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Banning words won’t make the world more just

theatlantic.com

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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#191

Post by soiler »

onecommentman wrote: post #189
soiler wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an extra layer of post-colonialism in this situation, but it's otherwise almost identical to the discussion happening in English about gendered pronouns. I think the following can both be true: 1. It's bad to tell people that they're using their native language badly if you're not a native speaker (especially in a scenario where there's a social power dynamic at play, like Spanish speakers trying to navigate…

Replace “younger people” with “a few younger people from a particular socioeconomic class” to be more accurate. The eternal outraged youth will always find a few hobby horses to ride. Sometimes they lead to good things. This is a particularly smelly one, unfortunately. It’s not bad to say “this whole thing is just stupid”. It’s just incomplete to say…it’s also musically ugly (language is a song of sorts) and cultural…

> The eternal outraged youth will always find a few hobby horses to ride. Sometimes they lead to good things. This is a particularly smelly one, unfortunately.

Nonbinary people face real discrimination, including but not limited to the dismissal of that fight as pointless outrage.

> it’s also musically ugly (language is a song of sorts)

This is ridiculous. Ugly-sounding words will always exist.

> and culturally insulting ... How about actual younger people developing another, more beautiful, culturally acceptable, word to achieve the same objective

What does any of this even mean? Real Spanish-speaking nonbinary young people did come up with a working solution. If you think it's too ugly sounding, fine, you get to have an opinion. If you think it shouldn't exist because it's too ugly sounding to you, honestly, fuck off. That's not a valid complaint.

> https://www.asale.org/la-asociacion

I am aware of La Asociación. I understand that they literally make the rules. I need you to understand that they do not actually make the rules. Language is how people communicate. New words happen.

So on the one hand: 1. You don't like the sound of the word 2. An intrinsically conservative body hasn't yet recognized the word

On the other hand: 1. Nonbinary would simply like a word to refer to themselves because one doesn't exist.

But, I will concede that it was pretty rude of me to write "mildly confused". I shouldn't have been so uncharitable.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#192

Post by soiler »

13years wrote: post #111
soiler wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Thinking your existence is determined by the grammatical structure of language is a self defined prison of ones own making.

Ok cool, they get to exist. And they speak Spanish. What word do they use to refer to themselves?

Oh, no, how did we get back here...?

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#193

Post by soiler »

stillkicking wrote: post #84
soiler wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Spanish-speaking non-binary people are hopefully not so stupid as to conflate a lack of appetite to rewrite the entirety of Spanish grammar with a refusal to acknowledge someone's existence.

You will actually find that the vast majority of Spanish grammar is untouched by this change. The only change, actually, is that it will now be possible to acknowledge the existence of nonbinary people. Or do you think that binary gendered pronouns already do that job?

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#194

Post by cassianoleal »

blahblah1234567 wrote: post #149
dragonwriter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn both English and then a made up filter created by well paid academics on top of it. 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”. Latinu and Latin@ I’m less sure about, but wouldn’t be surprised if they are the same. While th…

>Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language I doubt it. Having lived in Latin America, Latin American social norms are influenced by Catholicism and their societies are more conservative & traditionalist than the US and Europe. The vast majority of people in Latin American countries (outside of Costa Rica & Chile) struggle with academic achievement (including lite…

> The vast majority of people in Latin American countries (outside of Costa Rica & Chile) struggle with academic achievement (including literacy levels), adequate n utrition, enviornmental pollution.

Do they?

• Literacy rate:

    The average for 2020 based on 7 countries was 93.91 percent.The highest value was in Colombia: 95.64 percent and the lowest value was in El Salvador: 89.98 percent.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/literacy_rate/Lati...

• Food security:

    During 2019, 7.4% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean lived with hunger

    In 2019, almost a third of the population, 191 million people, were affected by moderate or severe food insecurity. Of these, 57.7 million, approximately 10% of the region's population, was severely food insecure
https://www.fao.org/americas/publicaciones-audio-video/panor...

• Tertiary education:

    Between 2000 and 2018, higher education gross enrollment rates in the region more than doubled (increasing from 21 percent to 52 percent), making LAC the region with the third-highest average higher education enrollment rate in the world after North America with 86 percent, and Europe and Central Asia with 70 percent.
https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/738931611934489480-0090...

• Environmental pollution

You're probably right about this one, but it's not worse than most of the rest of the world, including very rich countries such as the UK and Germany.

https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/738931611934489480-0090...

> they would put neo-marxist language changes

This is just nonsensical gibberish. I'll call it neo-misesist language.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#195

Post by fundad »

deely3 wrote: post #173
fundad wrote: post #25

Has anyone considered that non-binary Latine benefit from inclusive language differently than people pretending there is a ban on the word Latino?

Could you help me, I have a question: who should define how group of persons should be called? * Group that outside of the group * Majority of the group * Minority of the group * Any of the above when they think its for inclusion ?

Nice, you're discovering intersectionality.

Seriously though, you are pressed about other people using a term you don't use even though you're free to say Latino or Hispanic as much as you want.

The context matters immensely: The Sierra Club, a lobbyist group, conducts their work with politicians and government officials who are not pressed by inclusive language.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#196

Post by hirvi74 »

blahblah1234567 wrote: post #148
hirvi74 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "LatinX" How is such a word pronounced? Is it "Latin" + "ex" or is it "La" + "tinx" (-inx like in Sphinx)?

X is pronounces EK-EES in Spanish. so its "LA-TEEN-EK-EES" if we are respecting the Spanish language. but in reality such silly butchering of a language isnt respecting the Spanish language in the first place. its merely more communism attempts to disrupt tradition & reform societies towards some immature high school wanna-be communist ends by people who've never lived in communist society.

Okay, but my understanding is that this word is an English word, hence the premise of the article.

The article/this discussion is my first exposure to the word.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#197

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #123
scarmig wrote: post #9

The semantic turn of the Left is one of the worst signs of intellectual decay. There's approximately zero evidence that linguistic changes influence thought: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is rejected by linguists except perhaps in some very narrow situations. The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, from negro, to black, to African American, to Black, to person of color. And none of them are better or worse than the o…

> The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, It feels more like a minefield than a joke. A minefield that gets new mines added every so often just to keep everyone on their toes. When I was younger, I used to feel like I could keep up with all the new taboo words, but it seems like it is happening faster and faster these days. You can unintentionally say something that turns out to be taboo, and you're done for. Some…

[deleted]

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#198

Post by ccooffee »

scarmig wrote: post #73
ccooffee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide sources for "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is more or less rejected by linguists"? I took a university course in "Philosophy of Language" around 2008 and I was taught in no uncertain terms that language structures thought. The wikipedia article for Linguistic Relativity[0] states: > Research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting linguistic relativity, and this hypothesis is provisionally ac…

That quote is a relatively recent addition (17 Jan 2023) and isn't well-cited. A longer standing and more objective statement from the article: > Many different, often contradictory variations of the hypothesis have existed throughout its history.[4] The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and…

Thank you!

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#199

Post by TurkishPoptart »

blahblah1234567 wrote: post #169
TurkishPoptart wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These idiots should just use the word "Latin", which has been a normal word for centuries, instead of creating newspeak. Cultural Marxism doesn't even attempt to fix anything; it simply complicates and distorts pedestrian matters in the ivory towers it has penetrated, confusing the very people they're trying to "help". So, this is a linguistic trojan horse. There's no proper use case for the term "LatinX" except to n…

"There's no proper use case for the term "LatinX" except to normalize the pronoun/trans agenda in the Spanish-speaking world." This is an excellent summary of the entire discussion on the topic of the silly, childish, politically-motivated concept of "LatinX"

thanks, friend! I don't write much lately; most of my thoughts end up as 1 or -1 comments on this site.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#200

Post by mock-possum »

wonderwonder wrote: post #6

"The American Cancer Society advises that Latinx, along with the equally gender-neutral Latine, Latin@, and Latinu, “may or may not be fully embraced by older generations and may need additional explanation.” Cool cool, I look forward as a white guy to explaining to a group of Spanish people why they are wrong and are really LatinX and I'm doing it for their protection. Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn…

I can't tell if you're intentionally misconstruing here, but assuming you're not - you would not be in a position of explaining to Spanish people why they are wrong and are really one thing or another (Also I assume you mean hispanic people, or Spanish-speaking people?) You'd be explaining the reasoning behind the modern use of the term, and allowing them to decide for themselves how to engage with it.

The idea isn't to design a new armband that you require people of a particular group to wear each week - the idea is to ask those people what they want, and then respect them when they answer you.

If someone says they identify as Latinx, then you identify them as Latinx. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It's not about the enforcement of identity, *it's about the deconstruction of traditionally enforced identities in the first place*, it's about exploring the creation of new identities outside of the bounds of conservative tradition.

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