I was amused today to discover that the Italian equivalent of the French Academy (which regulates the correct use of the language) has just been addressing the question of how to ensure gender-neutrality in language. This is a problem for any language in which all nouns are gendered, but even more so when historical habit means that you distinguish between male and female practitioners of an occupation. (For example: dottore or dottoressa.) Is it any cultural advance for women if the female suffix is dropped in such cases? Some have even suggested borrowing the neutral (very English) “Uh” sound to replace politically suspect vowels.* I suspect that this one could run and run.
*You learn something every day. I have discovered that this sound is actually called, by experts in phonetics, a “schwa”. Fancy that!