Spanish grammar is having a very public argument, and Mexico sits near the centre of it. The flashpoint is the humble masculine plural: in traditional Spanish, a mixed group of men and women is described with the male form — "amigos" covers "friends," "todos" covers "everyone." Critics have long argued this makes women linguistically invisible, and politicians in Mexico began doubling up their plurals to compensate, greeting crowds with "amigas y amigos" instead of the single collective noun.
From there, workarounds multiplied. Online, people started swapping the gendered "o" ending for an "@" sign — "querid@s amig@s" — treating the symbol as a wild card that could stand for either "o" or "a." A variant using "x" ("amigxs") followed. Both are cyber-era solutions that fall apart the moment you try to say them out loud, which is where the third option came in.
Borrowing a page from the gender-neutral pronoun movement in the English-speaking world — where "they" and "we" never had this problem in the first place — advocates of "lenguaje inclusivo" settled on "e" as a pronounceable neutral ending. Groups become "les amigues" instead of "los amigos," "we all" turns into "todes," and "nosotros" gives way to "nosotres." The trend appeared not just in Mexico but across the Spanish-speaking world, as the region picked up and adapted a broader social shift it has long absorbed from abroad.
The referee in all this is the Real Academia Española (RAE), the institution widely regarded as the authority on correct Spanish. It has refused to endorse any of it, arguing that doubling plurals or substituting "@," "x," or "e" is unnecessary because the masculine plural "o" already functions as linguistically gender-neutral. The RAE stood by this position in 2018 after appointing a panel of two men and two women to study the question — and has since been accused of anti-feminism on social media for its stance. Where the debate lands is genuinely uncertain; even the traditionally stuffy Academy has loosened up considerably in recent years, so its resistance carries some weight.
Why should a traveller care? Because this isn't an academic squabble — it plays out in signage, menus, political speeches, university campuses, and everyday conversation in Mexico. You'll hear "las y los" from officials and see "bienvenides" or "todes" in progressive spaces, while older speakers and formal institutions stick to conventional grammar. Neither is wrong; they simply mark different registers and generations. Knowing the context helps you read the room, avoid accidental gaffes, and understand why a locally written sign might look ungrammatical when it's actually deliberate. If you're practising your Spanish on a trip, the safest route is the standard forms the RAE endorses — but don't be surprised when locals in Mexico City or Guadalajara reach for something newer.
Full story via Mexperience.
