Who decides which gender?
When a new word is introduced into the Spanish language, who or what decides what it is to be and which gender to assign? I also wonder what criteria they use for the latter since often it's the exact opposite to that used in France. (eg: l'ordenateur (m), la comutadora (f); el coche, la voiture etc etc).
Anyone shed any light on the matter?
Muchas gracias/merci beaucoup.
8 Answers
It is an interesting question, and I've got what I think it is an interesting answer. Many several linguists and psychologists have been very interested in this, and one of the many studies conducted (I guess) in this respect is very revealing.
Different European languages, even though they share a common ancestor, have different genders for different words. E.g. Turm (tower) is masculine in German , but feminine in Spanish, and "Mädchen" (daughter, female friend) is neuter in German. Anyway, the study I'm recalling was wondering how random these genders were, so they came up with a list of random words with no meaning, and they ask several natives from different countries to guess what the gender was. The surprising result is that there were very few discrepancies in natives' choices of gender -very little indeed. However, one particular word could be clearly feminine for over 95% of Germans, while being masculine to over 95% of Spaniards. Whatever the mechanism involved in the selection of gender seems to be deeply intertwined with the language itself, so useless as genders are, they seem to be an intimate part of the way speakers perceive the world.
Bare in mind that the choices made by a German person (to continue with the analogy) are as illogical to a Spanish-speaker as they can be to you, and vice-versa. Don't forget that ships are always "she" in English, while they tend to be "he" in Spanish. 
In Spain, it is el ordenador, not la computadora, so it may not be as "opposite" as you think.
Let's make this clear: the RAE, the French Academy and other similar institutions do not decide what the gender of a word is. They carefully study how educated speakers and writers use the language, and then they write books about it. When natives's rules are not consistent, these institutions try to arbitrate what it is considered (by them) the correct usage of the language. If natives ignore the rules they have written, and they continue to do so until it becomes mainstream, these academics release a new edition with the new rules... set by native speakers.
These dictionaries and grammars are nevertheless a good summary of how the most educated natives speak and write, and at the same time, they standardize spelling and orthographic rules so all written literature is (fairly) logical and consistent. The orthography is actually the only real thing they have created (to a certain extent), the only thing they do really control (luckily for us!)
The architect decides everything
I was actually told about the gender differences between French and Spanish by a frenchman who lives in Spain. He says that most, although not all, are different.
Odd. That's the opposite of my experience (I'm not French but I do have a working knowledge of French). Given the huge number of cognates in Spanish/French (that come from Latin) and given that the gender is Spanish/French is usually whatever it was in Latin, I would expect the genders to be the same (I don't know what the "usually" do with nouns that are neuter in Latin [but Lazarus probably does]).
Hi wenc3 - I was actually told about the gender differences between French and Spanish by a frenchman who lives in Spain. He says that most, although not all, are different.
Hi dewclaw too - please could you let me know what "the architect" means and where is he/she/it located or can you just point me to something on the net or a phrase for googling?
Many thanks to both of you.
Irrespective of how the gender of nouns is/was established, who did/does it or why, I think we all agree that assigning a sexual characteristic to any object is not ... intelligent, productive, helpful, reflective of reality, intuitive, etc. and is truly subjective. It never fails to amaze me that a horse-cart is masculine while the horse may be neuter even though the horse is a mare with a foal tagging along 
In Spain, it's the RAE (Real Academia de la Lengua Espanola - with a squiggle over the n) in Madrid that creates new words and assigns gender. However, there is also a group of academics who form the Instituto Cervantes and their mission is to preserve the integrity of the Spanish language worldwide. It is probable that either or both these institutions determine gender. However, which criteria they use is not clear at present.
