what gender is computer?

from another forum site:

"A Spanish 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 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 possible later retrieval! ; and

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

(No chuckling... this gets better!)

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (''el 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; and

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

The women won. "

funny stuff Charles

In fact I think that in spanish the term computer is a female noun: "la ordenadora" or "la computadora"!
The first term come from French and the second from English!
I think that it all comes down to the use of the word "calculator" which in spanish is "la calculadora", since computers are just advanced calculators they must have seen a relation

In my native language though the term is masculine: "o computador". But we also use feminine for calculator: "a calculadora"!


Good joke, in any case women will always win!

We rule!!

Just because the word ''top'' is mostly used laptop... desktop etc... doesn't mean the computer is masculine...
In reality mens are mostly attracted to it...That in itself gives us the real gender of computers...mine are all feminine ...
they all always have the last word...And many wives are jealous of their husband's computer...

I know mine is!


In latin languages all nouns are either male or female(that I can recall). There are no genderless nouns!

Good boys! Now what? Are you going to have sex with your computers? And after that, maybe somebody will claim the right to marry a computer and so on.

Is there any chance of existing homosexual computers? and eunucos?

Now think about it, if the manufacturers intended PC's to have gender would they not call it sex drive instead of disk drive?? (I won't even speculate about a floppy vs HD) ....

For a second I thought you wrote 'nuns'!

I've always considered computers inanimate, as in ..."Effen thing don't work!!!"