French Language

A language instructor was explaining to her class 
that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are 
grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. 

"House," in French, is feminine-"la maison." 
"Pencil," in French, is masculine-"le crayon." 
One puzzled student asked, "What gender is computer?" 
The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her 
French dictionary. So for fun she split the class into two 
groups appropriately enough, by gender and asked them to 
decide whether "computer" should be a masculine or feminine noun. 
Both groups were required to give four 
reasons for their 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 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 retrireview 
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you 
find yourself spending half your pay check on accessories for it. 
 
The women's group, however, concluded that computers 
should be masculine ("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 
realize that if you'd waited a little longer, you 
could have gotten a better model.