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Gender and language obsession | ||
Tags: Female Polyglot | Gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hokusai77 Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 7163 days ago 212 posts - 217 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, FrenchB1, EnglishC1 Studies: GermanB1, Japanese | Message 17 of 62 01 May 2005 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||
I was wondering the same yesterday... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lola Groupie Joined 7163 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes | Message 18 of 62 01 May 2005 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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1.- In any field I seem to get into, I tend to find more male than female fans, meaning, once they are interested in a single topic, the go into it in depth. Be it music, cooking, sports ... any activity in general. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of women being more multi tasking types in general, and men being more focused. So if they take up languages, they'll go all the way
2.- There is the factor of women being sidetracked in most of their interest due to family requirements... so they don't have time to devote to their interest, nor to a career that requires languages. This could show up if we looked at 'poliglocy' among male and female primary and secondary school students and a follow up ten years later... 3.- It appears to be a predominancy of women being more social, emphatic, which makes them pick up accents as well as emotions better from other people, while men are more systems oriented, they understand machines and logic better, which could translate on learning language from a more systematic approach, through understanding the logic behing the grammar and vocabulary creation. What I'm trying to say is that although in the end, men and women are equally capable of achieving the same level in all areas, they may do so by different means and at different learning rates in different areas. Edited by lola on 05 May 2005 at 10:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| muse Newbie United States Joined 7157 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes | Message 19 of 62 04 May 2005 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I tend to agree with Iola and as a woman I can attest to the getting side-
tracked phenomena. Could it also be that the polyglot women don't generally show-off? Perhaps they are out there quietly. As a psychiatrist I also see the motivations/behaviors necessary to become so interested in learning many languages as obsessional. It brings to mind the autistic individuals with extraordinary splinter skills. They obsess about their area and some researchers connect this with an overabundance of testosterone in fetal life that predisposes the brain to over-masculinize. These individuals are analytical in a highly restricted narrow focus. So in some ways it could be said that these specialized drives to go to extremes in an area are masculine in nature. I perhaps do not describe this well, but the research was done in the UK and has been published recently. I find it quite fascinating. It could explain the relative dearth of female autistics and prodigies somewhat. It may also explain the seeming relative lack of female polyglots. Although again this may be more apparent than real. I think you probably have quite a number of female lurkers on this site, just as I have been on this and many other sites until a day or so ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lenkadv Hexaglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 7160 days ago 21 posts - 24 votes 3 sounds Speaks: Czech*, English, German, SpanishB2, Russian, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese | Message 20 of 62 04 May 2005 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Count me in - another woman on this forum (and a long time lurker, as Muse commented).
I´m also a language teacher and I agree with Ardashir´s observation that most language students are women. They are also better students as far as study habits are concerned. There was an interesting discussion raised by a Harvard (?) professor who said in his speech that men are better mathematicians. In one of the articles that followed I read that on average, the IQ of men and women is the same but men are more abundant at both ends of the Gauss´ curve. That is, in the groups that score the best - and the worst, the majority are men. This might be also true for language learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lola Groupie Joined 7163 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes | Message 21 of 62 04 May 2005 at 8:12am | IP Logged | ||
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muse,
I was refering to the same research in point 3 (Baron-Cohen). There is one more thing: why do people want to learn languages for. Women are more 'functional' oriented when it comes to technology, which they may eventually use as much, but for different purposes: e.g. our interest in cars tends to be that they take us to places, the internet, allows us to keep in touch with people. I know for a fact that the relationship between men and their cars goes beyond the mere transport function. And I know a few exceptions as well. I think there is a great deal of interest in communicating with others when it comes down to women and languages, whereas for men that may be a nice side effect, they may be more interested in mastering a new system. I'm more interested in being able to talk to people and communicate, using as much body language as needed by my lack of language skills. Not sure if a male approach is to dominate grammar in a more academic way. Well, of course, I've generalised a lot here, but the teachers may be able to tell how male and female students approach their language learning. I'm pretty sure there is a great variety of motivations among the readers of this forum. Edited by lola on 05 May 2005 at 10:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| muse Newbie United States Joined 7157 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes | Message 22 of 62 04 May 2005 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iola and others,
Yes the Baron-Cohen research! I reread your post and see now that you were referring to it. Probably unconsicously that's what made me think of it. Interestingly, autism spectrum disorder runs in my family and I have some Asperger-like traits myself as well as some physical traits suggestive of extra testosterone during fetal development. Nothing too unusual mind you, just little stuff. And my thinking runs to the obsessional about numbers, analysis, and languages. That part of me loves finding these little clues about how we think, how our brains develop, why we are interested in languages, etc. Well, I hope Ardaschir has come to the conclusion that there indeed are women on the site! And i encourage any other female lurkers to come forward as I enjoy the comraderie of a mixed group. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7163 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 23 of 62 12 May 2005 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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The definitive question:
Forum Members: Do YOU consider yourselves to be Language-Obsessed? Please tell me why do you think you are so or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Akira Trilingual Tetraglot Newbie Singapore Joined 6839 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, Japanese Studies: French | Message 24 of 62 16 March 2006 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am female and all the language classes I have been in have more women than men.I think men are more obsessed about "collecting" for the sake of collecting hence they are more likely to post on this forum.
I think men and women have different motivations for language learning. For French, I imagine that my female classmates may be affected by image of fashion, cuisine, sexy French movies...you know, the usual...French has little utility in Asia but as I'm interested in the arts I don't mind the fact that it has no economic payoff so much...(the same goes for German and Spanish, another two languages I am interested in) I hope to take voice lessons to learn opera arias/European art songs one day, for that I would need to know some French, German and Italian. I intend to stop learning languages one day because I have two other passions, ballet (which uses pseudo-French terminology) and music. I simply cannot maintain so many and still have a life. I have a friend who studied in Paris but she's having trouble maintaining her French here. Also, I'm simply amazed/awed by the rigorous learning regime some of you follow. I love languages but I also love my violin. I think I will go nuts if I spent all my spare minutes learning languages... Edited by Akira on 16 March 2006 at 11:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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