, is a way to avoid reaching the issue.
No, the origin stories are very much part and parcel with the issue you're discussing. Either the Spanish community itself decided that it needed non-gendered words, or a bunch of white Americans decided the Spanish community needed non-gendered words.
If the drive to change Spanish did not originate with Spanish speakers, that is very much a concern, and grandstanding about including subgroups doesn't make it less of an imperialistic affair; it just comes off as "civilizing the savages".
> Either the Spanish community itself decided that it needed non-gendered words, or a bunch of white Americans decided the Spanish community needed non-gendered words.
Pretty sure that whatever identifier is right for the community of interest here, its not “the Spanish community”, and, irrespective of any debate about the origin of the terms, a subset of the community of interests has decided they need gender neutral terms and expressed preference for one or more of them. The question then is how to refer to the community as a whole, given the existence of a diversity of preferences.
This is disputed, both sides have evidence for them and no one really knows.
I'm fluent in Spanish and have a hard time seeing a native Spanish speaker inventing LatinX. There's no good Spanish way to pronounce it, and inserting the English pronunciation of the letter 'x' is an odd choice for someone who's paying attention to identity politics—you would think they'd try to find an alternative that feels less anglo.