Sunday, December 27, 2009
Are cars male or female or something else?
It's quite confusing that their is no consensus on whether a car is male or female, or even something else. Of course that's a language issue. Let's take French: It's "la voiture" and "la Ferrari". Same in Italian with "la machina" and "la Ferrari". So if you look at latin languages a car seems to be female. In English it's all unclear, because there's no such differentiation. In German things get really complicated as you can expect. It's "das Auto", so neutral, neither male nor female. But it's "der Ferrari" or "der Mercedes", so male if you call a car by its (brand) name. And you can even find "die Limousine", female for the four door car. My language skills don't go much further so maybe somebody could drop in what other languages do with cars? Anyway it's interesting. And maybe this symbolizes that great cars are compounds of male and female virtues.
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2 comments:
I reckon it varies from car to car.
I drive a green Rover P6B, and I certainly wouldn't describe it as feminine, if it were human, its name would be Keith.. After several run ins with a van, cars and bikes, and having damaged or seriously damaged them - the little P6 took seemingly no damage (maybe it being stationary helped) - so we can only assume Keith is 6ft5 and built like a brick s### house.. But hes a good mate to have around, and never fails to do his job..
On the other hand, my mechanic has a red Jaguar e-type convertible, and it is most definitely female. It has mood swings, its particular about the type of fluids you put in it, it doesn't like the hot weather, sometimes it refuses to start and needs the fuel pump tickled, its fragile, has nice curves and if it were human, she would be called Susan, wear a white dress with red polka-dots, a scarf around the neck and a pair of sunglasses.
Every car is different, my brothers red 635CSi BMW is also female, but shes a very aggressive German female, who will quite happily do her job, but wont hesitate to slap you across the face and punish you financially if you do something wrong..
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