958. We trace the history, usage, and meaning behind identifiers such as "Hispanic," "Chicano," "Latino," "Latina," "Latinx," and "Latine." Plus, we look at whether metaphors like "grow the business" and "grow smaller" are trendy jargon you should avoid or just regular figurative language.
958. We trace the history, usage, and meaning behind identifiers such as "Hispanic," "Chicano," "Latino," "Latina," "Latinx," and "Latine." Plus, we look at whether metaphors like "grow the business" and "grow smaller" are trendy jargon you should avoid or just regular figurative language.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/latinx-grow/transcript
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by Susan K. Herman
Back in September, we talked about the influence of Spanish on U.S. English and its growing prevalence as an (unofficial) second language in this country. But what do we call people of Hispanic or Latin American descent? "Hispanic?" "Latino?" "Latina?" What about new terms like "Latinx" (L-A-T-I-N-X) and "Latine" (L-A-T-I-N-E)? Well, first, out of respect, we should refer to people by the terms they prefer, but let’s talk about the history and usage of these different ways to refer to those of Hispanic or Latin American descent.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Stick around because after we go through this interesting segment by Susan Herman, I'll talk about why some people object to the phrases "grow your business" and "grow smaller."
We'll start with the term "Hispanic" ("hispano" in Spanish). This term is about language, so it is used to refer to people from Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain and Latin America — but not Brazil, where Portuguese is the main language. "Hispanic" generally refers to people in the U.S., and according to History.com, it was first used by the U.S. government in the 1980 census. At that time, the National Council of La Raza – now known as UnidosUS – lobbied the government to adopt the term for the census as a way to develop a common agenda for the community.
In the 1990s, "Hispanic" began to gain popularity, particularly in Spanish-language media like Telemundo and Univision, which benefited from a united market. Even though it is still widely used, the problem with this term is that it harkens back to the colonization of Latin America by Spain, which many people may want to distance themselves from.
Because of some of these concerns, the term "Latino" (in Spanish) gained popularity. "Latino" refers to people from Latin America, but not Spain, so it does include people from Brazil and other Latin American countries like Haiti, even though they don't speak Spanish. The term is not new, however. According to History.com, it was used in a 1970 diary entry by First Lady Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson in 1970 and in a March 1973 article from the Black Panther Party's newspaper. By 2000, the census included the question, "Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?"
Another issue with the term "Latino" has to do with gender. Spanish is a gendered language, which means that all nouns and adjectives have a gender. Words that end in O are generally masculine, and words that end in A are generally feminine (as always, there are some exceptions). So "Latina" is used for women. But when you have a mixed group of people or objects, the word automatically defaults to the masculine plural form. So, for example, if you have a group of 49 women and one man, they are "Latinos." Over the years, many people have pushed back on this as a "sexist" characteristic of the language. More on that in a moment.
In writing, many people try to avoid these issues by using "Latino/a" or Latin@, since it looks like both an A and an O. But those variants are difficult or even impossible to pronounce.
It gets even more interesting, though. The term "Chicano" has been used to describe Mexican-Americans, particularly those involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s of the same name. With that, the term began to take on political and activist undertones, so it's never been used to refer to all Mexican-Americans. Although the origin of "Chicano" isn't completely clear, one theory presented by History.com, is that it comes from the indigenous Nahuatl word "mexicano" (/meh-hee-CAH-noh/), pronounced /meh-shee-CAH-noh/. It is still used in the Southwest by several organizations and educational institutions.
So, what term or terms are in use now? According to Dictionary.com, "the words 'Latinx' and 'Latine' are used by people who want to avoid the association with gender altogether, as a way to avoid gendered language when it’s not relevant or specifically for use when referring to nonbinary people or groups in which more than one gender is represented." The terms first came about in the early 2000s in the LGBTQ+ community, primarily in the United States. "Latinx" was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2018 and to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2019. Merriam-Webster also includes "Latine" and notes its first usage in 2017.
People often look at the spelling of these words and wonder how to pronounce them. Well, "Latinx" is usually pronounced the way you've been hearing me say it: /lah-TEEN-eks/, and also more rarely as /la-tin-EX/, according to Merriam-Webster and a video by the American Pronunciation Guide. This phenomenon of using X for gender-neutral terms isn't unique to Spanish either. Similar terms have popped up in English, like "Mx" (M-X) as a courtesy title and "folx" (F-O-L-X) as a way to refer to commonly marginalized people.
"Latine" is pronounced /lah-TEE-nay/, but some English speakers may pronounce it /luh-TEEN/. Some people prefer "Latine" because it fits better with Spanish rules of pronunciation. As Dictionary.com points out, "Latinx" can be "cumbersome to pronounce" for Spanish speakers. Using "Latine" also allows people to adhere to Spanish subject-verb and noun-adjective agreement in terms of number (that is, singular and plural).
The question is: Are "Latinx" and "Latine" used by the people they represent? Well, not so much, it turns out. Many continue to use "Latino" as the default, and many others prefer to highlight their place of origin – "Puerto Rican," "Mexican-American," Salvadoran," and "Peruvian," for example. And according to an article by Them magazine, still others prefer to highlight their indigenous ancestry, which doesn't really fit within any of the terms discussed above.
According to NBC Latino in 2017, the term "Latinx" had started appearing in mainstream media and even Hispanic media, but it still has not been widely adopted. In 2020, Pew Research Center reported that while 25% of those who identified as Hispanic or Latino had heard of "Latinx," only 3% used the term. And according to a December 2021 poll by Bendixen & Amandi, only 2% of Hispanic voters aged 18 to 29 would use "Latinx" to describe themselves. Sixty percent preferred the term "Hispanic." The poll further found that "30% of Hispanic voters [were] less likely to support a politician or political organization using the word."
Due to such resistance, even the League of United Latin American Citizens (commonly known as LULAC), the largest Latino civil rights group in the U.S., dropped the term from its official communications in December 2021. In an NBC News article, the group's director, Domingo García, said that the term was "very unliked" by almost all Latinos and that the "'Latinx community' doesn't want to be called 'Latinx.'"
In his announcement, García referred to a Miami Herald editorial that cited the same poll, stating that 40% of respondents were "bothered or offended" by "Latinx." According to this article, the term "… has failed to gain buy-in from the people it’s supposed to empower. It’s time to retire it from official use." Nevertheless, some activists strongly support the term, noting that "Latino" is a masculine term, that "Hispanic" is connected to Spain, and that the plural form "Latinos" defaults to the masculine.
Are you thoroughly confused yet? Well, you're not alone. Even some press varies the terms it uses, like in this headline from KSNW in Wichita, Kan.: "Latinx students now eligible to apply for Hispanic scholarship." So … what should we do? Well, when in doubt, ask! The terms that people use to refer to themselves, especially in a group as diverse as Hispanics or Latin Americans, should be honored, so even if most people don't seem to like "Latinx," someday someone may want you to use it. The Miami Herald says it best: "We get it. Spanish grammar can be sexist and a foe to gender neutrality – people who want to be called 'Latinx' should be respected."
Now, if you are writing and following a particular style guide, use its guidance. For example, the Associated Press (or AP) Stylebook, which is the one we use, advises using "Latino," "Latina" (for females), or "Hispanic" (especially for those in the U.S.). The guide has not officially adopted the term "Latinx," for many of the same reasons we already mentioned. It does, however, recommend using the term if someone requests it, and explaining it with a line like "Hernández prefers the gender-neutral term Latinx." Lastly, the AP Stylebook advises to use geographic descriptors such as "Ecuadorian" and "Chilean" when possible, since many people prefer that, and it's more specific.
The Chicago Manual of Style takes a somewhat softer stance, noting that written terms like "Latino/a" and "Latin@" invoke a gender binary and are not as inclusive as "Latinx." Their guide states: "A preference for 'Latinx' (or one of the other alternative forms) should be respected, and editors should query authors about their preferred usage when in doubt." APA Style, commonly used in academic writing, recognizes all the forms we've discussed and similarly recommends "[using] the term(s) your participants or population uses." I should note that there are many style guides; these are only three of the most widely used.
So if you aren't part of the community, the next time you meet a Hispanic, Latino, Latina, Latinx, or Latine person, don't fret. Pay attention to see what term or terms they use, or just ask them. And remember: One of the most amazing things about language is how it changes over time.
That segment was by Susan K. Herman, retired U.S. government multidisciplined language analyst, analytic editor, and instructor.
by Mignon Fogarty
Next, I have a segment about the verb "grow."
I was surprised by the results of a poll I did on my Facebook page, which showed that 97% of the respondents thought the sentence "We need to grow our business" was fine.
I've heard objections to using the verb "grow" with nonliving things the entire time I've been Grammar Girl, and in 1994, only 20% of the American Heritage Dictionary usage panel thought this sentence was acceptable. They're a group of well-known writers, editors, and academics who regularly answered similar opinion questions for the dictionary. Now, admittedly, that was a long time ago, but I don't think I've been hearing fewer objections in recent years. In fact, I ran this poll because a reader who objected to the usage suggested it.
On the other hand, the phrase has never bothered me personally.
I wrote about it back in 2012 in my book "101 Troublesome Words" and said it was fine to use it in business writing but to be wary of using it elsewhere.
The old objection is that inanimate things don't grow. A more subtle problem some people have raised is that "growing a business" is vague. More specific choices could be "We need to get more customers" or "We need to expand into more regions." For those of you who don't like it, Bryan Garner is on your side. In Garner's Modern English Usage, he calls it trendy business jargon and says to avoid it.
On the other hand, as some of the commenters pointed out, we use metaphors all the time in English, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, people were using "grow" in a figurative way (intransitively) to mean "flourish" all the way back in Old English — so long ago they don't even put a date on it … it's just "Old English." Here's an example from 1473 from John Warkworth in a chronicle about King Edward the fourth: "Lo, what myschef groys aftir insurreccion!"
The transitive use — to grow something, potatoes and so on — is newer, emerging in the 1700s. The first transitive use for something that wasn't organic like crops or hair was in 1825 and referred to growing knowledge.
But the Facebook poll slightly overstates people's acceptance of the phrase "grow our business." To help me tally the results, I ask people to vote just "fine" or "wrong," but they can follow their vote with a comment, and some people qualified their "fine" vote with a comment such as "but I hate it" or "I would personally use a different word." If I count those votes separately, only 91% said it's fine without any qualifier.
All in all, there are far fewer people who hate this than I expected, and it has clearly become standard. Multiple people commented that not only did they think it was fine, but they couldn't imagine why I was asking the question.
My current advice is the same as what I wrote in 2012: It's fine to use phases such as "grow our business" or "grow the economy" in business settings. If you want to be especially cautious, you may want to use them more sparingly in other contexts, but even in general writing, I wouldn't call this a top pet peeve anymore.
And while we're on the subject, another objection you sometimes hear about the verb "grow" is that you shouldn't use it to talk about something becoming smaller — that it's illogical to say something like "The space between us grew smaller," or "The trees grew smaller, became stunted, and disappeared altogether," which are both real examples I found in the Corpus of Contemporary American Usage.
But the "become" meaning of "grow" is also old and well-established. Shakespeare used "grow" to mean "become," and it's such a non-issue that Garner doesn't even address it.
What is interesting though is that Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage identified a single influential New York writer in the 1870s who was the original source of the objection: Richard Grant White, who strangely enough was also a prominent Shakespearean scholar. But White's influence had dissipated by the 1920s, and even usage experts who complained about a lot of other things are on record saying they disagree with him and that using "grow" to mean "become" — as in "The space between us grew smaller" — is fine.
So while you aren't worrying about people growing their businesses, you should also not not be worrying about anything growing smaller.
Finally, I have a familect story.
"Hi, Grammar Girl. This is Elaine from Wyoming, and I have a familect story for you. My former husband used to call what we got out of the refrigerator when we had leftovers 'must go' because everything in the refrigerator must go. I can't tell you how to spell it. We pronounced it as if it were spelled M-U-S-K-O, but it does refer to the 'must go.' Anyway, love your program. Thanks. Bye bye."
Thank you, Elaine. I'm sure people are going to have a lot of musko soon. And if you're seeing your family this month, it's a great time to talk about your familects and where they come from. If you unearth a great story, give me a call and leave a voicemail. The number is 83-321-4-GIRL. It’s in the show notes, and it's in my email newsletter every week.
And here's a reminder: it's not too late to start the year with THE GRAMMAR DAILY. It's like a tip-a-day calendar you keep forever. It has 365 pages with tips, cartoons, puzzles, and quizzes to entertain you for the whole year. It's a fully updated version of my 2009 book, THE GRAMMAR DEVOTIONAL. But now, with a more obvious title: THE GRAMMAR DAILY.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to audio engineer, Nathan Semes; ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; director of podcasts, Brannan Goetschius; marketing assistant, Kamryn Lacey; and marketing associate Davina Tomlin, who just learned how to do a backflip in a circus class and clearly lives a much more exciting life than I do!
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.