Computers - Male or Female ?

[I1]

A French teacher was explaining to her class that in French, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. "House" is feminine -"la maison", "Pencil" is masculine - "le crayon."

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 feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.

The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer"), 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 immediate retrieval later;

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

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("le computer"), 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;

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

[M]

le / la computer?!! What's wrong with 'un ordinateur'? You'll be getting a visit from the boys from L'Académie Française - and they play rough!

LOL: Malcolm

[Dick Smith]

Apparently (and for once) le/la computer was NOT turned down by the Academie Française - it was IBM just after WW2. They just 'localised' the English term in most countries, but in France it sounded like 'Con' and 'pute', so they changed it. I read that in 'Sixty Million Frenchmen' so it must be true...

I have also heard that the original Brabham racing cars were to have been called "MRD" (Motor Racing Developments) but that came out as 'emmerder' and the Mazda MR2 had the same problem.

[Jonzjob]

"I have also heard that the original Brabham racing cars were to have been called "MRD" (Motor Racing Developments) but that came out as 'emmerder' and the Mazda MR2 had the same problem."

The basic difference Dick is that with the Mazda it's so true. As far as PCs are concerned they are about as friendly as a cornered rat!

I was a hardware engineer on mainframes for 20 years and I would rather spend a week on a pig of a problem on them than 5 minutes on a PC. I'm convinced that 1 is 'une ordinator'

John (wots just got his PC to share with his laptop after several weeks!)