Usage Note: The nouns Latina, Chicana, and other words ending in -a in reference to women are common in American English, and many women prefer them over forms ending in -o when referring to themselves or to other women or girls. Although constructions such as She is a Latino and a group of Chicano women are grammatically correct in English (because English grammar does not require agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives the way Spanish and other Romance languages do), the use of a feminine ending with such words is a matter of personal choice. · Recently, the word Latinx has gained favor as a non-gender-specific alternative to Latino and Latina.