Are women better at learning languages than men?
Hi folks .....
I've been leaning Spanish for about 5-6 years now and I've noticed that women seem to be more adept with foreign languages than men. I have absolutely no evidence to back this up but I'm curious to know what you think.
I used to attend a Spanish/English language exchange group near where I live. During that time there were about 60 women but only 6-7 men (including yours truly).
Last Saturday on the SD Skype chat I got talking to two American girls. One had a lot of experience with the Spanish language but the other had only been learning for about 18 months. She tore strips off me!
My old Spanish teacher (a Spanish woman) said she had noticed the same thing. She said "....well, women are more adventurous than men".
Or maybe women just get more ... ahem ... practice that men ...
What is your opinion on this?
Saludos.
22 Answers
Aren't women more adept at everything than men? (that should get me off the hook for a while).
They are certainly adept enough to catch that crack about them being loquacious.
There were 60 women and only you 6-7 men. No wonder you didn't learn as much as they did. You were a little distracted (and a female teacher to boot).
As far a women learning new languages faster that men, it makes sense to me. You can't use duct tape to fix your language errors so the whole process eludes me. Beside they don't have to be thinking about sex every 8.3 seconds or whatever the latest statistics say that we do.
At the risk of being called a nerd (again), I actually have a serious answer to this...
Although I the idea of putting people in boxes is personally distasteful to me... in general terms, I've often heard that men are better at sequential, numeric, and geospatial kinds of learning in general, whereas women are better in general at holistic, language-related, and social types of learning. Perhaps this might apply.
Also, what your teacher said about "more adventurous"... Language learning does involve taking risks of looking like a fool in public. Maybe ladies don't mind as much?
Well I think women get too emotional without reason.
Also june10 has just upset me. It's not what she said, it's the way she said it.
Just kidding June
Yes, I totally agree with gfreed! Women are -- just telling the truth here -- more adept at everything than men! Sorry, guys, but you can't argue with the facts!
Please note: I'm only kidding, so if anyone takes offense to this, just letting you know!
I don't think women are any better than men at learning languages, but there is definitely more interest in languages on the part of women than men. When I taught EFL in Russia just over 3 years, the majority of my adult students were women. (The elementary-school kids had no choice in the the matter).
I also agree with Valerie's view:
Although I the idea of putting people in boxes is personally distasteful to me... in general terms, I've often heard that men are better at sequential, numeric, and geospatial kinds of learning in general, whereas women are better in general at holistic, language-related, and social types of learning. Perhaps this might apply.
Aren't women more adept at everything than men? (that should get me off the hook for a while).
Dear Quentin
How could I ever have sent you to a dunce corner. Pleease forgive me, I am so sorry, ever so sorry, you never ever deserved that: 
You certainly do not, I mean, NOT belong there
You deserve a special place and a special chair, and a special .....whatever
And yes, you are so right in what you said here, such a wise man, so clever, so....
¡¡Pelota!!
And just to put in my "two-bobs-worth" - women in general, I am told, and do believe, are better at multi-skilling - juggling more things at any given time.
Now everyone on this site juggles learning Spanish with many other things home/kids/work/shopping/leisure...and even on a more serious note - relationship breakdowns et cetera. Perhaps women just "manage" it better and can devote more time to language learning.
Now here I wanted to post a picture of Heidita moderating a thread/tearing her hair out while at the same time cleaning the windows/painting the house... 
The greater capacity for women to acquire a foreign language is most likely a direct consequence of the way in which their brains are organized compared to men's.
For example, if you have an older right-handed male who has suffered a stroke involving his left hemisphere, he will likely have a much greater loss of language function than will an older right-handed women with a comparable stroke. Why ? Because in right -handed men language function is primarily restricted to the left hemisphere.
But in a woman, right-handed or not, language functioning is undertaken more equably across the two hemispheres. So if a woman sustains a right or left hemisphere stroke, she rarely has the same degree of language loss than does a left hemisphere stroke in a right handed male.
So with greater language representation in the two hemispheres, language acquisition in women is easier because the language "neurons" are able to interact with a greater set of other "neurons" which, being related to all the other senses makes the acquisition process just that much easier.
And this is the reason as well for their ability to read a situation much more effectively than we men. After many a party I have returned home with my wife dissecting the events of the evening. "Sheryl seems so happy with her new guy", I might say. My wife, laughs at my naivete-"You missed the fact that she was making eyes at Tony whenever it was safe for her to do so !"
"Men make great warriors but lousy diplomats".
Perhaps one reason that women are better than men at learning languages is that women tend to do things intuitively, while men more often insist on figuring things out and knowing how they work.
That's great for the men when learning all the grammar rules, but a stumbling block in the end to doing what we all desire: To think in the target language rather than making on-the-fly translations. That's an area where a woman's intuitiveness beats a man's mechanical inclinations hands down.
Based on all this, I'd make a horrible woman.
Women are intuitive, holistic, can sit and concentrate for long periods of time, can multi-task, are good listeners, and are good social communicators.
The only one of those that describes me is.. well, none.
I do care about my clothes though, and I cry during movies. There's hope yet.
Women have a bigger corpus callosum:size does matter - nizhoni1 May 29, 2010
I also understand that the corpus callosum develops earlier in female fetuses, so that females integrate the use of both sides of the brain from an earlier age. This speaks to the multi-tasking question too.
And Eddy wins the prize for being the first guy EVER to be suspicious about that headache line. jejejeje
I agree to some extent that women are better at speaking languages than men, while recognising that everyone is an individual too.. And No, I am not trying to please anyone or everyone by saying this lol I am just being realistic...drawing on both my experience and observation of life as well that of other people.
I do believe that in many ways women are better Social communicators than men and I attribute this assertion to an observation that women tend to value communication, especially the social kind, more than men; often developing such communication into an art form.(I mean this in a positive way) The area that we men often need to improve upon - and this is a valid criticism in most cases - is the skill of attentive listening without interrupting. I include myself too. There is no reason why (we) men should not be equal to women as accomplished linguists provided that we are willing to work at our communication skills.
I would think it would only matter who learns what faster if you were looking for new methods of learning.
From the answers I have read if we as men want to learn language faster we need to start thinking like women.
1) For starters, we would need to be able to talk for hours circling the point and never quite getting there. So stop getting directly to the point. This will increase the time we spend using the language by an infinite amount.
2) Never settle for the answers we get, question and pry until we get to another subject unrelated to the first. This allows more time to talk about the original subject later and gives us more experience with the language talking about the new topic.
3) We must form responses by reading between the lines, have confidence and argue the point regardless of its validity. When in doubt refer to number 2.
4) When arguing with a woman we need to stop agreeing so they think they won the argument. We need to keep our cool and argue it out knowing full and well that she will eventually have to sleep. Again, more time using the language and if we get as good as women we will be able to change the subject of the argument without them realizing it for several minutes to a day later. If we get even better, we will be able to change the argument into something worth arguing about, this has never been achieved by a woman. It requires the use of number 2 in conjunction with having point.
5) When we talk to our friends use the emotional words with feeling. This will increase our vocabulary and eloquence with the language. When feeling uncomfortable about this refer to number 1.
6) When we are not mad, never respond with “fine” when asked how we are doing. Tell them starting with last week include every little thing of irrelevance and go of on tangents in the attempt of giving relevance to the irrelevant. Again, more time using the language. If we are mad answer with “fine” and ignore, this will initiate number 2. From this we can gain experience listening to the language.
Finally, we must learn to keep our hands tied behind our backs and whip the flesh off people using only words. Again, expanding vocabulary and word use experience.
It is all in good fun. If anyone is offended, I am sorry you allowed yourself to be offended.
Seriously, men and women compliment each other our weaknesses are their strengths. Both men and women have contributed equally to our cultures, technologies, and overpopulation.
Personally, I think one reason why women are better language learners is that we are generally better listeners than men. Women are better at "reading between the lines", understanding the context of what is being said, and hearing what isn't being said. These sorts of skills are important when it comes to activities like translating from one language to another. Also, women just seem more interested in learning languages. In my university, almost all of my language classes have been overwhelmingly female.
En mi opinión, no es que las mujeres son mejores en el aprendizaje de los lenguajes, sino es que los hombres, reflexivamente, dejan pasar inadvertidos la mayoría de sus pronunciaciónes, dandoles la impresión de que no entiendan lo que les hablen!
In my opinion it is not that women are better with languages,but that men reflexively ignore what they say, giving them the impression that they don't understand what they say to them.
They say if you can succesfully tell a joke in your second languge you are making progress. I let all of you be the judge!
