Engineers and musicians

I was wondering why there are so many engineers and musicians among the Lingqers I know. It’s really amazing. At the beginning, when it first occured to me, I said it was odd, but after a while, there are so many that there must be some reason; this must be explainable. I’m looking for an answer actually.

I guess it only is amazing from the perspective of North-Americans, who are accustomed to see lawyers and real estate agents all around :slight_smile: ,

Since most of the LinQs users are not from Canada and US, you are left with engineers and musicians.
Happy Family days to Canadians! Happy President day to Americans!

Musicians may find the sound of a foreign language appealing and try to imitated it. Engineers may love to study grammar or find regularities and irregularities in languages.

astamoore,
I am an engineer and I assure you that I don’t like to study grammar. I find it a total waste of time if the goal is communication and fluency.

Oscar,
I’m an engineer, too (robotics and automation), and I assure you that I love studying grammar. I find that it saves me a lot of time getting the gist of a language. Much like reading a manual or a list of specifications.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Astamoore, I snooped at your Bio, and it says you are a musician. Anyway, I have no doubt you are an engineer if you say it. :slight_smile:

What I mean in my last post is that in my view it doesn’t seem there is a correlation between someone’s occupation and if he likes grammar approach or not for learning a language.

Furtheremore, Margopel states that there are a lot of engineers using Lingq, so, taking into account that Ling is not a grammar approach, maybe we can infer engineers don’t like grammar (anyway as I said before, I think there is no correlation).

I’m a musician, and although I was already into foreign languages back in the early 90s, it was through Irish music I became interested in Irish Gaelic et al. I happen to like both music theory and grammar, but definitely not at the expense of “feeling”. The theory is merely a tool.

Wow…it is really an interesting question XD. I guess musicians and engineers might have more chance or be more willing to communicate, work, travel…whatever around the world. Also, it might because Margopel is more sensitive to musicians and engineers and more attractive to them. Im an engineering student fond of music by the way! haha

I’ve ever studied the saxophone in CNSMP but now I am not a musician especially saxophonist now… so I am a student of LingQ although I have certain knowledge of music theory.

It’s funny that Marguerite meets a lot of engineers and musicians on LingQ. I’m always meeting computer programmers and teachers of English as a foreign language :wink:

There’s a lot of very clever and self-directed people on LingQ, and people tend to gravitate to people with similar interests

I am a programmer but my studies also included software engineering, if that brings me any closer. I end up to this accidentally, before I was meant to be a musician. I had reach very advanced level in piano and had also involved a bit with some other instruments like violin, flute, trompete and clarinet.
What brings me to languages… hmm I think it’s my musician nature talking rather than any engineering love for grammar. :))))

Well if you’re looking for someone to marry, find the engineer, real musicians are usually poor and filled with problems and strange idiosyncrasies…

That’s an interesting observation Margopel. I am both an engineer and musician, I’ve always been intrigued by different languages, and probably pretty much anything. Initially I was drawn to other languages, especially the Spanish language through Music.

A strange observation, but an interesting one. I am a musician, so are two language junkie friends of mine. I never thought of it that way. My interest in language and music have always coexisted, and in some ways tied into each other, for example searching out music in all kinds of different languages. I guess it’s something about the sounds of the language in conjunction with the tune, rather than the actual lyrics, that’s fascinated me.

Incidentally, I like grammar, but I hate music theory ^^

I hadn’t noticed about engineers. About musicians, this is something that I knew a long time ago. Language has many things in common with music. I am myself a musician. I studied violin for more than 10 years and played several instruments professionally when I was around 20 years old…until I got involved with language. Now I prefer playing the guitar, it is less demanding than the violin, although I also play it occasionally. I think that having a musical ear is very important for the imitation of oral language.

Any lovers of chess here?

Recently I watched a documentary about the competition for the World title in doing crosswords. I think it’s sponsored by the New York Times. It turns out that the best, fastest solvers are in two groups - engineers, mathematicians, information technologists and similar quantitative fields, and …musicians. Perhaps there is a similar kind of pattern recognition, algorithm finding, tinkering and playing involved.

The initial subject of the thread is to examine the relationship between engineers and musicians with learning languages. The connection of engineering-IT-math and related fields with music is a well know fact I think. Some argue that music should be considered a science by itself too. Personally I agree with this opinion, I believe that compositors like Beethoven,Bach,Shuman,Chopin etc etc are the greatest geniuses of the mankind. Ancient greeks had music as one of the basic courses thought in school from early age along with astronomy, maths, history and greek language. In modern Greece of course if you want to study music you’re on your own, there is not much mentality borrowed from our ancestors unfortunately…

@blindside: Thanks for the suggestion but… the engineering department was located right opposite the IT and although there were lots of attempts from their side I was largely unattracted to engineers even more than my classmates. So I have accept my fate to die poor :stuck_out_tongue:

Music is not science. Listen to Chopin, it’s full of feeling and expression.
To give you some examples: Chopin’s Ballades, Etudes, Scherzos, Preludes, …
I believe Bach is more science-like, especially with the polyphonic melodies, but it is not a music should be considered a science.

… but it is not that music should be considered …