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Are women better at learning languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 73 of 76 11 October 2013 at 7:33am | IP Logged | |||||
Not to diminish in any way the hardships of stydying science or technology, but a college education involves massive amounts of work - also within languages. I have had many days at the university of working from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening, then have dinner and continue my studies into the night. The only difference, is that as far as I know you cannot opt for immersion when you study science. No country of math where you can speak with the locals about math all the time :-) When I did my first term of Spanish I opted for going to live in Spain instead of doing it at the University. Even if I had forgotten most of the Spanish I had learned when I was 11, I figured I would learn better by immersion than by studying the hard way, and the thought of listening to 30 different, horrid, Norwegian accents every day did not appeal to me. When I came back I talked to a guy who had taken the classes at home, and who said that he had never worked so hard in his life, and when we started speaking Spanish together his eyes literally bulged when he saw the results I had gotten while in Spain. He said he could not even imagine how much I must have worked to get to that point. I did not have the heart to tell him that while he had done 14-hours shifts at home, studying grammar, vocabulary and going to the language laboratory, I had literally danced and dined my way to my Spanish, going to every fiesta and discoteque I could find, sleeping late, flirting with lots of handsome Spanish guys, shopping and sunbathing, and saving lots of money since things were cheaper in Spain. That possibility of doing immersion is the only thing which in my view makes studying languages less hard than doing science. If you stay at home and dutifully do your classes, it is just as hard. And it is hard regardless of your gender. I would not exclude that one gender has a slightly harder time learning specific subjects than others, but that may just as well be due to the fact that traditionally women were not expected or even allowed to study science, whereas foreign languages, together with singing, playing an instrument or drawing were considered suitable subjects. I am however 100% sure that whatever tendencies or talents which may be attributed to any gender as far as language goes has fairly little to do with dating rituals. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5055 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 74 of 76 11 October 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I meant women weren't better at languages than men. I agree with the last post of Solfrid
Cristin. 2 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 75 of 76 11 October 2013 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 76 of 76 11 October 2013 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning a language is relative to the method you use and your determination. It has never been proven 1 sex is
smarter than the other. I know someone whose mother-tongue is Cantonese. She learned to be fluent in Mandarin but at times she would stumble on individual words and phrases. Found this to be a common problem in the Chinese community because people learned the old-fashioned way by "memorization" instead of trying to learn by phonetics. I have 2 friends living in Germany who have an Austrian father but brought up in Canada at home speaking English. They took German in high school but without listening to German TV or radio stations it was questionable how fluent their German was before relocating to Europe as Catholic priests. Along the way they picked up Spanish & Italian as well. Edited by shk00design on 11 October 2013 at 8:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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