I was wondering after someone called his car a 'her', what do you call a car? As far as I know I've always called a car a he/him, she/her just sounds awkward to me.

edit: Hey, where's my poll?

I call her "her". Female,obiously. Odd,I know...

I call it Volvo, it is a car, not a person to me

There is however different cultures where car is like a family member, I have heard

In Finnish languages there is no masculine or feminine forms so it's a car for me.

Well it's got the exhaust pipe for a reason..

No female or masc gender for words ? illepall
WHY is my mother language so bloody difficult lol


I call a car a she, girls stand for beauty, pleasure, useful (sometimes ), need expensive maintance, need to fuel now and then ( ), .... It's just the comparison to me, dno if it's grammatical correct.

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

Well it's got the exhaust pipe for a reason..

Sure there is reason, without it engine would not run as amount of oxygen in cylinder would not be sufficient for more than few seconds if even that long so better to have exhaust pipe

A car is male, a bike is female.
If she's a BMW, she's two wheeled. If he is a BMW, he's four wheeled.

Vain

Quote from GianniC :

No female or masc gender for words ? illepall
WHY is my mother language so bloody difficult lol

it aint its just useless

All cars are male to me, I mean, cars ROAR when you rev them! They're beasts! Cars aren't delicate and cute..

Well okay, a Smart car is female.

Quote from (SaM) :

Well okay, a Smart car is female.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5292341112610385808
Still female?

Quote from Bosse :

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5292341112610385808
Still female?

maybe shemale illepall

well my dads got a garage so cars arent generally reffered to as men or women, but usually b****rds or w**kers or ar****les

There are plenty of feminine cars, the Audi TT, the Mazda MX-5 (sorry Tris), the MR2 etc etc, they all look pretty girlie.

In my mind, there's a difference between the gender of the car and whether the car is a "chick car".

Traditionally, I think most guys here in the US will refer to a beloved machine (car, bike, boat, etc.) as "her". However, I think other machines with which the person has little or no attachment are simply refered to as genderless.

Quote from danowat :

There are plenty of feminine cars, the Audi TT, the Mazda MX-5 (sorry Tris), the MR2 etc etc, they all look pretty girlie.

Wha??? Are you nuts? I can't stand the MX-5 bashing that is taking place in this forum!!! And, honestly, how can a girly car drift so nicely?

IMHO girlie cars are the Smart, the Citroen C2, Citroen C1, Toyota Aygo, Ford Ka, Nissan Micra (still laughing from Richard Hammond driving around in a pink one) etc.

OTOH masculine cars are Subaru Imprezas, Mitsubishi EVOs etc.

Its always she - unless its a muscle car - for me. Mind you, I regard most things as female :o Computers, cars. Not spanners or wrenches though.. That would be weird

In America, it is generally regarded that vehicles are female. We also like to name our cars. For example, my cars name is Esperanza.

I don't really refer to cars using a gender, but there are definitely masculine and feminine cars. A Dodge Viper is masculine, whereas an Alfa Romeo Berera is feminine. I still call cars "it" though.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Its always she - unless its a muscle car - for me. Mind you, I regard most things as female :o Computers, cars. Not spanners or wrenches though.. That would be weird

Quote from Wikipedia. :

Gender
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Gender (disambiguation).

The gender symbols used to denote a male or female organism. Derived from the astrological symbols of Mars and Venus.

In common usage, the word gender often refers to the sexual distinction between male and female. In the social sciences, "gender" emphasizes a social, cultural, or psychological dimension, in contrast to biological sex. The discipline of gender studies investigates and theorizes on the nature of gender as a social construct.

Some languages have a system of grammatical gender; while nouns may be classified as "masculine" or "feminine" in such languages, this is essentially a convention with little or no connection to their meaning. Likewise, a wide variety of phenomena have gendered characteristics ascribed to them, by analogy to male and female bodies (such as with the gender of connectors and fasteners) or due to social norms.

...social norms, with little or no connection

_aNgRy_aNglEI believe you regqrd most things a chance to curse at something

because in german there are 3 possibilities of translating "the", most of us have to assign a gender to a vehicle. So for most of the cars it would be male - and for bikes: I can't imagine any bike I assigned an other gender than female

i remember the chick from 5th gear got annoyed when some guy refered to a car as a female... (her name escapes me) vicky?

What is wrong with you people? You forgot one of the most girly cars ever. The new VW Beetle with the flower holder and flower rims.

I was going to call my car Honey, but the car sounds way too manly. However I catch myself saying "come on baby" when I need the power. It works, too!

My car? A 2002 Ford Fiesta (1.25 Zetec 16v). My first car

mostly it as in "das auto" but also often he as in "der wagen"
for bikes its almost exclusively it as in "das moped"

Quote from GianniC :

No female or masc gender for words ? illepall
WHY is my mother language so bloody difficult lol

theyve got 16 cases ... not what youd call an easy language

Quote from danowat :

There are plenty of feminine cars, the Audi TT, the Mazda MX-5 (sorry Tris), the MR2 etc etc, they all look pretty girlie.

a mr2 is girly ?