Earlier Bobyoungbalt commented on the advantage or otherwise of being able to cleary indicate gender in English:
In reply to:
Now that we have had a good bit of discussion, which I have enjoyed, about the wierdness of grammatical gender, I have to put in a plug for clearly defined gender.
The lack of any indication of gender in 99% of cases in modern English is perhaps a shortcoming. In situations when it may be desirable to indicate gender, you usually have to resort to some sort of periphrasis, often clumsy.
When I was living in Italy, I remember being frustrated that the ambiguity present in English was not available when I made the statement that I was "going out to dinner with a friend". Sometimes I want the listener be left wondering whether my 'friend' was male of female! In italian you have to say "la mia amica" or "il mio amico" , indicating female or male respectively.
Conversely, I found it very strange to use the masculine plural "amici" to indicte a mixed gender group.
