Weird Human Packbonding to things

cjaneway:

So, everyone in the Humans are Space Orcs and the Weird Human camps keep blogging about how humans always talk to everything, even inanimate objects. See a shopping bag toppling precariously? Hold out your hand and tell it to stay. See something threatening to roll off the edge of something, like a table, look at it balefully and growl: don’t you dare! 

What do aliens think about humans and their vehicles? Particularly the habit of referring to boats, cars, planes and everything else as a woman. Even women do it, as a nod to the ancient patriarchal societies that spawned these space orcs. 

Human: She’s beautiful, isn’t she?

Alien: Who? I don’t see a female member of your species.

Human: Eh, no, the ship.

Alien: The ship is beautiful, but why do you refer to it by the female pronoun?

Human: Old human languages would gender inanimate objects, and the neutral pronouns only appeared later, so I guess it stuck.

Alien: But why would inanimate objects need a gender? I mean, does it have to do with it’s shape? Do phallic shaped objects become male and diamond shaped objects female? 

Human: …

Alien: Or is it a cultural norm based on who used the object the most?

Human: ….

Alien: Oh! I see! It’s because of who discovered it first!

Human: How do you explain some languages gendering rocks?

Alien: Hllxxzichhht…. pardon my language. What is it then?

Human: I don’t know.

Alien: You don’t know?

Human: No

Alien: 

Hllxxzichhht! Humans!

New data entry proposed for the IHH (Intergalactic Human Handbook) for the subsections of languages, particularly the Germanic subsets: Humans using a language derived from the Germanic language tree (North-Western Hemisphere, look to page 284 for “Where the east starts and the west ends – a a summary of East/West conflict on Eart”) sometimes gender inanimate objects despite the object in question not having any connection to the human genitalia. Humans in general have no knowledge of why or how that quirk appeared in their languages, but appear to take great pleasure in using those quirks nonetheless.