ofmoonlightandthesun:

itsthek:

ofmoonlightandthesun:

madam-404:

Why the word “Latinx” should not be taken seriously.

The Royal Spanish Academy is the official institution that oversees the Spanish language. They basically make the rules on the Spanish Language.

They did come out on their rule on Twitter about the word Latinx on whether or not it was a valid word based on the rules within the Spanish language.

“No es válido el uso de la “x” para hacer referencia a ambos sexos.”

-Royal Spanish Academy

Translation:
The use of the “x” to refer to both sexes is not valid.

The people who speak the language as well as oversee and understand the grammar rules of said language as a career make the final verdict, not Tumblr. 

Huh, didn’t know there was an official academy for this. That’s kinda cool actually…

La Academia is Spanish and only “dictates” the Spanish spoken in Spain.

Further, such institutions Rookdirectly contrary to the way language is formed and evolves. La Academia as well as its French counterpart are a bunch of elitists who are only taken seriously in Europe and do not represent any Spanish speakers from the Americas.

It’s authoritarian imperialism trying to stop cultural evolution for the sake of elitism, and imposing imperialism on colonies.

People, everyday speakers, are the final arbitrators of language, not La Academia.

And Latinx exists outside of tumblr, nice try fuccboi

I’ve seen a lot of people laugh at the term ‘Latinx’ though, stating it make no sense both in use and linguistically.

I personally do not speak Spanish so I just thought it was interesting there was an organization for it, since English doesn’t really have that sort of thing.

On the topic of linguistic evolution though:

I agree with you that language evolves based on society. 20 years ago text language wasn’t consider “proper” but now some of it has been included in Webster’s Dictionary. That being said, they were added after the majority of English-speaking society started to use it, globally. From what I understand, Latinx is used by far-left leaning (SJW) groups but outside of those social groups it’s not used. Now, I don’t know how LONG the term Latinx has been around so it’s possible that it could become common within the Spanish-speaking community, globally, and then recognized (similar to the text lingo example from above). But I currently don’t see it used outside of those aforementioned circles. Could change, I wouldn’t know *shrug*.

Also, it’s not “authoritarian imperialism” for an organization of the language to make their opinion known. They could change their decision later down the line (as stated above). “Cultural evolution” occurs when the people at LARGE use the term, not just a niche group. If I told you “That coord your wearing is super cute!” You would go “wtf does ‘coord’ mean?!” and rightly so because it’s a term used in the Lolita fashion community (and a bit in the overarching fashion community as well, though OOTD is more common). You wouldn’t know what a JSK is (Lolita slang) or what a header is (planner term) or a requirements matrix is (business term). The academy is stating that, within the general populace, it’s not a recognized term. But within far-left groups it is a term.

Terms within social groups are not always recognized as “proper” language by the populace because it’s used ONLY by those niche groups. That’s not “imperialism” that’s called group distinction. It fosters an “in/out” group sense as well as a sense of community. Spanglish in the States is also a good example of this as it’s unique to Spanish-speaking communities in the USA. It’s not “proper” Spanish OR English but within the community, it is proper.

Lastly, let’s take your assertion that the organization is recognized and taken seriously only by European Spanish speakers and not American Spanish speakers in good faith. Why are American Spanish-speakers suddenly superior to European-Spanish speakers? What about Latin America? What’s their take? Do they follow the organization too or do they have their own or something else? Even if we take your assertion in good faith, you are dismissing European Spanish speakers and their voices which is very ethnocentric.