The Spanish Lesson
A Spanish language teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are either masculine or feminine. She explained as follows:
House is ‘la casa’ and feminine,
Pencil is ‘el lapiz’ and therefore masculine.
One of her students asked: ‘What gender is computer?’
Instead of supplying them with the answer, the teacher first split her class into two groups, one male and the other female. Then she asked her pupils to decide for themselves whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group had to give four reasons for its decision.
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 men.
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 earnings on accessories.
Wait for it – it gets better!
The women’s group decided that computer should be a masculine word, el computador, for the following reasons:
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 have committed yourself to one of them, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.
The women won.
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