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Gay and a polygot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6692 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 17 of 79 12 May 2008 at 7:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I have 3 gay friends (2 male and 1 female) and none of them speak a foreign language. The two men speak English and Spanish but that's pretty much a given in Gibraltar! All three of them claim to be useless at languages, though one of them's applying for a PhD in quantum physics so I guess they're just challenging their energy and intellect into other fields.
I don't know how scientific these claims are but from personal experience, I don't know any gays who are multilingual. Most of the polyglots I know are heterosexual so maybe sexual preference isn't necessarily linked to language learning ability. I'm more likely to believe that there's a connection between left-handedness and multilingualism as I've met a lot more left-handed polyglots than gay ones! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magic9man2 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6431 days ago 149 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Taiwanese, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 18 of 79 12 May 2008 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I myself am ambidextrous with more left handed tendencies and I come across left handed people that are interested in foreign languages more often than gay people who are.
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| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6658 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 19 of 79 12 May 2008 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was surprised to discover there was a significant population of gay language learners in Livejournal communities. There was enough of them to create a community of their own.
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| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6551 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 20 of 79 13 May 2008 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I really doubt that sexual deviance is related to genius or in this context language learning success. The reason being is that firstly aren't we all just programmed to have the capacity to learn anguages by nature as human beings? Therefore for survival this instinct should be universal without distinction of sexuality. More importantly, out of the homosexual people who I have encountered in life, some have been extremely intelligent. However, most of them have been as stupid and mindless as the rest of society. As for heterosexuals, some have been extremely intelligent, but again most have been mindless and as dense as a door knob. Therefore I really cannot imagine that their seriously is a relation between one's sexuality and language ability. My opinion is that many "sympathizers" for the homosexual community mindlessly attribute peoples' success (in whatever) to their sexual preference and actually go as far as saying that it is the root of their genius. However, these people seem blind to all the heterosexual geniuses of the world. They for some reason get no mention! I really cannot imagine any correlation on grounds of sexuality.
I would presume that something like Aspergers symptoms and traits would be more beneficial to larguage learning, thought not everything. If it is motivation which is the key factor, which is probably so, and I sure that such traits would help with motivation and prevent that the person not waste their time engaging in nonsense like daytime television or incessant binge drinking. As for language classes at university level, I have found that the mainstream languages of western europe like Spanish, French, ect... are female dominated and the minority of guy seemed a little effeminate and lacking traditional manly qualities. However, for the more exotic languages like Japanese, Korean, the Slavic languages, ect... the majority is extremely male dominated. I don't know why though, they just are. I think that there is only one gay guy on the course for Japanese, unless others are still in the closet. The people on the courses for those exotic languages seem to have a different quality, maybe more drive, more unique personalities. But there seems to be no correlation with sexual deviance. Final note, motivation is the most likely candidate for success, not one's sexual preferences. I just responded as nowdays it seems that everyone tries to create some feeling of homosexual superiority, and whenever anyone criticizes the claims, the critics are immediately labelled as homophobic or ignorant. Edited by Maximus on 13 May 2008 at 5:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 6934 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 21 of 79 13 May 2008 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some interesting points and observations have been made here. Personally, I'm not convinced that there is a strong correlation between sexual orientation and language ability; that said, I do know quite a few students of the more "exotic languages" (as Maximus phrases it) who are not attracted to their own sex.
While I don't think sexual orientation has much to do with language ability, I do think certain life experiences may better equip some men and women for the task. The argument has been made that being "gay" one is aware from a very early age of being an outsider, of not quite fitting in. It is this sense of alienation, they say, which allows some people to gain their footing in foreign languages and cultures faster than someone who is not used to a certain disorientation, a certain lack of steadyness. So, I do believe that certain experiences may allow someone to more easily grasp certain things (and this is true with everything), but I don't think there is a genetic disposition. Here it is more a case of nurture than nature. I'm unsure what to make of "effeminate" men studying Western European languages and more manly men studying "exotic" languages. "Manly" attributes vary not only from culture to culture but from era to era. If I were to make an ssumption about the sexuality of these language students--I would say the men who are studying the "softer" languages probably think there is a good man-to-woman ratio and feel they have a better chance finding a girlfriend. :-) Second, Maximus and I must read (read into) things differently. I've never felt that anyone was advocating that men and women who are attracted to their sex are superior. I only thought someone was pointing out an observation that they'd encountered more of one sexual orientation in their field than another. I'll have to go back and re-read the posts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tjw Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5941 days ago 53 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Persian | Message 22 of 79 14 May 2008 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I very much doubt the idea that gays have the potential to learn languages better than hetrosexuals. Language is a human instinct - it is like saying that homosexuals have better reflex actions, or are better at walking, or are better equipped for sleeping. There is significant evidence to suggest that language learning is an innate process controlled by a "language organ". It is akin to saying, perhaps, that homosexuals have better lungs. Saying that, it is quite possible that more homosexuals choose to learn a second language than heterosexuals, but concerning the almost biological nature of language acquisition, it is, in my view, absurd to claim homosexuals are better equipped at doing something which, on a certain level, makes us human.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6241 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 23 of 79 14 May 2008 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm astounded by some of the posts in this thread.
People have genuine differences. While the ability to learn to walk is innate in most people, not everyone has the raw ability to become a professional basketball player or win a gold medal in Olympic gymnastics. Furthermore, this is associated with specific traits (height, in both cases, among others). I can't imagine that this is controversial. Humans have parts of the brain specialized for language (especially Broca's area and Wernicke's area). I think most people are willing to accept that the human brain and mental abilities in humans are strongly correlated. Furthermore, it strikes me as ridiculous to accept without evidence the idea that physical differences in brain configuration have no effect on cognition: there is ample evidence that they do. Not all people speak their native language equally well. I see no reason to believe that people are all equally good at acquiring later languages; it certainly doesn't match what I've seen. I furthermore see no reason to believe that there would not be a statistical correlation between raw ability and actual achievement. For what little it may be worth, I think polyglottery is within the grasp of someone of initially average linguistic ability who works hard. I'm not saying that one has to be gay or left-handed or otherwise in a particular statistical minority of any sort - any number of counter-examples to such an assertion can be given, and several have been. However, I find the study of human cognition and genetics fascinating, and think that it's worth looking at what statistically valid correlations are found between traits (and, as importantly, which are found not to hold) and finding out why. Why are people so uncomfortable with the idea that people have genuine differences in mental abilities and configurations, and that these may be statistically correlated with other differences, rather than viewing such differences purely in the context of individuals, such as Daniel Tammet or William Sidis? I presented a number of links to research showing that there are clear, observable physical differences in brains which are correlated with other traits; these links showed evidence of correlation between some of the traits mentioned in the original post. I see no evidence that anyone so much as glanced at these articles; rather, there is a bunch of philosophizing based on people's gut instincts and ideologies, ignoring everything known about modern neuroscience. Why?! ------------- And, finally, two other points: a) Whether or not one considers homosexuality 'deviant', I don't believe that the term 'deviant' belongs in this discussion. It adds nothing, and offends. b) Anecdotal evidence about the number of homosexual (or bisexual) language learners one knows, especially as distant acquaintances, are skewed by the simple fact that many people are closeted, heterosexuality is usually assumed, and many bisexuals are openly in opposite-sex relationships or pursuing members of the opposite sex, which often leads acquaintances to assume they are heterosexual. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tjw Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5941 days ago 53 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Persian | Message 24 of 79 14 May 2008 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
This statement undermines and ignores completely the past 50 years of linguistic discovery. Language is about communication, nothing more, nothing less. People have different ways of speaking because they need to communicate different things, not because they are somehow less adept at using language which is an innate human function. Anyhow, what does your statement actually mean? A lesser vocabulary, or perhaps the usage of an "incorrect" grammar? For the former, this comes from exposure and various social/environmental factors. How about the black inner-city youth who grew up on a council estate somewhere who has never read a book in his life but can express himself in a rich dialect containing unique lexis and grammatical structures which the University Professor would have difficulty understanding. Is it not chauvanistic and, indeed, classist to assume that the Professor's language (or the language of the middle-class) is somehow "better" than the rich, creative dialect of Black Vernacular English? You are of course free to assume such things, and many people do, but if we are to have a serious discussion about linguistics then your choice to assume such things ignores 50 years of linguistic study which has been dedicated to the concept that everybody's language is of equal worth and value and corresponds directly to the communication needs of the society in which they are placed. For the latter, when concerning communally accepted, frequently used deviation from the grammatical norm (for example in Black American Vernacular) - a notion of "incorrect" grammar does not work. Of course, it works if you are taking the position of a grammatical prescriptivist, but frankly prescriptivist grammar has been dead since the 1950s, and the only place it flourishes is in the classroom, not in everyday speech and in the minds of linguists. Now we realise that grammar belongs to the people who speak it and anything which has entered into the language of a society is correct grammar, and the job of the linguist is to study these linguistic phenomena. Take a look, for example, at English. English is a SVO language but it wasn't always. English is genderless, it wasn't always. English has little inflection, it used to have massive inflection. If everybody's language conformed to your ideal, then language would not change. I realise that this post is slightly irrelevant here, as we are talking about the acquisition of second languages, which is slightly different, because it relies more on outside factors rather than the innate. However, if we took a random selection of people of all races and sexual orientations and if they all did exactly the same amount of work with the same methods, they would all be at exactly the same place at the end. This is because language is biological, and there is no such thing as somebody who is innately "better at languages" - just people who have the motivation, reason and have done the work. To link something like sexual orientation which is, at the very least, a combination of nature and nurture, with something as unrelated and fundamental as language acquisition (we are talking about an innate human fuction like a heart-beat here) seems to me, completely absurd. It is like asking whether homosexuals are innately better at standing on two legs. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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