Friday, September 29, 2006

All about computers

A language instructor was explaining to her class that French nouns, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. "House" in French is feminine, "la maison". "Pencil" is masculine, "le crayon".

One puzzled student asked "What gender is a computer?" The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her French dictionary, so for fun she split the student into 2 groups, by gender, and asked them to decide whether "computer" should be a masculine or feminine noun. Both groups had to give 4 reasons for their recommendation.

The men's group decided that computers should be feminine (la computer) because:
1. No one but their creator understand 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
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your pay on accessories for it

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masuline (le computer) because:
1. In order to get their attention you have to turn them on
2. They have a lot of data but they are still clueless
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 realise that if you'd waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.

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