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Gender and language obsession | ||
Tags: Female Polyglot | Gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6868 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 33 of 62 18 March 2006 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
How do you even know this? I'm just lurking on this thread for now. There seem to be more men on this list, but maybe that's because women, polyglots or not, have better things to do with their time. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| curon Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6900 days ago 31 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh*, German, Italian, French | Message 34 of 62 19 March 2006 at 4:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Five years ago I did a postgraduate course in teacher training (Modern foreign languages). Forty five women. 7 men (two of whom were gay). Forget speed dating. This was a great year for me. I'm not sure what point I am trying to make here but feel free to comment on the stats.
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| KingM Triglot Senior Member michaelwallaceauthor Joined 7202 days ago 275 posts - 300 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian | Message 35 of 62 19 March 2006 at 8:32am | IP Logged | ||
Ardaschir is one of the world's leading polyglots. I think when he's talking about polyglots, he's not talking about the makeup of this board, but what he has seen in his experience as an academic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6872 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 36 of 62 19 March 2006 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm quite sure there aren't less female polyglots in Belgium (where I live). The best polyglots I met were women.
At my university, there are 858 women who are studying European languages at the moment, but only 291 men! When I was in high school I took part in quite a lot of language contests. The top 10 was almost always dominated by women. But this is of course only true for my generation, people who are about 20 years old. The older generation is dominated by men. I know only one female professor in my faculty who is older than 50, but there are a lot of younger female researchers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7026 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 62 20 March 2006 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
When I did my teacher training there were many more men. Then again, I did it in maths and science... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6868 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 38 of 62 21 March 2006 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
I'm just saying gender and language obsession is one thing; gender and polyglotism (is that a word?) is something else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| awb Groupie United States Joined 6885 days ago 46 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 39 of 62 21 March 2006 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Uh, I disagree about females being better at learning foreign languages. Maybe in schools, but we all know no one actually learns languages in schools, maybe females just memorize the conjugation of to be within two months there instead of within two years. The methods in schools are crap, and I don't think a whole lot of the boys there give a damn.
And as to men needing absolute perfection, I've played online games and understood things that Germans said even when I didn't know two or three words.. and replied in German as well, men don't always need absolute perfection, the only time that happens is when they're at home and have the time to look in a big grammar book and look for explanations of something they didn't understand exactly.. not exactly a perfectionist. A perfectionist would be me checking with a German on MSN, asking for every shade of detail in what was meant in their message and asking for complete corrections to every message that I wrote as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| janalisa Triglot Senior Member France janafadness.com/blog Joined 6901 days ago 284 posts - 466 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese Studies: Russian, Norwegian | Message 40 of 62 23 March 2006 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm female, and I'd definitely call myself language-obsessed. Language learning is pretty much the only thing I do with my spare time these days, and I'm highly motivated to learn a lot of languages and learn them very well-- simply for their own sake more than anything else. I don't think I could call myself a polyglot right now, but I definitely aspire to become one. Anyway, as has been mentioned, I think individual personalities have to be considered above all else. I don't see anything wrong with making general observations about gender groups as a whole, but sweeping generalizations can't be applied to individual people.
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