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Dave Glover "Down Under (Oz)"

Webdev, Visual Studio, Mobility, Windows, Security, Media Center and Gadgets:-)
What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-)

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that, in Spanish unlike in 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 each of them to decide for themselves whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun.  Each group was asked to give 4 reasons for a recommendation.

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

  1. No one but their Creator understands their 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.
  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 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.
  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.

    The women won.   :-)

Published Monday, August 08, 2005 11:22 PM by dglover

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Comments

# re: What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 8:59 AM

haha ;)
Great!

Mikael Söderström

# What Sex is Your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) (thanks to Dave Glover) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 9:04 AM

Alan Ferrandiz Langley's Blog

# What Sex is Your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) (thanks to Dave Glover) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 9:05 AM

Alan Ferrandiz Langley's Blog

# re: What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 9:21 AM

What a load of old codswallop.

Pete Y

# re: What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 9:44 AM

This is funny Dave ... it's about time posts on MSDN were a bit more laid back. It's good to know someone besides Robert Scoble has a sense of humour.

MoneyMagic698

# re: What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 12:48 PM

This has gone around the 'net in various forms for a while. Definitely cute.

The funny thing is that 'computer' can actually be either gender in Spanish, depending on which word you use. 'Ordenador' is masculine; 'computadora' is feminine.

Dan Glick

# re: What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 6:13 PM

OK, take this sentence:

Woman without her man is nothing.

It's missing punctuation, of course. Now how do you suppose a room of people would choose to punctuate? A recent experiment was very revealing about ingrained thought processes.

Men punctuated this way:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

Women punctuated this way:

Woman--without her, man is nothing.

Quite amazing, isn't it? :)

Steve Riley

# re: What Sex is your Computer? Fun/Silly:-) @ Monday, August 08, 2005 7:13 PM

lol, yeah, this was gratuitous posting but having watched the world news last night figured we could all do with something international to make us smile... Have a great day!! Cheers Dave

dglover

# This is Pakistan » Blog Archive » What Gender is Computer? @ Saturday, July 22, 2006 8:50 AM

PingBack from http://thisispakistan.wordpress.com/2006/06/22/what-gender-is-computer/

This is Pakistan » Blog Archive » What Gender is Computer?

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