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Fem. polyglots: Too few or camera shy? | ||
Tags: Female Polyglot | Youtube Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
 Mae Trilingual Octoglot Pro Member Germany Joined 4990 days ago 299 posts - 499 votes  Speaks: German*, SpanishC2*, Swiss-German*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, ItalianB2, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Swedish Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 65 03 April 2012 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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What a solid objection! You are absolutely right...
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 65 03 April 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I doubt that there is ONE reason. Both culture and tradition play a role too. Women my generation were taught not to put themselves forward. Younger women may be concerned about unwanted attention. And in countries like mine noone, man or woman are supposed to brag.And just saying " I am good at this" is considered bragging. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4621 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 11 of 65 03 April 2012 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the reason is the same as why women are not as interesting in collecting things. Posting videos of all the languages one knows shows, to some extent at least, that one sees one's languages as a collection. I don't know why women are less interested in such things, but I wouldn't see that as a disadvantage for women.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 65 03 April 2012 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe learning languages is more of a male interest, who knows? There aren't that many clips with a woman solving the Rubik's cube/teaching tunes on the five-stringed banjo/doing close up magic/doing celebrity impersonations/guiding the viewer through an online strategy game/etc.,nor are there that many males posting videos about fashion/gossip/shopping/relations/etc. (not that I'm a fanatic follower of those topics...).
One can't force people to post videos on Youtube. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 13 of 65 03 April 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
My younger daughter has been spending a lot of time on youtube lately watching videos about cosmetics and nail polish. Apparently, many young women making those videos have "ginormous" collections of nail polish, far in excess of anything they could ever use. So, perhaps women are not averse to collecting things, but because they are more likely to collect shoes than stamps, men may not even realize that the collector bug can thrive in women just as well. Women are certainly no strangers to foreign languages. I am not certain, but I suspect that at least in my time you would find more women than men enrolled in various foreign language programs. Among my older daughter's high school friends, I hear of more girls who are into languages. There has never been a shortage of women teaching foreign languages at all levels, and many of them know more than one foreign language. It is possible, however, that there are fewer women among the "obsessive" polyglots. I don't really know, but I have a suspicion that a woman with a talent and interest in languages may learn several and slow down, making those languages part of a reasonably balanced life, where a man might think that learning as many as possible in one's lifetime is the only life worth living. And those who are in that mode seem more likely to feel the need to show the world what they can do. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 65 03 April 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
And I'm one of the few that do want to learn many, yet I don't have any desire to make youtube videos. Maybe because I myself am more impressed with flawless writing than with a flawless accent. Also, I used to study at a linguistic lycee and a linguistic university, and now I study at the linguistic faculty of a big uni - all those places have had 90% (or more) female students. Perhaps that's why I'm upset when people here assume that I'm male - to me language learning is totally a unisex hobby so to say, just like reading, music or movies. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 15 of 65 03 April 2012 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's possible that men are just more into self-promotion and make more youtube language videos as a result, but women do make plenty of videos in other areas, so they are certainly not youtube-shy as a gender, which is why I suspect there may be more to it. Perhaps you would have more insight into whether women approach polyglottery somewhat differently from men, or have different motives for taking it up, granted that both male and female polyglots exist. I would be especially curious to know if there's any difference among the genders on the "depth versus breadth" issue. Edited by frenkeld on 03 April 2012 at 9:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 16 of 65 03 April 2012 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think there are two main reasons. First, while women are usually better at languages than men, few are driven to push it to an extreme. Kind of like cooking, I guess. Second, it takes a certain willingness to expose yourself to criticism, which tends to appeal to women less than men.
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