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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

I do not understand why, as many answers as they received, none of them pointed out that almost all inanimate objects in English are referred to as female when given a gender. An English speaker would say "oh yeah that old table saw, she's gonna give you some problems" but never "he's going to give you some problems". "This is my new hunting rifle, isn't she a beauty?" never "isn't he a beauty".

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Pretty sure I’ve heard people use “he” more than “she” in parts of England, especially for tools and, I think, furniture (“see that table - squeeze him in there”). I would guess there is a gender role being attributed to the object.

Almost all can be referred to as female. I most often hear "it" rather than "she". The difference seems to be related to personal connection. If you think a device has a personality, you'll use she, otherwise you would use it.

Almost all can be referred to as female. I most often hear "it" rather than "she"

That's what I said, "when given a gender".

Why would they be given a gender anyway? If it's not some kind of self replicating dimorphous being that reproduces sexually it makes literally no sense.

Half of the world's languages have grammatical gender for inanimate objects. English is one of only a handful of Indo-European languages that don't. Giving inanimate objects gender doesn't have to make sense with regards to what maleness and femaleness mean in terms of human sexual dimorphism, it's just a part of how some languages developed. In French everything is male or female. In German things can be male, female, or neutral, but a table is always male.

What's a bit unusual is that in English nouns don't require gendered pronouns generally because we have a neutral impersonal pronoun "it" for things that don't have literal gender, and generally don't require gendered pronouns - except we sometimes gender them anyways, and that gendering generally follows some convention.

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