No way will I ever use "Indian" to describe someone who is not from India. That usage started with a man who practiced genocide and was too dumb to know he wasn't in India. Why would we want to perpetrate that?

Besides, it is confusing, as there a whole bunch of people in the world who are actually Indian. Like, a billion?

The correct term nowadays is Indigenous Peoples.

I assume there are varied opinions on this throughout the indigenous community, so I am open to ideas and corrections. But until there is consensus, the fact that a few or some indigenous people want to go back to I dian isnt the end of the discussion.

Heck, I'll bet you could find some black people who are fine with "colored." Might want to get a second opinion.

Exactly. "Indigenous" works very well.

Some activists on my social media feeds (some of whom I know irl) use NDN, but that works better in print. When spoken, it has all the issues of the word in question. I have not seen non-Indigenous people use it.

“Indigenous” is problematic because it (re)centers white Europeans. The people who are defined as ‘indigenous’ to a land are those who happen to be there at the moment of European arrival, and doesn’t take into account the complex histories of these people and who might have lived there before said people arrived.

It implies that history begins when white people take notice.


See? I can play this game too.

You play it well, sir ...

It's a no-win proposition for Anglos. Now there's a term ...

Whatever term I use to describe that person from a particular tribe or pueblo, I risk offending them, making them laugh at me, or offending some of you here.

quote:

The people who are defined as ‘indigenous’ to a land are those who happen to be there at the moment of European arrival, and doesn’t take into account the complex histories of these people and who might have lived there before said people arrived.

Are the Navajo indigenous? .... pschssshhhhhh, the sound of a can of worms opening.

What is the indigenous population of England? Certainly not Anglo-Saxons.

quote:

Are the Navajo indigenous? .... pschssshhhhhh, the sound of a can of worms opening.

For anyone who does not know, the Navajo/Apache and the Spaniards arrived in the southwest at roughly the same time.

Is Spanish any more legitimate as a language in that region than English, or any other "conquering" group's speech or culture?

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
“Indigenous” is problematic because it (re)centers white Europeans. The people who are defined as ‘indigenous’ to a land are those who happen to be there at the moment of European arrival, and doesn’t take into account the complex histories of these people and who might have lived there before said people arrived.

It implies that history begins when white people take notice.


See? I can play this game too.

Yes, two decades in Hawaii have taught me this.

Not all Hawaiians (and I'm not talking about the descendants of plantation workers) came to Hawaii from the same place nor at the same time.

quote:

Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
No way will I ever use "Indian" to describe someone who is not from India. That usage started with a man who practiced genocide and was too dumb to know he wasn't in India. Why would we want to perpetrate that?

Besides, it is confusing, as there a whole bunch of people in the world who are actually Indian. Like, a billion?

The correct term nowadays is Indigenous Peoples.

I assume there are varied opinions on this throughout the indigenous community, so I am open to ideas and corrections. But until there is consensus, the fact that a few or some indigenous people want to go back to I dian isnt the end of the discussion.

Heck, I'll bet you could find some black people who are fine with "colored." Might want to get a second opinion.

He was a genocidal maniac. That's for sure. He wasn't the first European to arrive in North American by a long shot either.

German Lopez from Vox tweeted today:

“The most baffling thing about the term Latinx is Latin works just fine.”


I think he misunderstands the purpose of Latinx, or rather the entire purpose. If the purpose were simply picking out a referent, Latin might do fine (as would, for that matter ‘Latinos’.

But “latinx” signals belonging to an in-group in a way that ‘Latin’ couldn’t pull off.

Jon, I don't agree with your criticism of "Latin". It certainly seems quite unneccessarily convoluted to come up with "Latinx" which apart from being overthought, is unpronouncable.

Latin is the elegant solution - always the way to go in both Science and Art. Heaven knows there are more than enough conundrums in trying to revamp preexisting languages to suit evolved sensibilities! (Thinking for instance of the endlessly unsatisfactory "their" for an he-she-it substitute which avoids gender commitment for whatever reason.)

And I can''t begin to imagine what the sexually noncommittal can do with a Semitic language. Their languages are completely declined by gender (not just modifiers and nouns but the verbs themselves)!

Certainly when you can simplify AND shorten (without either giving offense or spoiling the essence and elegance of a language) one should gratefully take that option.

Even at the (relatively) trivial cost of being unable to jump on the "Woke" bandwagon. "Latins" will be rewarded by history which will retain that substitution long after Latinx and ILK have fallen by the wayside with a chuckle at the quaint efforts.

quote:

Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
...The correct term nowadays is Indigenous Peoples.

I assume there are varied opinions on this throughout the indigenous community, so I am open to ideas and corrections. But until there is consensus, the fact that a few or some indigenous people want to go back to I dian isnt the end of the discussion.

Last I heard (a panel of sensitive indigenous high schoolers), their preferred adjective/noun was "Native". I can see where that might lead to confusion but it certainly makes both sense and a point. (Also passes the important - to me - elegance test.)

And BTW re the possible return to the descriptor "colored", I got an interesting insight into this term from (what I'm ashamed to admit was) my only "Afro-American" girlfriend. (We became friends in Germany where we bonded over our shared Americanism).

"Well, all I can say, Mandy, is if we're 'colored', you're colorless! (Don't think she meant that I'm especially pale, though I am.) And FWIW I had not used the "colored" identifier. I figure she just had a lot of "always wanted to say" comments stored up. (And that was an expecially good one. )

The only commonality to all this language jiggering I can find, is that the main qualification for acceptance is for the relevant minority to have originated the term themselves.

With (please please please) two caveats: that the preferred term not change more often than once every ten years or so, and that it be pronounceable!

For instance, one major exception to my principle that people have the right to be called what they prefer, is those few (seem to mostly be celebrities) who deliberately give themselves or their children unprounceable names. (Most extreme so far, the poor spawn of Elon Musk )

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Not too much, they are very similar And my Spanish is much better than my Portugese. Often if I don’t know a Portugese word I use the Spanish and change the pronunciation as appropriate. Most of the time it works. It’s humorous when it doesn’t.

I used to do that with some longer English words when I lived in Brazil. It's surprising sometimes how somewhat pretentious speech transcends language.

Big Al

The word “Latinx” may never be an officially accepted word in the Spanish language.

I recall from the Spanish course I took the professor saying that there’s a Spanish language institute in Madrid, Spain. According to google, that institute is: “The Royal Spanish Academy was founded in 1713, modeled after the Accademia della Crusca (1582), of Italy, and the Académie Française (1635), of France, with the purpose "to fix the voices and vocabularies of the Spanish language with propriety, elegance, and purity".

It acts as the gate keeper for new words to be added into the Spanish language. I don’t know if “Latinx” is an officially accepted word in the Spanish language or not. If not, then the word “Latinx” cannot be used on official forms such as contracts. The word can still be used for non-official purposes though.

quote:

gate keeper

Language gatekeeping is always fraught at best. There are more native Spanish speakers in the Americas than in Spain. That doesn't make the ideology that puts Spain-Spanish at the top of the linguistic food chain has no sway, but a language is a living thing and change is the rule rather than the exception.

(I say this in general, not with regard to the debate about Latinx in particular.)

quote:

Originally posted by big al:

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Not too much, they are very similar And my Spanish is much better than my Portugese. Often if I don’t know a Portugese word I use the Spanish and change the pronunciation as appropriate. Most of the time it works. It’s humorous when it doesn’t.

I used to do that with some longer English words when I lived in Brazil. It's surprising sometimes how somewhat pretentious speech transcends language.

Big Al

I traveled in Italy with a friend who was in the Peace Corps in South America. (Not sure which country. Maybe Bolivia). She could sometimes make herself understood in Italian by tacking an "-o" at the end of key words.



I took some Italian lessons and got some "How to Learn Italian" books before leaving on the trip. The best I was able to do in terms of speaking was to successfully get what I wanted by saying in Italian, "Excuse me. Tickets. Four. Napoli. Please."

In terms of listening, I was an utter failure. They'd start speaking fast, see my blank look, and speak in English.

I did very well with reading, though. I found that if I relied on a good English vocabulary, the little bit I learned from my lessons, and the surprising amount of Italian one learns from studying music, I could read more Italian than I would have expected. I remember wading through a newspaper article all about how Julia Roberts had bought a palazzo in Venice on the Grand Canal.