Latinx? Latino? Hispanic? A linguistics expert explains the confusion

Linguistic expert Jose Medina explains Latinx and what the debate is about.

The many pan-ethnic labels used to describe the group of people who trace their roots to Latin America or Spain -- terms like Hispanic, Latino, Latinx or Latine -- have left some confused, some angry and many people debating what word to use.

Hispanic and Latino remain the dominant terms to refer to people from this group, according to the Pew Research Center, but a term growing in the public consciousness is Latinx, a gender-neutral version of the masculine and feminine words for Latino and Latina.

But the term has been criticized by some Latinos and Latino organizations who call the term elitist and non-inclusive.

ABC News spoke with language researcher, author and TikTok sensation Dr. Jose Medina about why it's so hard to describe such a vast, complex group of people in a single term.