The Word On The Street Is Latino

Very many thanks to a regular reader whom I did not know, but whom I do have the pleasure of knowing now, and who assures me as a Latino that the preferred word is "Latino", with the feminine form "Latina".

That is the word that arose from the grassroots as the community's name for itself, he informs me, and it is usefully the same in English, Spanish and Portuguese. By contrast, even the pronunciation of "Latinx" is not immediately obvious, a difficulty to which speakers of Spanish are unaccustomed.

I am advised that I was correct to say that no Spanish noun or adjective could have no gender, and that no Spanish sentence could ever be organised in such a way as to accommodate such a word. But the main point is that "Latinx" is a top-down imposition, an academic conceit. The word on the street is "Latino".

Increasingly, that street is in Britain. The Latino population here is quite large, and it is growing rapidly. The man who refused to press charges in relation to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes is unfit to be the Prime Minister of such a country. Mercifully, he is not the Prime Minister. And he never will be.