Rovers - He Or She? Options

[Tman]

I'm still confused about the gender of Spirit and Oppy! What the consent about? If Spirit female (so I think) then make it sense to keep quiet about her age and make she younger

No kidding! I would like to know which personal pronoun (she, her or he, his etc.) I have to use by Spirit's and Oppy's gender definitely?

[mike]

They're both genderless. Until we create machines that can enjoy sexual intercourse, they must be genderless.

[Deimos]

They're both genderless.  Until we create machines that can enjoy sexual intercourse, they must be genderless.

Hardly. "Gender" is originally and primarily (though certainly not exlusively) a grammatical term. In American, British, and I believe more general western European tradition, vessels of exploration are feminine. When the Russians go back to Mars, there may be masculine rovers. For now, each rover is surely"her".

Steady as she goes ...

[dvandorn]

Exactly -- just try telling the French that something must be able to have sex in order to have a gender-specific pronoun. In the Romance languages in general (and French in particular), every single noun in the launguage is assigned either male or female gender -- for instance, a pencil is male, a table is female, etc. The entire structure of the Romance languages depends upon each and every noun having either a male or female "identity." There is no such thing as a genderless pronoun in French.

And you're right, I think only the Russians (at least of the European societies) refer to a ship as "he."

Americans (and, to a lesser extent, the British) have embraced scientific rationalism to the extent that they've tried to distance the English language from such non-rational concepts as a female chair or a male shovel, and I'm sure that more Americans refer to Spirit or Opportunity as "it" than they do "him" or "her"... but there is still enough irrationality to our language that we can safely use feminine pronouns for the rovers.

-the other Doug