October 20, 2005 Issue

La/El Spanish Computer

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, that
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 a 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 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.

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.
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.

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