Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Love it or hate it, people are now saying "Latinx" instead of "latino" or "latina." However, everyone is busy arguing over gender inclusion, nonconformity, and whether imposed language change is "ruining" Spanish and nobody is talking about what's actually interesting about the word latinx. In this video, I take a moment to appreciate that we might be seeing a grammatical animacy distinction develop in real time.
One point I didn't mention in the video: object marking in Spanish ALREADY respects an animacy distinction, as in "yo veo a ti" where the "a" is obligatory when talking about people, and absent when talking about things.
Language Jones T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs are available here: languagejones.creator-spring.com
Love it or hate it, people are now saying "Latinx" instead of "latino" or "latina." However, everyone is busy arguing over gender inclusion, nonconformity, and whether imposed language change is "ruining" Spanish and nobody is talking about what's actually interesting about the word latinx. In this video, I take a moment to appreciate that we might be seeing a grammatical animacy distinction develop in real time.
One point I didn't mention in the video: object marking in Spanish ALREADY respects an animacy distinction, as in "yo veo a ti" where the "a" is obligatory when talking about people, and absent when talking about things.
Language Jones T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs are available here: languagejones.creator-spring.com
