|
 |
Gay and a polygot? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Garaidh Decaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5865 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Serbian, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic Studies: Faroese | Message 1 of 79 04 May 2008 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I noticed this on Wikipedia under 'Multiligualism':
'The neuroscientist Katrin Amunts studied the brain of Emil Krebs and determined that the area of Krebs' brain responsible for language—Broca's area—was organized differently than in monolingual men. On the other hand, the neurolinguist Loraine Obler has suggested a link with the Geschwind-Galaburda cluster, which shows a high coincidence of left-handedness, homosexuality, auto-immune disorders, learning disorders and talents in art, mathematics and, possibly, languages.' Just wondered if anyone else has noticed that there are a lot of gay polygots? I myself am gay. My husband speaks 6 languages. Daniel Tammit has openly said on TV here that he is gay. A lot of people on my languages degree at uni doing multiple languages were gay. I know its a bit of a generalisation and not so important a trend in the grand scheme of things, but just interested to know if anyone else had made similar observations? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6241 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 79 04 May 2008 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
A few other people on this forum have said similar things, but nothing particularly substantial. People seem even more divided about lesbians, possibly due to the apparently smaller number of female polyglots.
There are definitely some quite accomplished straight polyglots here. Fanatic and ProfArguelles are some of the forum's most accomplished polyglots, and both are men married to women. For what it's worth, Fanatic is a right-handed math teacher, and ProfArguelles is ambidextrous, and has some interest in mathematics. Formiko is also a man married to a woman with a gift for languages by his report, and has an autoimmune disorder (multiple sclerosis). Zhuangzi speaks several languages, is also a man married to a woman, and as far as I know has none of the other traits you mentioned. If there are any gay polyglots here other than Garaidh, they haven't revealed it. Chunks from other discussions show that there are a few other gay forum members, but their profiles claim 3 and 2 languages, respectively: Without suggesting anything about the other members of this forum and certainly not meant to offend anyone, I wanted to know if anyone has come to any conclusions about homosexual men and whether or not they have more interest and ability to learn another language than heterosexual men? I am gay and several of my friends who are also gay, speak more than one language. Most of the men in my upper-level language classes have also been homosexual. What's more is that most homosexual women I know are like most of the heterosexual men I know--one language bound. Does anyone else find this interesting or to have any merit? Do Gay men and straight women learn easier than gay women and straight men? ... I haven't noticed anything sexual about having a language partner. That's probably because I'm usually too young for the people I chat with... and gay. :) Guys do seem to be interested in me in any discussion - oh, guys - but I have never found anything frightening about that (if anything, it's nice). lol........ And girls are just nice. If a girl were interested in me, I think that would make it sooo much better. I spend half the time chatting with people instead of studying anyway, so it wouldn't be anything new... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6046 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 79 04 May 2008 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Wanted to delete because inconsequential, but apparently "delete" is not an option. Edited by charlmartell on 04 May 2008 at 6:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6046 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 4 of 79 04 May 2008 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
lol, just don't steer this discussion into a bad direction. it might ruin a good one.
it's funny that i actually read the same thing just a couple of days ago, and i have to say i'm not that supprised. even before i read that left-handedness has a higher occurence among homosexual men than heterosexual men. i suppose a connection does exist, however, it does not mean it is exclusive. what does amuse me though is that there is a very high occurence of gay literati in history; wilde, woolf, proust, ginsberg, rimbaud, verlaine, only to name some of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6249 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 79 04 May 2008 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Kinda want to delete before I even post. Krebs was married to a woman who called him "Mein Krebschen" which would assume happily. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Garaidh Decaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5865 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Serbian, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic Studies: Faroese | Message 6 of 79 05 May 2008 at 3:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Perhaps you might have taken the time to read my post in full before wanting to delete it. Katrin Amunts studied the brain of Emil Krebs and discovered an area of his brain was organised differentely to monoglot men Loraine Obler has suggested a link with the Geschwind-Galaburda cluster, which shows a high coincidence of left-handedness, homosexuality, auto-immune disorders, learning disorders and talents in art, mathematics and, possibly, languages Therefore no-one was suggesting Krebs was gay. Although I suggested that this observation was not 'so important a trend in the grand scheme of things', surely any observation that adds to the understanding of how the human mind works is important? Back to topic: One of my old college tutors went on to teach Oriental Languages at Oxford. He mentioned that people who did best at Japanese/ Chinese, often had done really well in their Maths exams at school (one of the traits noted by Obler). He also said that during the war, gay academics were often hand picked by the government to work at the code breaking centre near Oxford (sadly as soon as the war ended they were then prosecuted!), the most famous of whom was Alan Turing, who helped crack the German enigma code and in doing so helped established the foundations of modern computing. More recentely Daniel Tammet is gay, a savant , a brilliant linguist and mathematician. Unlocking his mind could signifcantly help in our understanding of memory, learning and cognitive science. Surely of interest to linguists? Edited by Garaidh on 05 May 2008 at 4:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6505 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 79 05 May 2008 at 4:21am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Sometimes the delete-function doesn't function even when you have just written something (and before others have added to the thread which block it). I have had the same problem once or twice, but long ago, and I have never found an explanation.
Krebs was a quite excentric person in general, and his condescending manners did not exactly help his his career in the foreign service - though in the end he proved himself to be a valuable addition to the staff because of his immense knowledge. By the way he is one of those superpolyglots who didn't see any reason to explain to the world how he learned his languages. I have read the original article about his brain (while it was still free) and it did sound rather cautious about the Broca thing, so the changes cannot have been dramatic. Unfortunately I don't remember whether it also mentioned his Wernicke's. The relation between the ability to learn languages and the Geschwind-Galaburda cluster is to my best knowledge not proven. Actually the bundle of traits known as the Geschwind-Galaburda cluster looks more like a list of ways that you can be an outsider in general than something somebody has proved through empirical research based on a sufficiently large number of cases. The general idea is that too high levels in the first half of the pregnancy can result in changes in the brain structure that makes it more symmetrical - which might conceivably affect language, because this is a highly lateralized function. In this case I haven't read the original article from 1985, and I don't know much about the subsequent research. It seems that the changes in the brain were first and foremost proposed as an explanation of lefthandedness, with the other symptoms including dyslexia being mentioned as other possible consequences, - but I fail to see why hyperglotism should occur in a syndrome that also contains dyslexia. Edited by Iversen on 05 May 2008 at 9:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6467 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 8 of 79 05 May 2008 at 5:15am | IP Logged | |||||
Where did you get that idea from? When I told him I was a mathematician, he asked if I could think in numbers (which is not a stupid question for a layman but shows clearly that he doesn't know anything about maths). By the way, I'm a left-handed mathematician who loves languages. I'm not gay, but I know a lot of gay people. In mathematics the proportion of gay scientists seems to be relatively high, but I've never observed a correlation between homosexuality and languages. Almost all the lesbian women I know are monolingual. I know some polyglot gay men, however. 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. |
