What's wrong with Latin American? We come from Latin America. I'm fine with being called that, and it's gender neutral.
Honest question: Is it because of the "American" part? Do you think it's non-inclusive of people who aren't US citizens, or something like that?
I'm Brazilian, and, in my perception, thinking that the "American" in "Latin American" is related to the demonym is a bit exceptionalist, as if there were One True America, and that is the United States.
Furthermore, I always avoid using the term americano to talk about people from the US, and I think the only thing that's more ridiculous than saying America instead of US is a Latin American person, particularly a Brazilian, referring to Estados Unidos as América. It's one of the smoothest-brained things to do in Brazilian Portuguese.
It's also why I think that the gendered language discussion is way more complex in Portuguese. We not only have gendered pronouns, but also adjectives and nouns. Gender-neutral language in Portuguese goes one of two ways:
1 - You literally change every single gendered word in the whole sentence. Okay, now every instance of ele/ela is rendered elx or whatever you're using (there is no consensus about this as far as I know). But what if you're trying, for example, to talk about a person who is a teacher? The masculine form is professor and feminine is professora. What do you do? Do you add an X at the end? Professorx makes no sense and doesn't follow Portuguese phonotactics at all, and you most certainly would be met with a "huh?" if you said that out loud. It would also mess up TTS software and make things way harder for blind people.
2 - Circumlocution, in other words, finding other ways of saying the same thing. This is, in my opinion, the only appropriate way to make something gender-neutral in Portuguese. Instead of painting yourself into a corner, you simply avoid the problem altogether.
I'm ranting a bit now, but it's just that importing the simplified English gender neutrality norms into Portuguese is not only not grammatical (in the scientific, not prescriptivist sense), but it's also in my view softcore imperialism, creating a debate about a matter that's already settled from the get-go.
I don't know. I've already gone way off topic here, but I just wanted to share my view. All this to say that gender-neutral language in English is easy as shit, don't be a dick, just do it.
What's wrong with Latin American? We come from Latin America. I'm fine with being called that, and it's gender neutral.
Honest question: Is it because of the "American" part? Do you think it's non-inclusive of people who aren't US citizens, or something like that?
I'm Brazilian, and, in my perception, thinking that the "American" in "Latin American" is related to the demonym is a bit exceptionalist, as if there were One True America, and that is the United States.
Furthermore, I always avoid using the term americano to talk about people from the US, and I think the only thing that's more ridiculous than saying America instead of US is a Latin American person, particularly a Brazilian, referring to Estados Unidos as América. It's one of the smoothest-brained things to do in Brazilian Portuguese.
It's also why I think that the gendered language discussion is way more complex in Portuguese. We not only have gendered pronouns, but also adjectives and nouns. Gender-neutral language in Portuguese goes one of two ways:
1 - You literally change every single gendered word in the whole sentence. Okay, now every instance of ele/ela is rendered elx or whatever you're using (there is no consensus about this as far as I know). But what if you're trying, for example, to talk about a person who is a teacher? The masculine form is professor and feminine is professora. What do you do? Do you add an X at the end? Professorx makes no sense and doesn't follow Portuguese phonotactics at all, and you most certainly would be met with a "huh?" if you said that out loud. It would also mess up TTS software and make things way harder for blind people.
2 - Circumlocution, in other words, finding other ways of saying the same thing. This is, in my opinion, the only appropriate way to make something gender-neutral in Portuguese. Instead of painting yourself into a corner, you simply avoid the problem altogether.
I'm ranting a bit now, but it's just that importing the simplified English gender neutrality norms into Portuguese is not only not grammatical (in the scientific, not prescriptivist sense), but it's also in my view softcore imperialism, creating a debate about a matter that's already settled from the get-go.
I don't know. I've already gone way off topic here, but I just wanted to share my view. All this to say that gender-neutral language in English is easy as shit, don't be a dick, just do it.