|
 |
Women easier to understand than men? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 23 18 April 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
|
When I think back to my early days in Germany, being in a non-tourist rural area where everyone simply spoke to you in a dialect and expected you to understand, I seem to recall that most of the major communication difficulties arose with men.
For some reason, I usually found female voices clearer and therefore easier to follow. Maybe this is because men have a tendency to mumble. Or perhaps a deep voice is more impenetrable when you are struggling with a language? Or it could simply be that women tend to be more compassionate and are more likely to slow their speech down a little, which makes a huge difference to a learner. Edited by beano on 18 April 2013 at 5:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 2 of 23 18 April 2013 at 5:19pm | IP Logged |
|
There has been a widespread consensus here an the forum that this is true. Edited by Cabaire on 18 April 2013 at 5:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 3 of 23 18 April 2013 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
|
That's probably due to their higher voices. Edited by Марк on 18 April 2013 at 7:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5033 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 23 18 April 2013 at 8:26pm | IP Logged |
|
I've also heard that women tend to follow language changes more and similarly tend to follow the standard language more than men. So maybe women just speak a bit less dialectal and more "modern" than men, generally speaking.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 5 of 23 19 April 2013 at 2:59am | IP Logged |
|
I don't see any comments from women in the previous thread. I need to think of it some more but my gut feeling is that in professionals (actors, TV hosts, commentators, audiobook narrators) I prefer male voices, whereas in the country of the target language I prefer the female ones. At least as a woman I definitely feel more comfortable talking to a woman :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5968 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 23 19 April 2013 at 3:11am | IP Logged |
|
Speaking only for myself, I have never noticed any consistent difficulties understanding speakers of my target languages according to gender. It depends on too many other factors: a person's communication style, accent, choice of vocabulary, context, and also patience and general friendliness, if in person. And, in my listening to foreign language media, I understand or misunderstand men and women about equally, I think, and don't have a personal preference for language study in that area, except that I enjoy listening to those I can comprehend more than those I don't! Edited by meramarina on 19 April 2013 at 3:12am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5172 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 7 of 23 19 April 2013 at 3:26am | IP Logged |
|
I tend to understand women better than I understand men, but there are some men whom I find very easy to
understand and some woman who are very difficult for me to understand, so this is by no means a set-in- stone rule. Still, if you give me a random speaker whom I must understand at all costs, I'd much prefer it be a woman. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4433 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi | Message 8 of 23 19 April 2013 at 3:28am | IP Logged |
|
By the way, 'gender' is the tag, not 'sex'. You should either edit it or steer the subject onto 'gender' so as
not to be misleading. When it comes to sex though, from female linguistics grads I've heard that they've researched how women are biologically better suited to distinguishing sounds and picking up on oral cues as well as body language than men are because their survival depends more on socialization whereas men's survival has not tended to be so much language-based. Studying the liberal arts, I'm a minority in Western society because I'm male. My major is linguistics and out of 60 students in third-year linguistics courses this year there was only one other guy (hi Taylor!). My teachers are usually female, whether for linguistics or a foreign language. Most students in psychology, foreign languages, linguistics, literature and philosophy here are female. How many male liberal arts students have alternative gender identities than those attributed to their own sex? I am unsure whether young men are capable of going through an undergrad liberal arts program without considering their gender identity at least a little. What I mean is when you're often the only guy in the German literature or Milton or Phonetics lecture and your female prof asks you to consider the gender roles of the subject matter, and this happens in all these fields, I know, then how can you avoid posing the same question about yourself? But perhaps this is getting into subject matter too tangential for the intended discussion. LGBT and linguistics are constantly talked about at every undergrad conference I attend and there's always one presentation about how young women and young homosexual men talk, for example, or the difference of L1 and L2 acquisition and errors in children of each sex. Personally I prefer a woman's voice when watching news, television programs and listening to radio, but game show hosts, late night music programs and interviews I prefer with at least one male voice involved. I perceive that women usually talk quicker and so to tune into their speech is to attune yourself to a faster paced understanding, if you can believe that women speak quicker (because it has been shown before that women process language faster, though this depends on upbringing, on language and on its orthography, too). I also prefer body language when available, so video podcasts are more pleasing to me than audio podcasts. Even if I'm just watching an interview on Nogoum FM's Youtube channel or wanting to practice my French, I download an RTL interview, I prefer to see the celebrity or politician speaking because I can see how they respond to the radio host's interjections and how much they move their face when speaking and if they look happy or not and how it affects their language. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
