In part, it’s a linguistic issue: Latinx just doesn’t translate to Spanish, some argued. A commenter from Ohio wrote that , if you’re a Spanish speaker, “the term Latinx reads like a thousand nails in a thousand blackboards.” Some readers in Latin America said it was an Anglicization that wasn’t relevant in their home countries. Another implied that the term is elitist, writing that the word Latinx “ostracizes all the speakers of Spanish who don’t have wealth or time to pontificate the ‘oppression’ of a language which at its very root genders everything.” In a very official poll on my personal Facebook page, some friends and family said that they’d never even heard of it.

So, should it be used at all?

Linguists have mixed feelings.

Kim Potowski, a professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in Spanish linguistics, tried to employ inclusive language in a forthcoming Spanish grammar book , but replacing the masculine “O” throughout overwhelmed her and her co-writer, Naomi L. Shin. “It came to a point where we said, ‘You know what, we’re not ready,’” she said. Maybe in the fourth or fifth edition of the book, she added, “we will have those X’s in there.”

“There is absolutely no consensus among linguists,” said Dr. Potowski.

Another scholar, Lourdes Torres, a professor of Latino studies at DePaul University in Chicago, argues that the word Latinx undermines hard-fought feminist battles. “In its attempt to be gender-inclusive,” she said, “one can argue that it’s gender-erasing of women who have fought for a long time to not just have Latino, but to have Latino/Latina, to make sure women are represented.”