Masculine or Feminine?

[Jemisa]

A teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.'
'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.'

A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'?'

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two
groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer' should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora'), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself
spending half your salary on accessories for it.

(THIS GETS BETTER!)

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ('el computador'), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model.

The women won.

[DTCwordfan]

Q. How can you tell if a blonde has been using your computer?
A. The joystick is wet.

Q: How can you tell if a blonde's been using the computer?
A: There's white-out on the screen.

[Prudie]

My Rosetta Stone Spanish taught me computer is 'un ordenador' so I can't win :-(

[DTCwordfan]

presque le meme en francais - un ordinateur

[Prudie]

Merci DT, je n'apprendrais que le mot 'ordenador' alors

[beso]

Incidentally, Spanish has an official body that actually makes such decisions.

The Spanish computer is feminine. "La computadora".

[MarkRae]

There's very little logic to this. E.g. in French, a computer is masculine but a printer is feminine (une imprimante), a spreadsheet is masculine (un tableur), a calculator is feminine (une calculatrice) etc...

[Marijn]

Does anyone know the Lee Mack joke, along these lines, about the French for custard?

[cojones]

not wishing to be pedantic, but computer in Spanish is "ordenador".