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Female Foreign Language Learners | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5849 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes  1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 66 of 202 12 April 2009 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I see, that the discussion here was getting off-topic. Thanks to Recht for bringing it on-topic again! We were discussing about female foreign language learners here.
Fasulye-Babylonia Edited by Fasulye on 12 April 2009 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6751 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 67 of 202 12 April 2009 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't want to get into a big argument on gender politics because quite frankly I have little interest in the subject. But if we are talking about traditional families, aren't you forgetting that the man has obligations too. Being the main bread winner he may have to go out an work for 8, or maybe 10 hours. Then in the competitive world of work he may spend more time working overtime. Some guys end up obsessed with their work and neglect everything else in their life because they want to come out number one in their field of work. Now after a 12 hour shift work, intellectual persuits are the last thing on the minds of most people. Basically what I want to say is that anyone, regardless of gender, can end up in one of those lifestyles where you have no time for any of your own interests because of things that we have to do in the world of work, responsibilities, family, etc... For language enthusiasts, it is obvious that this can be a real hindrance for our language persuits. My personal opinion is that regardless of gender we should try to absorb as much language knowledge as we can when we are still young and have less adult responsibility in our lives. When we are in high school, college, university (basically the times when we are less likely to have to do a full time job and as a consequence have more time for personal development), instead of wasting this time we have at this period of our lives by abusing alcohol and drugs and living completely debaucherous and unproductive lifestyles like many young people do, we should be investing as much of this precious time as we can into our intellectual persuits and leading studious lives. I personally regret just using all my time for videogames when I was a high school student. I could have learned at least another two languages by myself during the 5 years of highschool. The other personal opinion I wish to express is the following. Since I believe that work, family, child rearing or life in general can severely reduce a language enthusiasts opportunity to gain foreign language fluency, I now hold the opinion that, if it is not yet no late, and if we are really passionate about language learning/becoming a polyglot, maybe we should aspire to live and work in the country of our target languages. I live in the UK. I was having a conversation with a polyglot and linguist, also from the UK. He basically told me that the UK really isn't an environment conducive to foreign language acquisition and that he would rather be living abroad if he didn't have family and work obligations in the UK. Yes he is MALE. He also shared with me his concerns that many of the languages which he acquired have become passive as he has little chance to use them in the UK. He has studied all kinds of rare languages. I completely agree with him. In the UK, at least in my personal environment, it seems as if nothing other than English is taken seriously. If you want to use your languages with foreigners who are living and working here, I get the feeling that you have to have almost perfect knowledge of the foreign language to be taken seriously. And of course the foreigners here will usually speak English better than we speak their language because they are constantly immersed here. (I find that this is not the case abroad when foreigners insist that they speak with us in there less than satisfactory English even if we speak their language much better). What I am trying to highlight here is that the UK has a very monolingual mentality and so I don't feel that it is suitable for my personal language studies. If I stay here and work here, I too will have the same problem of limitted time or real opportunies for language advancement. For this reason, I believe that if I really want to become the polyglot I would like to be, I have no choice but to lead a life abroad, work abroad, have a family abroad, and basically live life entirely in my foreign languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5767 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 68 of 202 12 April 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@Maximus- my comment was based on poorer families where women work a regular job all day and then come home to domestic responsibilities which are an additional burden. And men who have to work 2 jobs to make ends meet are equally disadvantaged. It's usually middle class families who can afford to have one parent at home full time, or can afford to pay someone else to clean the house, mind the kids etc. There are plenty of sociological studies to back this up- and as on this forum we are mainly concerned with self-teaching languages as a hobby, then it's not difficult to see that there is a huge proportion of the human race that is disadvantaged when it comes to free time. With the fact that we are not all equally in the running for becoming superpolyglots/geniuses etc means that the predominance of men in such fields that Recht keeps referring to is not particularly meaningful. The rest of your post I agree with- I wasted the entire decade of my twenties for reasons unrelated to my gender and there's nothing I regret more. Edited by Dark_Sunshine on 12 April 2009 at 7:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6036 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 69 of 202 12 April 2009 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Now that's a pity. You should have wasted in on video games localised in your target language ^_^. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6751 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 70 of 202 12 April 2009 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Like GTA VICE CITY! RRRRRRRRRRRRRADIOOOOOO ESPANTOSO! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6036 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 71 of 202 12 April 2009 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not a GTA fan, I have no idea what you are referring to ;p. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6566 days ago 131 posts - 136 votes Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 72 of 202 12 April 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think I would be better qualified to give an insight on it than you, at any rate, unless you actually have some personal experience with the things we're debating on. You're either suggesting that I'm making up things that aren't there (presumably to make myself feel better about being a student with 'less aptitude' in my field than others) or that the experiences I have had for 3 years, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, have no bearing in this discussion. Either way, I have to disagree with you. This is a topic that is close-to-home for me since it affects my personal life, academic life, and career and it's something that I have to confront and give thought to every day. So yes, I do believe a first-hand experience on the topic is relevant.
I don't understand why you think the ratio is so significant. If anything, all it proves is that there are more males in my field. The average female is on par with the average male. Since there are more males in my program, there would be expected to be a wider distribution of talent (really really bad students and stellar students) as compared to a more 'mean' talent among the girls. If the two ratios were equal (as they are in the life sciences and other soft-science fields) the distribution of talent would still be roughly the same. THAT is where I am getting my conclusions from. There is a difference, but it is an expected difference that comes with the differences in the sample sizes. This does not, however, suggest that males are better because there's more of them or because there's more geniuses among them than the very small sample size of the females.
From the same studies that you reached the conclusion that males are better at scientific pursuit. I suggest you read over a few of those studies more carefully because in the couple of rigorous and well-respected ones, both conclusions are reached. We can debate when you've actually experienced this field for yourself. I am sick and tired of talking about science and other fields to a lay-person who thinks they know everything because they've read some studies. The studies do have merit, but the average American knows diddly-squat about the fields and the people in them but still feel qualified to make decisive statements on the subject. Nope, sorry. Edited by Silvestris on 12 April 2009 at 9:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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