“We’re always talking about equality — and the truth is that language reveals the inequalities that exist in society at large,” said a Buenos Aires city judge, Elena Liberatori.

Last year, Judge Liberatori set off a controversy by issuing a ruling in which ordinarily gendered words were spelled with an “e” instead of the “a” or “o” that generally denote the feminine or the masculine in Spanish.

The quest to make Spanish less gendered is not limited to Argentina.

In the United States, for instance, some politicians and scholars, and even the Merriam-Webster dictionary, have embraced the word “Latinx." It is an alternative to Latino, the masculine form of the word used to encompass everyone as the default in Spanish.

Not everyone welcomes the change though.

The push for gender neutrality has also been met with staunch opposition around the world, including among the foremost experts on the Spanish language. The Royal Spanish Academy, which oversees the most authoritative dictionary in the language, regards the new formulations as an aberration.

What makes Argentina notable is how widely embraced the new forms have been not just among activists but also in academic and government spheres.