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LaRoza
August 11th, 2008, 11:50 PM
I once asked a French person if the word for "computer" in French was male or female.

He didn't know.

So which is it? In languages that have genders for everything, is a computer male or female (or neuter for those langauges with that)

EDIT, if you are going to post a joke, make sure it isn't an old one like this one: http://computerjokes.net/165.htm (and others on that site)

Steveway
August 11th, 2008, 11:51 PM
In german it is male: der Computer.

swoll1980
August 11th, 2008, 11:54 PM
Male, or female? :confused:

abgemacht
August 11th, 2008, 11:55 PM
Der Computer is masculine in German

Edit: aww...too slow

sisco311
August 11th, 2008, 11:59 PM
In Romanian, it's neuter: un calculator/două calculatoare

no gender in Hungarian: számítógép

MaxIBoy
August 12th, 2008, 12:03 AM
In Spanish, Computadora is feminine.

Teg_Navanis
August 12th, 2008, 12:06 AM
In French, it's masculine: un ordinateur.

RedPandaFox
August 12th, 2008, 12:21 AM
I call my computer male, same as my car (although I call him Sheila). But my laptop I refer to as female.

Superkoop
August 12th, 2008, 12:22 AM
...I thought my computer was a machine, and I didn't know it could reproduce either...I should let my laptop sit next to my desktop at night, maybe I would wake up with a baby pocket PC! :D

Seriously though, it's a machine to me, and that's what I refer to it as; neither male nor female.

LaRoza
August 12th, 2008, 12:45 AM
...I thought my computer was a machine, and I didn't know it could reproduce either...I should let my laptop sit next to my desktop at night, maybe I would wake up with a baby pocket PC! :D

Seriously though, it's a machine to me, and that's what I refer to it as; neither male nor female.

English doesn't have genders anymore (Old English had three, and Old English had many complexities that are not in Modern English), so it is meaningless to us.

Many languages have genders for everything (Hindi does it the mostly sanely that I have seen)

Joeb454
August 12th, 2008, 12:48 AM
My laptop has a male hostname (a pain if I want to mount it...)

My car is called Mildred ;)

swoll1980
August 12th, 2008, 12:51 AM
My car is called Mildred ;)

Is it a Geo Metro, or something?

Gadgetech
August 13th, 2008, 03:11 PM
In Spanish it's El Computador (male) or La Computadora (female) depending upon what country you're in.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/computadora

odiseo77
August 13th, 2008, 03:19 PM
In Spanish it's El Computador (male) or La Computadora (female) depending upon what country you're in.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/computadora

Yep, and there's also "ordenador" (male), but I think it's only used in Spain; in America it's "computadora" (female) or "computador" (male).

JillSwift
August 13th, 2008, 03:30 PM
Yep, and there's also "ordenador" (male), but I think it's only used in Spain; in America it's "computadora" (female) or "computador" (male).What part of America is that? In my parent's house it's "¡Esa máquina maldita!" :)

kirsis
August 13th, 2008, 03:37 PM
It's a masculine name in Latvian - dators

Unfortunately for them, a lot of the systems I've set up had feminine hostnames :)

hufferd
August 13th, 2008, 03:39 PM
My laptop has a male hostname (a pain if I want to mount it...)

My car is called Mildred ;)

My PC is named Oscar :)

and I had a car ----- (don't have it anymore it bit the dust.) or maybe it didn't LOL

Its name was Christine (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085333/trivia) for good reason LOL it was not a 1958 Plymouth Fury. But I loved that car it was a 1994 Cadillac with over 250,000 miles on it I drove it for another 4 years after I bought the thing it was great I swear it got better with age :) When I bought it from a customer of mine the doors would lock them selfs
Issues sometimes used to fix them self. Sometimes Im sure when that car was mad at me it would run different LOL

Now I miss Christine :(

cespinal
August 13th, 2008, 03:54 PM
In Spanish, Computadora is feminine.

Yes but there are also masculine therms and some cultural-dialectic diferences:

Latin people rather use La Computadora over other masculine therms such as El Computador or El ordenador.

Spanish people will go for El ordenador which means "the organizer" (?????????)

For laptops, we, the alienated latins, love using "laptop", although there are other mispelled therms derivated form this word...engrish... you just gotta love that!!

Spanish people will rather go for "La portatil" (femine) or "el portatil" (masculine) which means literally, "the portable one" as a contraction to avoid saying "the portable computer" all the time...

and yes... we spanish speakers have always a hard time on simplifying things...

Giorgio tani
August 13th, 2008, 03:56 PM
In Italy the computer is male "il computer" or "l'elaboratore elettronico" (very rare, computer is more common).

BTW, curiously in Italian a car "l(a)'auto" or "la macchina" is female, and a generic machinery may be called as female "una macchina" ("macchina" here means something mechanical, not specifically a car) but the very same piece of machinery can be also called as male "un macchinario" (slightly less common).

mali2297
August 13th, 2008, 04:04 PM
In Swedish, there are two grammatical genders: common (utrum) and neuter (neutrum). The gender of a computer (en dator) is common.

piousp
August 13th, 2008, 04:05 PM
Yes but there are also masculine therms and some cultural-dialectic diferences:

Latin people rather use La Computadora over other masculine therms such as El Computador or El ordenador.

Spanish people will go for El ordenador which means "the organizer" (?????????)

For laptops, we, the alienated latins, love using "laptop", although there are other mispelled therms derivated form this word...engrish... you just gotta love that!!

Spanish people will rather go for "La portatil" (femine) or "el portatil" (masculine) which means literally, "the portable one" as a contraction to avoid saying "the portable computer" all the time...

and yes... we spanish speakers have always a hard time on simplifying things...


For me, "laptop" is "La portatil" which have the tacit subject "Computadora (la)" which is female.

tarps87
August 13th, 2008, 04:17 PM
I think it would be male. If you think about it you have male and female connectors, the male one plugs into the female one (I can't figure out why its that way round ;)) You plug all peripherals like monitors and keyboards into the computer so that makes your keyboard female and pc male.
Oh and wireless keyboards are aliens form Betelgeuse

chucky chuckaluck
August 13th, 2008, 04:38 PM
gender for objects seems, at the very least, a bit lonely. btw, is it 'le', or 'la' tranny?

brunovecchi
August 13th, 2008, 04:42 PM
In Argentina (we speak spanish), it's feminine. "La computadora".

Steveway
August 13th, 2008, 04:42 PM
gender for objects seems, at the very least, a bit lonely. btw, is it 'le', or 'la' tranny?

Since it is die Transmission in german it most propably is la transmission.It is only confusing for you english-born people because you don't have genders like we have in most other languages.

Stan_1936
August 13th, 2008, 04:51 PM
...my car (although I call him Sheila).....

Haha! wait...what?

joshdudeha
August 13th, 2008, 04:58 PM
I don't think LaRoza was asking if a computer was male or female, but asto whether Computer in french is a masculine word, or a feminine word.

I'm pretty sure it's masculine though (:

init1
August 13th, 2008, 05:07 PM
I don't see the point of assigning genders to objects.

joshdudeha
August 13th, 2008, 05:10 PM
Do you mean in language? Or in general.

I'd prefer them not to do it in languages like French.. complicates things if you want to learn it XD

And, like they always assign like female to boats and things like that... it's tradition I Guess.

odiseo77
August 13th, 2008, 06:09 PM
I don't see the point of assigning genders to objects.

It depends on the language you speak. Some languages assign genders to objects and others don't (it's simply a linguistic rule).

gunashekar
August 13th, 2008, 06:18 PM
Many languages have genders for everything (Hindi does it the mostly sanely that I have seen)
In my opinion, a language that assigns a gender for each inanimate object is stupid if not insane, though some consider it romantic. I don't romance with keyboards and monitors or laptops for that matter.

happysmileman
August 13th, 2008, 06:19 PM
Male in Irish "ríomhaire"

Obviously it's male, it can do maths (it wasn't on that page you linked to and I didn't want to look through the website to check if it was on any other page)

jeyaganesh
August 13th, 2008, 06:42 PM
Computer is a non-living thing. So there is no gender classification for computer. :-({|=

DMcA
August 13th, 2008, 07:05 PM
Seriously, are there this many english speaking people who haven't ever studied a foreign language?

brunovecchi
August 13th, 2008, 09:04 PM
In my opinion, a language that assigns a gender for each inanimate object is stupid if not insane, though some consider it romantic. I don't romance with keyboards and monitors or laptops for that matter.

If a language can be "stupid" and "insane", then why can't an inanimate object have a gender?

LaRoza
August 13th, 2008, 09:20 PM
In my opinion, a language that assigns a gender for each inanimate object is stupid if not insane, though some consider it romantic. I don't romance with keyboards and monitors or laptops for that matter.

Well, we all can't be as complex as Tamil ;)



Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (tiṇai) - the "rational" (uyartiṇai), and the "irrational" (aḵṟiṇai) - which include a total of five classes (paal, which literally means 'gender'). Humans and deities are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animals, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (paal) - masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific, gender-neutral, singular form. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes (paal) - irrational singular and irrational plural. As the example in the table indicates, the paal is often indicated through suffixes.

Canis familiaris
August 13th, 2008, 09:49 PM
In my opinion, a language that assigns a gender for each inanimate object is stupid if not insane, though some consider it romantic. I don't romance with keyboards and monitors or laptops for that matter.

I feel very ashamed when Indians bash up their own National Language. I know for the very fact that each region in India has its own language but Hindi is the "official language" and will remain so. If you really dont want to learn the language please dont do so, but do not bash or insult it.
How would you feel if I say Tamil is <insert derogatory statement here />
Or that a language with funny script sucks.
BTW My native state language is Oriya not Hindi, So I have no biased opinion.

EDIT: Oh there wasn't a direct reference to Hindi. Somehow I thought that post seemed to imply Hindi.
But the comment still applies.

spupy
August 14th, 2008, 12:25 AM
In Bulgarian all things have gender. The gender is decided solely by the ending of the word. (SOOO much easier than German! :) )
"Computer" happens to end in a consonant, so it is masculine.
"Ubuntu" is neuter.

LaRoza
August 14th, 2008, 12:27 AM
In Bulgarian all words have gender. The gender is decided by the ending of the word. (SOOO much easier than German! :) )
Computer happens to end in a consonant, so it is masculine.
Ubuntu is neuter.

What determines if it is feminine?

zmjjmz
August 14th, 2008, 12:39 AM
I believe it's male in Hebrew.

spupy
August 14th, 2008, 12:53 AM
What determines if it is feminine?

In Bulgarian, singular words ending in a consonant are masculine. Ending in "у","е","о","ю" - neuter (these are u, e, o, yu in english). Ending in "а" - feminine.
This is roughly; of course there are some rules about that, but since it is my native language I don't know them as rules.

LaRoza
August 14th, 2008, 01:14 AM
I believe it's male in Hebrew.

Ouch. I hope no one goes around trimming cables...


In Bulgarian, singular words ending in a consonant are masculine. Ending in "у","е","о","ю" - neuter (these are u, e, o, yu in english). Ending in "а" - feminine.
Thanks. It just seemed weird as posted before, (neuter and male) and since it was based on endings, I couldn't figure out the rule as one had a non-vowel at the end, and other other a vowel.



This is roughly; of course there are some rules about that, but since it is my native language I don't know them as rules.
What? You aren't as infants given sheets of paper outlining grammatical rules?

Der Alte
August 14th, 2008, 02:18 AM
In my opinion, a language that assigns a gender for each inanimate object is stupid if not insane, though some consider it romantic. I don't romance with keyboards and monitors or laptops for that matter.

Well in my opinion, a language that

-Has no grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, etc)
-Only has two grammatical numbers, plural and singular
-Has no grammatical genders (feminine, masculine, neutral - this doesn't refer to the biological genders in any way, so I don't see what's so weird about it)
-Has no tu-vos distinction
-Has a primitive tense system (seriously, 13 tenses and only 4 supportive verb formations)
-Overemphasises the passive verb formation (with the same supportive verb formations that are used with the tenses)

Is primitive. Coincidentally, English is the only language I can think of that has all of those properties.

adamogardner
August 14th, 2008, 02:25 AM
What determines if it is feminine?

the nature of the thing thats built in. I'm guessing that different languages are similar in what they identify as being fem. or masc. proving something i can't quite word right now. But like I said, I'm surmising so I may stand corrected.

Der Alte
August 14th, 2008, 02:28 AM
the nature of the thing. I'm guessing that different languages are similar in what they identify as being fem. or masc. But like I said, I'm surmising so I may stand corrected.

Well, actually nouns are assigned genders differently in different langauges. For example, in German, a book is das Buch, which is neutral gender, while in Russian, it's Книга (kniga), which is feminine. English is actually the only language I know of that doesn't use grammatical genders.

fissionmailed
August 14th, 2008, 02:38 AM
I normally refer to my computer as that rotten *******.

LaRoza
August 14th, 2008, 02:40 AM
(just my observations)



-Has no grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, etc)

They exist, but we don't decline them. We have the cases, we just don't decline words (except for pronouns).

Old English had a slew of cases and complex declensions. It slowly disappeared over time. I think that happens a lot. Sanskrit had many cases, including locative, but Hindi only has 2 (nominative, and oblique. Oblique is "everything else", so it isn't hard). Marathi has five I thing and retains the locative case.



-Only has two grammatical numbers, plural and singular

Old English and some modern languages have three, singular, dual and plural.



-Has no grammatical genders (feminine, masculine, neutral - this doesn't refer to the biological genders in any way, so I don't see what's so weird about it)

Old English had three genders but that was lost over time.



-Has no tu-vos distinction

We have that, we just don't use it. I actually like that distinction. In English, we have to use extra words to show respect, whereas in some languages there are ways of being respectful without using extra words. Hindi takes this to a new level with three words for "you" with levels of respect/intimacy.



-Has a primitive tense system (seriously, 13 tenses and only 4 supportive verb formations)

Complex verbs are the bane of learning a language! Latin, Old English, etc are loaded with that.

Hindi's verbs are better than any language's I studied so far (except for the minor gender thing, but that is simple).



Is primitive. Coincidentally, English is the only language I can think of that has all of those properties.
One thing I think English lacks that is big is a universal word for "he/she/it". Hindi (and I assume some other Indic languages) have this. There is no word for "he" or "she" thus making statements less biased.



Well, actually nouns are assigned genders differently in different langauges. English is actually the only language I know of that doesn't use grammatical genders.
I can't find another, but there has to be another with that.

lisati
August 14th, 2008, 02:46 AM
Well in my opinion, a language that

-Has no grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, etc)
-Only has two grammatical numbers, plural and singular
-Has no grammatical genders (feminine, masculine, neutral - this doesn't refer to the biological genders in any way, so I don't see what's so weird about it)
-Has no tu-vos distinction
-Has a primitive tense system (seriously, 13 tenses and only 4 supportive verb formations)
-Overemphasises the passive verb formation (with the same supportive verb formations that are used with the tenses)

Is primitive. Coincidentally, English is the only language I can think of that has all of those properties.
It depends.. There are a handful of remnants of other languages which have influenced English over the years, e.g. lion/lioness and actor/actress are examples of gender-spcific, he/she/it vs. him/her/it are reminiscent of the grammatical cases

chucky chuckaluck
August 14th, 2008, 02:52 AM
i got it! le-la tranny.

dominiquec
August 14th, 2008, 02:56 AM
Strangely enough, I thought this was a followup to the "La Roza -- Male or Female?" thread. ;-)

Anyway, "computer" doesn't have a gender in Filipino, unless we're using the borrowed Spanish word, which we hardly ever do.

Der Alte
August 14th, 2008, 03:01 AM
La Roza, I understand Old English wasn't nearly as primitive, but supposedly we're talking about the currently in use, degenerated version, which is just about as primitive as a language can get. Also, has anyone else noticed how English has no distinction between second person singular and plural pronouns? Why oh why can't internet be in Latin instead :mad:

fissionmailed
August 14th, 2008, 03:03 AM
i got it! le-la tranny.

Computers don't have trannies!

kirsis
August 14th, 2008, 09:47 AM
La Roza, I understand Old English wasn't nearly as primitive, but supposedly we're talking about the currently in use, degenerated version, which is just about as primitive as a language can get.

Well, from all the languages I've studied, English seems to be the simplest by far. However, I think this is beneficial for it :) Easy to learn yet versatile enough. What's the point in having a very complex language for the sake of complexity?

sisco311
August 14th, 2008, 10:33 AM
English is actually the only language I know of that doesn't use grammatical genders.

Hungarian does not have grammatical gender or a grammatical distinction between animate and inanimate.

starcannon
August 14th, 2008, 10:37 AM
The one on Startrek seemed to have a female voice most times, though it did have a male voice sometimes.

I'm guessing it varies from computer to computer; good thing to, otherwise where would umpc's come from?

Der Alte
August 14th, 2008, 10:56 AM
Hungarian does not have grammatical gender or a grammatical distinction between animate and inanimate.

A grammatical gender does not in any way imply whether an object is animate or inanimate, even though the grammatical gender of nouns denoting an animate object is likely to coincide with it's biological gender, although there are some exceptions, for example, while kitchen (die Küche) is in feminine, a girl (das Mädchen) is in neutral grammatical gender. This is purely a grammatical thing and has nothing to do with personification of inanimate objects. It adds complexity and profoundness to the language, in a way making it less stale. Like grammatical cases, it allows for a more accurate description using less words.

LitusMayol
August 14th, 2008, 11:03 AM
In catalan is always male: "un ordinador/ un computador"

In spanish, in despite of what someone has said before, i can be both: "un ordenador/una computadora"

That kind of thing are always funny! (if you can, investigate about the word "car":
Catalan: un coxtxe (male)
Spanish: un coche (male)
French: une voiture (female)
...)

mali2297
August 14th, 2008, 12:45 PM
Well, from all the languages I've studied, English seems to be the simplest by far. However, I think this is beneficial for it :) Easy to learn yet versatile enough. What's the point in having a very complex language for the sake of complexity?

I agree, but I believe there is a German saying: Warum einfach, wenn es auch kompliziert geht?

lisati
August 14th, 2008, 12:48 PM
Computers don't have trannies!
Except perhaps in a museum.....(tranny being short for "transistor")

sharks
August 14th, 2008, 01:02 PM
its a ROBOT

LaRoza
August 14th, 2008, 01:34 PM
Except perhaps in a museum.....(tranny being short for "transistor")

Or transsexual

Der Alte
August 14th, 2008, 01:42 PM
I agree, but I believe there is a German saying: Warum einfach, wenn es auch kompliziert geht?

True.:) A complex language also allows you to express yourself in a more sophisticated manner. I think Latin is pretty much the ideal combination between sophistication and ease of learning. Everyone who speaks a European language (English and Finno-Ugric languages not included) should find it easy to learn, it's a bit more complex than modern day German, but not as complex as some Northwestern-Germanic or Slavic languages.

uberdonkey5
August 14th, 2008, 02:32 PM
O computador, is masculine in Portugal. I think most computers must be masculine cos pretty much they do as they're told unless you over-exploit them, and then they go crazy and completely mess you up.