Female in Russian, because the word machine/машина ends with A, and so any machine, from tattoo gun to steam engine is female gendered. I always thought French and German worked in somewhat similar manner?
It is die Waschmaschine. and a Steam Engine ist die Dampfmaschine. And it is a very straight foreard naming convention. Just add what kind of machine it is to the front of the noun.
I didn't learn of any rhyme or reason to it in German when I took classes on it. In fact, in a few cases, the gender changes the meaning of the word. Der See und die See, for example. One means lake and the other means sea/ocean.
OMG, I've been doing my Duolingo lessons and never realised that they had different meanings, I just thought Germans used one word for all bodies of water 😭
i don't recall there being any rhyme or reason to gender in german, but it's been many years since i studied. i do remember that the gender of any word like ____-machine would be whatever the gender is for machine.
Native German speaker here, can confirm yes, there are some patterns but mostly the genders are pretty random; but a Waschmaschine is feminine because a Maschine is feminine, yes
The only actual rule I'm aware of is diminutives (i.e. words ending in -chen or -lein) always being neuter (das). This is also the reason why it's das Mädchen (girl) and das Fräulein.
The rest is arbitrary, and sometimes there's even regional variations.