A Spanish Teacher (this works for French and Italian too) 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 computadora”), 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.

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; and
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.

I expected a little more masculine solidarity (no innuendo intended) from Mr I. Mrs La Bobbit made me decide that the female was more deadly than the male. I've gone off the the, 'Eeee we're all dick heads us blokes', approach now that there's all those ladettes gobbing on the pavement and racing off the traffic lights.

Smug bastard says: It's neither... It's 'ordenador', oh, and it's masculine.

Oi you smug get! I was talking about the principal of verbs having genders not the 'traduction directe' and incidentally, its
ordinateur not ordenador. Which by the way is feminine (une ordinateur) [sits back even more smugly]

I thought this was going to be a thread about Zippos.

Them gadgies who live in caravans with 189 cousins each and talk in a 'oirish' accent??

As resident cunning linguist on here, Mr I, i must point out that my reply referred to the Spanish translation of 'computer', and must regrettably inform you that the French noun 'ordinateur' is indeed masculine and not feminine as you state.

If it were feminine, it would be 'ordinatrice.'

Bisous, TFC