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points by abustamam 3 days ago | 0 comments

Maybe I'm just lucky but I have a few gen Z coworkers and they are probably more often than not the voice of reason in our org (start up with 8 engineers). I think if an employee can't handle simple constructive criticism or clarifications maybe they should not be employed.

I did used to work for a consulting firm about a decade ago, and I was leading a staff augmentation project with another company and I was once chastised for saying "hey guys" in a chat because there were women in the group. I was encouraged to use "y'all" but not wanting to sound like I was from the south, I just used "peeps" which was somehow okay.

I'm all for inclusive language but I thought that was a bridge too far.

[–] throwaway20222 3 days ago

A coworker was asked in a meeting how he was holding up after pulling an epic two day sprint to deliver a project that saved our butts. He replied “I felt like jumping out of a window.”

Someone reported him for not warning the room about suicidal ideation before saying it and not considering that it might be triggering. He was actually reprimanded.

Unfortunately typical of the place. I left soon after.

[–] abustamam 3 days ago

That's wild! I wonder how far I could get at a place like that by saying random things trigger me, like "don't call it a sprint because I once tripped and broke a tooth while sprinting" or something like that. Make an entire organization change their jargon and use fun words like "this is our two week adventure!"

[–] sa48k 3 days ago

I once told someone that they shouldn't use 'flesh out an idea' because it's offensive to skeletons.

[–] walthamstow 2 days ago

In a previous job, in whiteboard sessions, one of the team would always refer to something as the "final solution" and I could never tell whether he was doing it on purpose or not

[–] lostlogin 1 day ago

Volkswagen blundered into a version of this when the CEO pushing for more productivity declared something like ‘work sets you free.’

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47566898

[–] lazide 2 days ago

Playing the long con

[–] eecc 2 days ago

Why not try… master is now main after all

[–] kavok 2 days ago

Yeah but in that case main is shorter, still understandable, and has the same autocomplete. It’s actually an improvement.

[–] The-Old-Hacker 2 days ago

I once had a software manager who used "master/child". He had a previous stint as a teacher at an English private school.

[–] eastbound 3 days ago

That may be the game that others are playing. I always wonder how much of this is other countries paying agents to spoil the productivity of the West, as a retaliation for unmerited wars we do to them.

[–] kwertyoowiyop 2 days ago

This is actually a great high concept for a comedy.

[–] gbuk2013 2 days ago

A (US based) PM on our team really liked to use “backlog grooming” until we sent him a few BBC articles about the connotations - he immediately changed his lingo :)

[–] olyjohn 2 days ago

I am offended by the connotations of "BBC," it makes me feel inadequate. Please change your lingo.

[–] Lio 23 hours ago

There's nothing wrong with the phrase "grooming". We groom lots of things including ourselves as in personal grooming.

This whole language purity test, whether from the left or right, is just a load of performative bollocks.

[–] roosterIllusi0n 2 days ago

These stories feel like someone purposely doing HR wrong because they hate equality or fairness.

[–] NoMoreNicksLeft 3 days ago

I think this is... well, hilarious is the wrong word. How does that protect anyone that's suicidal? It's teaching everyone that you will be punished for expressing it.

[–] PinkSheep 2 days ago

It's the opposite. It might have driven the person to actual self-commit. Allow me to hypothesize on their behalf:

- the employee pulled off the impossible

- may be already burnt out or on the brink of emotional collapse

- the "jump out of window" would have been as much of a joke as it was a coping response

- the righteous language policewoman does not feel empathy to personally ask him, how he is doing

- instead, she goes to HR to report him

- this unexpected hostility breaks the camel's back and what might have been interpreted as a joke actually wasn't. Still emotionally drained and now backstabbed, the person commits.

In short: policing voice was more important than taking a potential signal seriously. How is it not a despicable behavior in this situation?

PS: I hereby permit the commenters to reprimand me for the stereotype-based guess.

[–] LaurensBER 3 days ago

> How does that protect anyone that's suicidal?

It doesn't, this kind of language policing is all about control and power.

A friend of mine worked as consultant with a big bank in London. They would get weekly emails about what kind of "newspeak" is allowed or not.

They seriously banned terms such as an "all hands meeting".

Woke 1 was absolutely crazy.

[–] kakacik 3 days ago

And the reason there is so much more visible (and still invisible) pushback, stuff went into ridiculous in offices and schools, biggest screamers and complainers basically got the biggest voice. It seems pendulum must swing to the extremes, some stable balanced rational position ain't possible now.

[–] ethbr1 2 days ago

The problem is that HR's remit is minimizing legal liability.

Nothing about productivity or culture in there.

So invariably they spend far too much time and effort addressing the person who had an issue with handedness, without consideration of all the other people that's impacting.

You can't please everyone, but if you're HR, you try.

[–] lazide 2 days ago

Never was, really. You were just used to the old crazy, so the new crazy is jarring.

[–] Akronymus 2 days ago

> Woke 1 was absolutely crazy.

That feels like the covid amnesty thing to me. Say the previous "version" of x was insane and we should just blanket forgive and forget about it. Kind of a rejecting all responsibility.

(besides, i dont think there is a woke 1/2 in the first place IMO)

[–] bell-cot 3 days ago

If that was how they treated top performers, I'd hope you had quite a bit of company on the way out.

[–] theidjjdiej7484 2 days ago

US went from insane wokism to insane white-nationalism in the snap of a finger.

I still don't understand what happened.

[–] slater 2 days ago

Well, the first part didn't happen, and the second part has always been there.

[–] mlmonkey 3 days ago

Reminds me of that one time my partner mentioned "Latino" in a meeting, referring to people from Central and South America in broad terms (this was a marketing meeting, where customers are naturally grouped together along various dimensions).

She was told to not use "Latino"; but to use "LatinX" instead. What hurt more was the implication that she was being insensitive.

When I learned of it, I asked my Mexican friends which one they preferred. None of them had heard of "LatinX" and were as confused as I was.

[–] dpark 3 days ago

“Latinx” is weird because it seems to have arisen from a set of privileged English speakers deciding that poor downtrodden Latinas were being hurt by a word they never complained about and pushing this as the “appropriate” word. It’s so clearly not born of the Latino community because that’s not the construction they would use.

I remember reading about some similar thing with French and the French president’s wife responding that the language was beautiful the way it was and they don’t need outsiders telling them how to gender (or not) their words.

[–] mr_00ff00 3 days ago

Gives vibes of saying “unhoused” instead of homeless.

I feel like the affluent just love to invent new words to show the “others” that aren’t using it how backwards they are, and how the affluent are truly enlightened.

[–] idontwantthis 3 days ago

I also thought unhoused was just a pointless euphemism, but I recently learned it does have a technical meaning. A "homeless" person might live with friends, in a shelter, or on the street. An unhoused person is one strictly living on the street/car/public space.

[–] NoMoreNicksLeft 3 days ago

If I had a friend who was staying with us because he had no other place to be, he wouldn't be homeless. That's like saying my 13 yr old is homeless because his name's not on the mortgage. The only point of the euphemisms is for people to feel self-righteous for policing language. Which they often do because it's lazier than any sort of real reform.

[–] HWR_14 2 days ago

If your friend moves into your guest room and receives mail there, etc. they are not homeless. If they sleep on your couch 5 days a month then circulate among 6 friends doing the same, they are.

[–] NoMoreNicksLeft 2 days ago

If I buy a plot of land out in the middle of nowhere and do not inform the post office, apparently I'm homeless too, even if I built a mansion on said land.

Your measurements of homelessness are dumb and not representative of the condition most people think of when they are thinking of homelessness.

[–] dust-jacket 2 days ago

That's just not true. Your 13yr old is your legal responsibility, whilst you have a home, they do to.

Someone who you generously take in now has a roof over their head but they have literally zero protections - you can argue with them tomorrow and be within your rights to throw them out.

Someone with nowhere at all to stay might die of the cold tonight.

Homelessness charities absolutely want to know which case you are in. They require different interventions with different priorities.

[–] idontwantthis 2 days ago

You are correct.

[–] NoMoreNicksLeft 2 days ago

>That's just not true. Your 13yr old is your legal responsibility, whilst you have a home, they do to.

You miss my point so thoroughly, it can only be genius. I know that it's not true. My son's not homeless. The other guy implied it, because he can't come up with a logical test of who and who isn't homeless.

[–] abustamam 3 days ago

This is interesting. Two things can be true though. There may be a technical distinction between the two terms but I think many people (like me, until now!) don't know it, which means that many people do use it as a euphemism and not as its technical intention.

[–] specialist 2 days ago

Like being quoted out of context.

It's just so easy to mock terms and phrases of art, to spin up the general public.

People like Chris Rufo, who mine legal, bureaucratic, technical, etc. phrases, are trolls.

[–] matt-attack 2 days ago

I don’t think anyone would describe non-rent paying cohabitant as “homeless”. I truly don’t believe we needed another word. It’s just different for different’s sake.

It’s essentially the same word too:

“Un” == “less” “Home” == “house”

It’s just another example of the Euphemism Treadmill.

[–] zombocomvibes 3 days ago

I think the Latino community who cares about such things prefers "latine".

LatinX is awful. An AIM screen name from 1998.

[–] usern20260720 2 days ago

Latini Latine tantum loqui deberent

[–] sicktriple 3 days ago

The sillyness of LatinX is that there isn't even an "Ecks" sound in Spanish.

[–] Izkata 2 days ago

I can't help but read it as "la-tinks". And then I think of Tinkerbelle, who has the nickname Tink.

[–] Someone 3 days ago

I assume you pronounce that X as the X in Mexico.

[–] elondaits 2 days ago

The X in Spanish is sometimes used to “neutralize” the gender of a word. An alternative is the @, as in “latin@“. Visually the x is more harmonic, because of its smaller size, and the fact that there are lower and uppercase versions.

That x is generally pronounced as an “e” in Spanish (i.e. “latine”, not “latin eks” or “latinks” and most certainly not “latinj”, as the j sound of x is only before a vowel, e.g. xavier = javier).

But why write an x and not an e? Because there are consonants that change their sound with an “e”. So, say, the word “chicos” (boys) and “chicas” (girls) would be written as “chiques” in neutral because the c sounds like an s and not like a k with an e in front… but “chiques” doesn’t look like “chicos”… visually it’s not recognizable… while “chicxs” is much easier to parse.

This is how it works. I don’t care to enter a discussion of whether this is nice or not, good or bad. I’ll just leave with the anecdote that I once participated in a project that involved a big survey written in the traditional “neutral” form, which consists of writing “chicos/as” to covers both binary genders. That form quickly becomes very hard to read… “Los chicos/as están sentados/as con sus nuevos/as compañeros/as”. Use of the x has a lot of pushback from some people, but all in all, it’s easier to adapt to.

[–] ta7000 2 days ago

It's not. And that shows just poor education. Differently from the US, in Spanish we have the RAE (Real Academia Española). That dictates and gives guidelines on how to write so most people will understand what you are writing. The fact that you are having these issues just shows poor education, these topics have been discussed, and they are clear rules to avoid this non sense. Don't invent rules, read what has been already created for you to write clearly in Spanish.

[–] lazyasciiart 2 days ago

Speaking of ways to demonstrate ignorance, Spanish language usage in America is driven by Central and South American speakers, and they do not consider themselves bound by some bunch of Europeans telling them how to speak their own language.

[–] elondaits 1 day ago

Linguistics are descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm explaining how things work in practice, not how they're supposed to be according to the wishes or mandates of some foreign institution and its followers.

Judging something and understanding something are different processes. The RAE creates guidelines, but people often speak and write without following them, and that's still worthy of examination.

[–] afiori 3 days ago

that is even worse

[–] jonathanlydall 2 days ago

I'm South African so wouldn't really know culturally how African Americans would see it, but wondered at the time if the changing of the Git default branch name to "main" was an initiative by European Americans worried about offending rather than actual offense taken by African Americans.

It is interesting how different locations find different things offensive. Only when I was living in Europe for a while (doing Blizzard Customer Service) did I became aware of how big a deal the usage of N word was, as over here the K-word (look up "South Africa k-word" if you don't know it) is the word of choice for the, unevolved, die hard racists.

Was similarly unaware, (but not really surprised in hindsight) how World War II references were much better left avoided and Nazi references an enormous no-no. Over here references to Nazism are very rare and while South Africans did fight and die for the Allies in Europe, the impact of WW2 over here was no where near what it was like for most of the rest of the world.

[–] SanjayMehta 2 days ago

Is the "k-word" the Arabic for infidel? If yes, were there a lot of Arabs/Arabic speakers in South Africa?

[–] jonathanlydall 2 days ago

It has etymological roots in the Arabic word, but is spelt differently and it has no meaning or use except as a slur of which there is nothing more offensive to say to blacks (“blacks” is a completely acceptable term here).

We don’t have much of an Arabic community here.

[–] lazyasciiart 2 days ago

No and no

[–] ta7000 2 days ago

I'm a latino (US citizen, born in Latin America). Somebody said that also at my job. LatinX is despised by most Latin people living in the US. It's acceptance rate is less than 2%. Comes from a 'scholar' invention, and aside of the scholars with both hands in their ears that want to use it, almost all Hispanic and Latinos dislike the term, specially the ones living in the US. I compared it to using the N word with African American people. Call them something they want to be called, not whatever you want to call them.

[–] lazide 2 days ago

Most Latino/latinas I’ve discussed this with find Latinx offensive because there are strong (positive) gender associations with each, and it appears to be explicitly trying to erase them.

Classifying a Latina as a Latino or vice-versa will get you in a pretty serious fight in a lot of places.

[–] wolvoleo 3 days ago

Here in Spain both the 'x' and '@' versions are really common in written language. The 'e' version I've not seen. But they're not really spoken because the X and @ versions are weird to pronounce. Replacing the o and a with an e makes more sense but it hasn't really seemed to have reached here.

And no it's not just privileged white people. My Spanish teacher was a Colombiana and she always pointed out the innate patriarchal traits of the Spanish language while rolling her eyes.

[–] ozozozd 3 days ago

My native language has no gender. Every time I see these conversations I wonder “why not do away with the gender?”

It often leaks information the speaker didn’t intend to share. e.g., “I met a friend. She was late.”

Did the speaker mean or care to share to gender of this friend? Is it relevant? I don’t think so.

And I find it especially interesting when people argue for gender-neutral plurals, but then happily use gendered noun. It sort of feels like “everyone must stay in their lane” type of expectation.

Even the patriarchy argument is weird. The patriarchy - along with religion - wanted this gender line and specification in every context. Wanna stick it to patriarchy? Nix the gender from all languages!

[–] dpark 3 days ago

> The patriarchy - along with religion - wanted this gender line and specification in every context

Did they? English used to be gendered but lost it ~1000 years ago.

Languages evolve in odd ways and don’t think the patriarchy or religion have much to do with it.

[–] bregma 3 days ago

English is still strongly gendered: the animate and inanimate genders are everywhere. The masculine/feminine subgenders are still present in pronouns of the animate gender.

If English were to truly evolve to be non-gendered, there would be no "he/him/them" or "she/her/them", only "it/that/those".

[–] ramcle 3 days ago

I wonder how you would feel about, for example, Slavic languages. There, you leak information about the gender even about speaking about yourself in first person (at least in the ones I have some idea about). Example in Polish:

"Spotkałem kolegę" - "I [male] met a [male] friend."

"Spotkałam kolegę" - "I [female] met a [male] friend."

"Spotkałem koleżankę" - "I [male] met a [female] friend."

"Spotkałam koleżankę" - "I [female] met a [female] friend."

Notice the different ending (em/am) depending on whether a male or female is speaking.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

> My native language has no gender. Every time I see these conversations I wonder “why not do away with the gender?”

Yes, many languages have no gender or have a generic option besides genders.

I always find this very annoying in Roman languages, where every object has an arbitrary gender, and to make matters worse it's not always the same. A word that is female in Spanish could be male in Italian or Portuguese. It trips me up a lot and it's annoying because the gender is just some arbitrary thing there, it has no meaning because objects have no gender. If we're talking about people I can understand but things?

But languages are not very logical. They are something that melted together over centuries out of habit.

[–] suddenlybananas 2 days ago

Persian doesn't have gender and Iran is famously not patriarchal at all.

[–] lazide 2 days ago

It adds real world flavor, instead of mashing everyone and everything into the same grey goo of genderlessness.

It’s no surprise that the strongest (mainstream) gendered languages are also known as the ‘Romance languages’.

Is it logically simpler in some ways to not have it? Of course. Let’s not even talk about how complex gendered verb conjugations are in Spanish or Portuguese, for example.

But it does allow a lot of beautiful flourishes that add a lot of color.

[–] piperswe 2 days ago

They're known as the Romance languages because the languages are rōmānicē (Roman-style), not because they're romantic.

[–] tacitusarc 2 days ago

Romance in the context of languages means they were derived from Latin, the language of Rome.

[–] lazide 2 days ago

Technically yes - And also why every single one of the cultures speaking those languages is known for it’s lovers?

[–] dpark 3 days ago

Interesting. Google trends shows that Latine is more common in Spain (and everywhere that isn’t the US).

Nonetheless I appreciate a perspective from someone who has an affiliation with the culture term refers to.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

Ah I have to say I'm not reading much official media in Spanish, perhaps the media is taking up these terms faster. But I see x and @ in official event posters too.

But my friends and in the LGBT+ communities chat groups I only see people using the x and @.

[–] dpark 2 days ago

I have never seen Latin@ at all (but I also do not speak Spanish). Is that a common a/o replacement?

I find it interesting that the Hispanic LGBTQ+ community would use LatinX. How is this even pronounced in Spanish? Latin-equis? Or is it the English Latin-ex?

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

Yes in my scene @ and x are both common. I like the @ option.

Like I said nobody pronounces either option because it's unpronounceable. That's why the 'e' is a better option IMO.

[–] elondaits 2 days ago

You can pronounce it as “Latine”:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261926

[–] mr_00ff00 3 days ago

I’m curious on people’s opinions here cause I have seen this both ways. I have seen people say gender in the language at all is bad. And have said Spanish is sexist.

I’ve also seen people argue that we should learn to not see vocabulary gender as gender at all, just start associating some words as “la” and some as “el” with no boy/girl idea behind it.

[–] dpark 3 days ago

Old English for “wife” was masculine. “Maiden” in German is neutral. In Italian, the formal “you” is the same as “she” (written capitalized).

Grammatical gender is not intrinsically sexist and doesn’t really make a lot of sense if you try to analyze it to tease out what patriarchs were thinking when they added these forms, because largely they never thought about it at all. The forms evolved over hundreds of years.

[–] vladvasiliu 3 days ago

There are also languages where the gender changes from singular to plural! What do we think of this?

I can't say I follow these things too closely, and I do find them silly, but I think that, at least for languages that have "genders", this mostly comes from words describing professions that "seem gendered". I don't think many people care if a bag is feminine or masculine.

For example, in French, a doctor is "masculine", but a secretary is feminine. The point was that young girls would see these words and figure, "I can't be a doctor because I'm not a man. Guess I'll just be a nurse (which is feminine, but also has a masculine form)".

Now, I think there may be some kind of truth to the fact that many such professions were traditionally held by people of the "same gender". And, now that these traditions don't hold as much anymore, especially for "prestigious" professions, people want to make a point that there's a difference, especially in things like politics and medicine.

Of course, I don't remember much noise being made about how to call a woman who picks up garbage (though there are quite a few) or does construction work (haven't seen that many).

[–] spankibalt 3 days ago

“Maiden” in German is neutral.

Nachweise erbeten (citations, please). :)

[–] dpark 2 days ago

Should have said ‘The German word for “Maiden” is neutral.’

My phrasing was ambiguous and my German is rusty, hence the archaic translation.

[–] heinrich5991 3 days ago

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mädchen

[–] lazyasciiart 2 days ago

As my high school teacher memorably put it: “in Germany girls have no sex”.

[–] mike_hearn 2 days ago

dpark is using a slightly archaic translation, Mädchen would normally be rendered as "girl" in modern English.

[–] swiftcoder 3 days ago

> I’ve also seen people argue that we should learn to not see vocabulary gender as gender at all, just start associating some words as “la” and some as “el” with no boy/girl idea behind it.

If you look up the list of exceptions to the whole "-a = feminine, -o = masculine" in Spanish, it's incredibly long (and covers many of the most common words). Similarly there are a whole bunch where the gender is correct, but the article is swapped because it sounds better. The gender of specific words is also arbitrary, and doesn't agree between the various Romance languages.

This whole thing is just the leftover pieces of Latin's 3x linguistic genders hanging around in our languages, and ceased to be related to actual gender centuries ago.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

> Similarly there are a whole bunch where the gender is correct, but the article is swapped because it sounds better.

Yes, like "el agua" but agua is a female word. Soo confusing when you are learning it.

[–] nbajka 3 days ago

Which is funny because the entire Spanish-speaking world has always been deeply matriarchal.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

No not really. In the Spanish language the masculine form always takes precedence.

And they are also catching up on feminism. Until recently here in Spain a woman would have to prove there had been violence when claiming rape. There was a big headline-making case where some rapists went free (well until supreme court appeal): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Manada_rape_case It led to the "only yes is yes" law which was already prevalent in other countries.

[–] nbajka 2 days ago

Even then, women hold all the soft power in Spanish-speaking countries. For example, at home, whatever the woman says, that’s what’s done. That’s what a matriarchy is.

Also, convicting people without proof, that’s not something to be proud of. (This also proves they live in a matriarchy)

[–] dpark 2 days ago

> convicting people without proof

They literally videotaped it and shared the video in a group chat.

There was no question of whether the assault happened, only whether it met the bar for the more severe crime.

[–] partyficial 2 days ago

women control the inside, men the outside.

that's just biology and it's the case the world over, not only spanish countries.

[–] darksim905 3 days ago

>My Spanish teacher was a Colombiana and she always pointed out the innate patriarchal traits of the Spanish language while rolling her eyes.

Was the eye roll part of the sarcasm or...? Colombian and other related Spanish speaking cultures do the same things, so what's her point, to feel like she's sticking it to the invisible spanish dude?

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

No, she genuinely hated that even though it is part of Colombian culture too. But being part of a culture doesn't mean you 100% agree with everything.

I'm Dutch myself and I hate many things in Dutch culture. Especially those stemming from the calvinist influences. It's one of the reasons I don't live there anymore.

[–] darksim905 2 days ago

  calvinist influences

Admittedly I don't really know about dutch/some other regions -- could you expand on that?

[–] PaulDavisThe1st 3 days ago

> it seems to have arisen from a set of privileged English speakers

I'd recommend getting out a bit more or reading a bit more:

> According to Google Trends, it was first seen online in 2004,[7][21][22] and first appeared in academic literature around 2013 "in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language."[20][23] Contrarily, it has been claimed that usage of the term "started in online chat rooms and listservs in the 1990s" and that its first appearance in academic literature was in the Fall 2004 volume of the journal Feministas Unidas.[24][25] In the rest of the United States, it was first used in activist and LGBT circles as a way to expand on earlier attempts at gender-inclusive forms of the grammatically masculine Latino, such as Latino/a and Latin@.[21] A similar use of 'x' in the term Mx. may have been an influence or model for the development of Latinx.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx

[–] grepex 3 days ago

From the same wiki:

> Despite the increase in awareness, use of the term to describe oneself has not greatly increased over time.[4] As of 2018, use of the term Latinx was limited nearly exclusively to the United States.[29] Manuel Vargas writes that people from Latin America ordinarily would not think of themselves using the term unless they reside in the United States.[29]

Maybe it didn't technically originate in privileged English speakers but it certainly seems to have arisen in popularity among them.

As someone who lives in a 99% hispanic region in the US, I've never heard anyone use this term to identify themselves. We're right on the border and that sort of thing seems to mainly happen in larger cities north of here.

[–] dpark 3 days ago

I’m not saying no one who identifies as Latino/Latina/Latinx has ever used the word, or even advocated for it. But the only people I’ve ever heard use this term are, bluntly, very white.

To the extent that the term has become widespread, it seems to have piggybacked on other diversity and inclusion efforts. People who identify as Latino/Latina seem overwhelmingly to dislike the term.

> Among Hispanic and Latino Americans, knowledge of the term is not widespread, and reception to the term as a potential classifier for the entire Hispanic/Latino population has been overwhelmingly negative. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly half of U.S. Hispanics were not aware of the term Latinx; of those aware of it, 75% said it should not be used to describe the Hispanic or Latino population, preferring instead the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" by large margins.

Ironically, the also relatively uncommon “Latine” is in decline but still more popular than Latinx for all of recorded Google trends history. Except in the US. Of course.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=latinx,L...

[–] Gibbon1 2 days ago

LatinX to me reeks of white savior and HR speak.

[–] lastofus 3 days ago

Latinx appears to be on the way out now as well, to be replaced by Latine, for exactly the situation you described. "Latinx" didn't come out of the broader community of native speakers, and was seemingly rejected due to that fact.

[–] mook 3 days ago

… I wish they picked a better word, because I actually misread that as Latrine… definitely not going to be referring to anybody with _that_ at least.

[–] sethammons 3 days ago

"It used to be Shithouse"

[–] kelnos 3 days ago

"It's a good change!"

[–] lakeviewterrace 3 days ago

Both were presumably invented by insufferable white people.

9/10 Latinos would roll their eyes and get back to doing actual work, they don't have time to be offended.

[–] scheme271 3 days ago

Latine comes from South Americans (primarily chileans and argentinians). Whether the people from those countries that came up with it are insufferable white people is up to you.

[–] hbarka 3 days ago

Their World Cup teams are insufferable.

[–] clw8 2 days ago

I sub to /r/asklatinamerica (and many similar subs, to learn about global opinions and attitudes first-hand) and they absolutely revile the term, and associate it with an attitude they call Gringosplaining.

[–] GMoromisato 3 days ago

I was born in Peru and I absolutely abhor the word "LatinX". I assume people meant well, but ironically, it exhibits the "we Americans known better than you" attitude that liberals usually avoid.

[–] phreack 2 days ago

Normal Latin Americans want to be called Latin Americans when speaking English. LatAm (people, team, etc.) or similar also works because they prefer shortening by syllables instead of doing acronyms like LA because they're much clearer when read and easier to pronounce.

[–] Steve16384 2 days ago

The world is full of people wanting to be offended on behalf of other people.

[–] Akronymus 2 days ago

I know a few latinos, they absolutely loathe latinx. They treat it almost equally to chink, even. Doesnt help that latinx is pretty hard to pronounce for them.

[–] platevoltage 3 days ago

Was I wrong in assuming that "Latinx" was only intended for written language? Because it's not pronounceable in any way that makes sense.

[–] lakeviewterrace 3 days ago

I pronounce it "la-tinks" if forced to read it aloud. Always gets some side-eye from coworkers you probably already find obnoxious.

It's all a performance to them anyway, and I'm not playing the game.

[–] abustamam 3 days ago

I think you're "supposed" to say "Latin-Ecks" (as in pronounce the X) but yeah it's fun to say Latinx because it sorta signals what you think about it while still technically complying.

[–] desolate_muffin 3 days ago

That's exactly how my Mexican friend says it, and he's about as liberal as they come

[–] pfannkuchen 2 days ago

How about “Latin Equis” like the beer?

[–] daveguy 3 days ago

No one has been saying LatinX for years. Why the anti-lib propaganda from 2022? Are y'all really that desperate to connect with folks?

[–] socalgal2 3 days ago

It it still a thing in many California based tech companies.

[–] kirab 3 days ago

> I think if an employee can't handle simple constructive criticism or clarifications maybe they should not be employed.

and then

> I was encouraged to use "y'all" [..] I thought that was a bridge too far.

I wonder if there might be a small bias on your part. The criticism you deem constructive everyone shall endure, but the other criticism you deem a bridge too far you yourself shall not endure.

[–] vigilantpuma 3 days ago

There’s a difference between feedback regarding your work and language policing something like “you guys” which some people have just suddenly decided is offensive as of 2016 or so because I guess we’ve already solved the rest of sexism.

[–] hellisothers 3 days ago

This is/was absolutely a thing and I saw it happen to others and switched to y’all, I got called out for using “dude” and come on dude, dude is extremely gender neutral in this sense.

[–] vigilantpuma 3 days ago

I have not been able to bring myself to use y’all, it just seems so fake and performative. I am not a southerner, why am I y’alling people?

[–] sdenton4 3 days ago

Pennsylvania uses 'yins' for the second person plural, if you'd like a confusing alternative!

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

No one decided it was offensive. Show me anyone saying they're offended by the use of "guys" as a gender neutral term.

People get lumped into "guys" and feel excluded. That's such a different bar than feeling offended.

It's ok for you to say, "I'm sorry my language makes you feel excluded, but I'm not going to change" and it's ok for someone to think less of you as a result.

Why does everyone jump to the idea that people who want more inclusive language are offended? Or that the critique being offered here is that the language is offensive?

(Granted, sometimes that is the critique. Plenty of casual racism or ableism is offensive. But that's not the case with "guys".)

[–] vigilantpuma 3 days ago

This really feels like splitting hairs.

As a woman in this industry, being told that using “guys” to address mixed groups is non-inclusive/insufficiently considerate/worth thinking less of me for (just wow) is much worse than being addressed by “guys” when I’m in a mixed group.

Like… we have real problems with equality in tech, right?

[–] jeromegv 3 days ago

Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't and it takes 1 minute to solve. "Okay thank you, will change it for next time".

[–] autoexec 3 days ago

Why spend even one minute "solving" a non-problem? What would even qualify as a solution to a non-problem? Or maybe it's a problem, just not a real problem, although if a problem is imaginary, surely the solution can be too.

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

It can be a problem. If someone doesn't like people taking calls at their desk because it interrupts them, they might ask their peers not to do that. If someone has a dislike for a food, they might ask their friends to not go to a type of restaurant. If someone has particular nickname preferences (Will vs Bill) they might share those.

People deliberately choosing not to try to honor those preferences are making a choice with a small impact. No one is claiming it's a big deal. But honoring preferences can make people feel unhappy.

As can honoring a preference that you find silly.

It turns out, this is pretty simple human negotiation stuff -- we can all express a preference and we can all choose to not honor it. And we have to be comfortable with the idea someone might think less of someone else a little bit as a result.

[–] brightball 3 days ago

It takes less than that.

“I’m not going to do that. Moving on.”

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

People are down voting you for this, but like, I'd rather have that honesty. I know where I stand with you when you do that.

Everyone is out here thinking I'm policing, correcting, eradicating, or some other verbing. When really I'm asking you to inconvenience yourself to stop inconveniencing me.

You are well within your rights to be like, "no". I don't understand this compulsion to make either party into some villain.

[–] Dylan16807 3 days ago

> Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't

Yes.

> solve

No that's not solving anything.

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

I'm glad for you it doesn't feel exclusive. Your experience is totally valid and also you are correct, there are structural issues at play that also need addressing.

Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term. I'm not offended, but I do appreciate when people offer something else.

But to your later point, I don't think it's either/or. We can do both.

[–] vigilantpuma 3 days ago

I think pursuing things like the eradication of an expression that is genuinely considered gender neutral by large swaths of people is the sort of thing that loses you goodwill for the big stuff.

I’m sorry that you find it exclusionary. What I find exclusionary is people telling me that it’s justifiable to think less of me for using that term, or comparing continuing to use the term to their grandmother who still uses the N word.

For what it’s worth I have stopped using “you guys” at work except for in “safe spaces” because I don’t want to deal with this sort of judgement. But I find the “it costs you nothing!” defense of word policing to be completely unconvincing.

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

I think if you want people to give you the grace to form your own opinions of others, you need to be comfortable with us forming an opinion of you. I'm allowed to have people I think about as allies, I'm allowed to think of others as assholes. To suggest otherwise is a much stronger control over someone than to say, "I would find it less uncomfortable if you spoke differently."

You are, in essence, saying, "I want you to think differently."

I made no claim that it costs nothing. Changing language use is non trivial. Which is why I never demand it. I make a preference known, you can act on it or not.

I made the claim that: a) it does not offend me and b) I prefer others not use it and c) if I've expressed my preference and you choose not to honor that preference, it will diminish my opinions towards you.

This is how preferences work. We communicate them. Others find the request reasonable or not and act accordingly. If my preference was no music playing in desk areas, and you played music in the desk area, I'd think less of you as a result. If you gave me a nickname and I asked you not to use it, and you still used it, I'd think less of you.

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

You and others keep putting words in my mouth. Where did I sell the eradication of language?

The scenario here is, "I feel excluded by 'guys', would you all feel ok using something else?"

You are a grown up, you can just say "No".

The consequences will be me having a slightly lower opinion of you as a person.

There's no eradication. I'm not asking you to stop using the word guys.

[–] 5upplied_demand 3 days ago

> I think pursuing things like the eradication of an expression that is genuinely considered gender neutral by large swaths of people is the sort of thing that loses you goodwill for the big stuff.

On the flip side, someone unwilling to do even the “small stuff” pretty much already lost the goodwill that they would be willing to do the “big stuff.”

Put another way, if you ask someone to take a small step for you, and they refuse, would you feel like they are more or less likely to take a big step?

[–] bigstrat2003 3 days ago

> Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term.

You are reading into the words a message that was never intended, and that is on you, not the speaker.

[–] buuyytp 3 days ago

I don't think that's true at all. I think language carries history, and that we all come from different upbringings and life experiences that give language context.

There are words we use because they are familiar that are nevertheless hard to hear for some groups.

When that happens, one absolutely can share the impact of the words AND acknowledge no malicious intent. When I was a kid, "gay" meant bad. Tell you what, didn't feel good to hear it. "Hey, I'm gay" was met with, "Oh I didn't mean it like that". Like, sure, but also can we find another word for bad?

[–] KoolKat23 3 days ago

I feel this is pedantry. It's been used in good faith as a neutral term to address all, basically no different to using words others don't like such as moist.

If this level of pedantry can be considered acceptable, how on earth do these folks justify/cope with terminology used in "empowerment" initiatives who often use very non-inclusive wording more so than "guys".

[–] dolni 3 days ago

I've watched a woman walk into a space to meet her group -- all of whom were women -- and address the group with "Hey you guys!"

I've also worked with a woman who was extremely displeased to be greeted with "you guys". I found her absolutely insufferable.

The reason it feels bad to people who use "you guys" in a gender neutral way is what it says about the offended person. The offended person has a pet peeve, and if you don't accommodate it, it will be a problem. That's pretty much the definition of an insufferable person.

A person who is well-regulated wouldn't make a stink over something so trivial. Which then tells you that the person is going to make a similar stink over other trivial things. Ad infinitum.

[–] autoexec 3 days ago

Pedantry would be pointing out the extensive history of "you guys" as being non-gendered and that even dictionaries say that is what it means. Anyone misinterpreting a word or phrase by using their own made up non-standard definition of it is, at best, assuming the absolute worst about someone's intention without any cause. If people feel excluded by the phrase it's an entirely self-inflicted wound.

[–] mook 3 days ago

Eh, happened to me. Decades ago, before all this wave of preformativeness. To be fair, I _was_ addressing a small group of girls my age; at the time the gender of the people involved was simply not relevant to the topic and I didn't consider it at all.

[–] zzrrt 3 days ago

The original story about not handling criticism well was someone crying after a kind question, not merely saying something was a bridge too far. (FWIW if I saw someone cry once, I would consider it might be a one-off due to stress at home etc, not necessarily a constant personality trait I'll have to deal with regularly.)

[–] aucisson_masque 3 days ago

Because he was saying “hey guys “ naturally without thinking twice.

Now you make him think twice about what he’s saying, of course he’s going to nitpick everything.

[–] detourdog 3 days ago

The start of the "electric company" started with I think Rita Moreno shouting "Hey you guys..."

anyway I have always considered Hey guys as gender neutral.

Merriam Webster seems to agree by listing this as a secondary meaning.

used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex saw her and the rest of the guys.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guy

[–] lurk2 3 days ago

You appear to be German so I will assume you lack the cultural context to understand why these two things are not comparable. Asking someone born outside of the deep south to refer to a group of people as “y’all” is so absurd my immediate assumption would be that my coworker was playing a joke on me.

[–] margalabargala 3 days ago

I'm very much not from anywhere resembling the American south, and "you all" is very much a part of my lexicon.

[–] lurk2 2 days ago

“You all” is distinct from “y’all.” The former is atypical but doesn’t sound weird, the latter was appropriated by turbo-liberals in the mid-2010s to signal that they listen to Kendrick Lamar.

[–] margalabargala 2 days ago

It's very different when written out, but when speaking aloud it blends and becomes difficult to distinguish.

[–] abustamam 3 days ago

There's probably bias on my part. But I didn't cry about the criticism as the person I was replying to mentioned. Technically I abided by the criticism. I didn't agree, but I liked having the social capital with my employer more than I cared about how I felt about the policing. It's all just words in the end, I just thought it was nitpicky.

[–] Brian_K_White 3 days ago

Somehow you missed: Not all critiques are equally valid or valid at all.

and then

Somehow you missed: They did deal with it. The one they criticized did not.

[–] Dig1t 3 days ago

The difference being that telling someone they are not allowed to use "guys" is not a valid criticism. It's just someone being a bully and trying to language-police others.

[–] hajile 3 days ago

Both of these issues come because our ancestors messed up changing the language.

Centuries ago, "thou" was singular second person and "you" was plural second person.

"Thou" got abandoned and "you" lost its original meaning to replace "thou" as the new singular second person.

"You guys" or "y'all" are simply attempts to re-introduce a needed pronoun.

[–] atomicnumber3 3 days ago

So we get to fight sexism AND bring back cool anachronistic language? I'm in.

[–] abustamam 3 days ago

IIRC "you" was also the formal second person pronoun (like usted in Spanish or vous in French).

I think it's all just normal evolution of language. I actually think it's kinda neat how different English-speaking subcultures found different ways to reintroduce the pronoun.

[–] userulluipeste 2 days ago

"I think it's all just normal evolution of language."

The normal way for languages to evolve is for words to spread into different (adjacent) forms in order to express more nuances of their original meaning(s). The collapse of words' meanings, and for basic things as (nominative case) pronouns no less, like it happened in English for "thou" and "you", is not fitting the definition of "normal" in the larger context of linguistics domain.

[–] AnotherGoodName 3 days ago

Australia has 'yous' for plural you. Yous is used exactly how you might think it'd be used.

[–] mgerdts 3 days ago

Beware! Y’all doesn’t necessarily include everyone:

> All y'all is used in the Southern United States when a speaker wishes to include everyone being addressed. Y'all may refer to an indefinite set of members of a group, but all y'all definitively includes everyone in the group.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/all_y%27all

[–] usefulcat 3 days ago

I dunno, as someone who’s lived their entire life in the southern US this sounds really pedantic. At best.

Also, is it just me or does that Wikipedia entry have zero citations? I thought Wikipedia was allergic to citation-free claims..

[–] omgwtfbyobbq 3 days ago

I just asked my SO and she confirmed that "all y'all" means everyone within earshot and "y'all" usually means a specific group of people. She also said "y'all" is similar to "on" in French and "youse guys" in the NE.

I'm guessing it's regional and/or group specific.

[–] e12e 3 days ago

Odd, the dictionary definition (here: webster's) is literally:

> guy: (...) person —used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex

[–] abustamam 3 days ago

Yeah, tell that to my manager at the time!

[–] tibbon 3 days ago

I go for “yinz” then, and tell them not to discriminate against my Pittsburgh area heritage

[–] platevoltage 3 days ago

Yinz goin dahn tahn for the Stillers game? I need a ride, car needs fixed.

[–] Shocka1 2 days ago

My experience as well. I'd like to add we have a smaller team of 4 and we all have each other's backs at any given time. If someone screws up we call it out, fix it quickly, then move on to our nerd conversations about video games and sometimes other offensive content lol. Politics are basically nonexistent unless it's protecting or advocating for the dev team. It's great and I wouldn't have it any other way.

This kind of culture is harder to achieve in a corporate environment IMO, but a good manager or two can keep the team spirit if they have a strong hand in the hiring process. But I think it is a much harder thing to do than at a small org.

[–] iugtmkbdfil834 2 days ago

I think this is the big part of it. I am at a relatively big corp now so everything is very corporate almost by default. The team you land effectively determines your experience.

But at a simple organizational level, the basic idea is that one manager shouldn't have more than 7 reports stands.

I kinda lucked out on my current boss, because this is basically how he approaches stuff. Going above that 4 person limit is how you get into no fun zone.

[–] ButlerianJihad 3 days ago

If we want to trace back the etymology of the term "guy" we would unearth some interesting facts. The most infamous "Guy" of the 17th century is Guy Fawkes, would-be Catholic terrorist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Guy Fawkes is most notorious in the UK today as the progenitor of Guy Fawkes Night, where children solicit "a penny for the Guy?" and the funds raised ostensibly go to construct and burn a large straw effigy of Guy, in order to celebrate his defeat and the survival of the Parliament. He was executed, not by burning but by hanging, but nevertheless Guy Fawkes is the original Burning Man.

Guy Fawkes Night was imported to the United States during our independence, and it became Pope Night, a night of mayhem and anti-Catholic vandalism and hooliganism. George Washington once told his military troops to knock it off with the Pope Night shenanigans, because it was alienating Canadians.

So the term "guy" became genericized, beginning in Australia it seems, to refer to a grubby lower-class Catholic boy. After a few centuries of circulating in this way, it lost most of its derogatory connotation and became a generic way to refer to men or boys, and by extension, girls and women.

I don't take offense at being called "guy", nor would I if I were female, and especially because today in the USA, it is so generic and inoffensive. Nobody recalls its sordid roots, even if Pope Night is making a resurgence around here.

[–] skissane 3 days ago

> So the term "guy" became genericized, beginning in Australia it seems, to refer to a grubby lower-class Catholic boy.

I'm sceptical of this alleged Australian connection. As far as I'm aware, the term started in England, spread to the US, and it is in the US that its usage really took off. In Australia, "guy"/"guys" as a term for a male or gender-neutral person was imported from the US in the second half of the 20th century.

[–] MikeNotThePope 2 days ago

I once got scolded for using vulgar language when I called saving a record "shoving it in the database."

[–] SanjayMehta 3 days ago

Can you use "hey everyone" or does that offend schizophrenics?

[–] Spooky23 3 days ago

The Gen Z and Alphas will save us. As a late Gen X, most of our cohorts were bogged down eating for boomers to die and are lost causes in big companies.

[–] samudrijan 3 days ago

Just holler

[–] gdilla 2 days ago

And yet, that's part of the influence younger gens on your workplace - the pronouns. So which is it?

[–] latexr 3 days ago

> I'm all for inclusive language but I thought that was a bridge too far.

Presumably you haven’t been living on “the other side” for a whole life. Try living decades in environments where you’re constantly devalued in little ways, and you too may grow to become resentful.

Now, maybe you were chastised, or maybe you were just asked politely and interpreted it as a reprimand. I wasn’t there, I can’t say, all I have is your side. But let’s say the person did chastise you. They could probably have been more polite about it, but how many times have they been polite before with no results? That’s maybe not your fault, but you did unwillingly contribute to that person’s exasperation that day.

All I’m saying is let’s have a little empathy towards others, even when they don’t have it towards us, because we all have days when we’re our best and days when we aren’t, and we don’t know what the other person is going through.

Edit: I want to thank the downvoters for not letting me forget HN has turned into a cesspool and spending long here isn’t healthy. This is the website where calling other people subhuman and cheering for their extermination is upvoted (I’m not referring to the parent comment, but something I’ve seen more than once) and calling for empathy and union is downvoted. With such a backwards inhumane cheering squad, it’s no wonder tech companies are what they are.

[–] abustamam 1 day ago

You are right that I am privileged and perhaps the term "chastised" is a bit heavy handed. But the fact that it was mentioned at all, politely or not, is bizarre to me.

Empathy is important in a workforce but there's a difference between empathy and just policing language for no discernable reason. I think the reason you were downvoted wasn't the call to empathy but it was the insinuation that I somehow was not being empathetic in my comment, which perhaps I was not being empathetic but it seems irrelevant to the topic at hand.

[–] latexr 23 hours ago

> But the fact that it was mentioned at all, politely or not, is bizarre to me.

Again, because you don’t have to deal with it constantly. Women are constantly being undermined.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91630773/theres-a-career-tax-on-...

> there's a difference between empathy and just policing language for no discernable reason.

And what I said in my comment is that I don’t know which happened to you, but that it’s important to understand that because you’re not suffering the everyday repercussions which are treated as “normal”, maybe you don’t really know which one it was either. That’s where the empathy comes in, it’s you reaching out to the person and talking about it, rather than just complaining about it on the internet.

> I think the reason you were downvoted wasn't the call to empathy

I was not referring to an isolated incident. In fact, I can fairly often predict when the worst people will come out to downvote and run (they never have the courage to comment). At this point I can assert with a good amount of confidence that HN has a severe dipshit problem.

> the insinuation that I somehow was not being empathetic in my comment

There was no such insinuation, but it is increasingly common on HN that people just read anything and foam at the mouth thinking they are being attacked. For a community which prides themselves on objectivity and correctness, there sure are a lot of assumptions and wrong interpretations.

> which perhaps I was not being empathetic but it seems irrelevant to the topic at hand.

As long as you believe being empathetic to a person who was affected by your words is irrelevant, you will be incapable of understanding the situation, seeing it for what it really is, and navigate it appropriately.