For me in private it’s easy to tell about my language activities, because I regularly sit in a social café and there people can SEE me with my dictionary, my textbook or the copies of our Danish novel studying Danish. Of course I get asked: “What are you doing here?” And then I explain a bit what I’m currently studying and which language that is. Some people who come there and don’t have anything to do with languages already know that I’m studying Danish in that café.
I only experienced once that one of my friends exaggerated my language skills in introducing me as: “She speaks Turkish fluently.” which was embarrassing for me to hear having only an A1-A2 passive level of Turkish.
Dear Fasulye, I really liked your video. It is a pity that female polyglots seem to be a bit reluctant to present themselves on the Internet because I would really enjoy to hear more from you.I believe that it doesn’t really matter whether you are male or female when it comes to the learning process itself, however, I am sure that women are more challenged when it comes to trying and squeezing in some spare time into their daily work routine. Nowadays many women have a job while they keep bearing the brunt of household chores and care for the children (even though a few things seem to have improved in that respect).
Considering the fact that the majority of my foreign language teachers at school and at university were female and that about 80 % of the interpreters I work with are women as well, I really find it astonishing that there are so few female polyglots on the Internet. My female colleagues also seem to be less confident, albeit definitely not less competent. I understand the reluctance to post videos (I still don’t really like it myself but I have met so many nice and interesting people through my videos that I just shrug off the odd unpleasant private message or comment) and maybe women are more concerned about negative feedback or about being labelled as competitive, I don’t know.
Basically, I think it is all about sharing. There are times when I feel exhausted or even frustrated and then it is great to have somebody to “turn to” on the Internet. I love that kind of sense of community. And I hope that more women will join that community in the future.
Your video also shed some light on little known aspects of language learning from a woman’s perspective. Thanks for that as well. I look forward to hearing more from all three of you. And last but not least, I’m really impressed by your linguistic abilities (I have watched videos or listened to podcasts of all three of you and thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it).
Welcome here on LingQ! Despite your unknown nickname I would guess that you are Robert from You Tube. If this is true, then I have already enjoyed watching several of your videos. So you are interested in the discussion topic of our video as many male viewers are, because they want to hear experiences from the other perspective. One common trait of us is that Susanna, Jana and I don’t have children and this may be a reason that we have more time to spend on developing polyglottery than many other women. This aspect has been further discussed in the HTLAL - forum. Interesting information for all three of us is that - from your personal experience - the majority among the interpreters seem to be female. Therefore I assume that students at interpreter’s schools are also predominantly female, so Luca and you are so to speak male exceptions of the general trend.
Susanna, Jana and I enjoyed very much making this first video together, so I can imagine well that there will come more videos of us in the future. One idea of Jana and me is to make a video discussion of us three (plus maybe another internet woman we know) speaking French alltogether - the open question is only: “Do we need subtitles then?” and if so: “Who is going to do the subtiteling work?” We don’t have any concrete plans yet, but yes, the animo is positive. I personally would predict that this is not the last video we made together. Nice for us three to know as well is that you are familiar with the You Tube channels of all three of us. When we had the Skype discussion about female language learners, I did not know Susanna’s and Jana’s You Tube channel and they did not know my You Tube channel either. Of course, after making the video public, this has changed completely!
ad Fasulye: (…) Despite your unknown nickname I would guess that you are Robert from You Tube. (…)
Yes, you are right, that is me. I would love to hear you speak in French with Jana and Susanna. I have watched quite a few of Jana’s videos and I first learnt about Susanna from a couple of interviews she did with Steve. I really look forward to more of your videos.
Since my video project with Susanna and Jana, I am very motivated to listen to their both various language activities, and I am now looking forward to get to know in which languages the two interviews are…
… but anyway I am right now listening to “The Polyglot Project Podcast” interview with Robert, so I don’t have time this evening. I will give Robert a feedback on this tomorrow (It’s late now!) and tomorrow I will also explore Susanna’s (hopefully multilingual) two interviews with Steve.
Robert, I’ve had the same kind of experience you describe in making my language learning public online. Once in a great while I’ll get a nasty or inappropriate message, but the vast majority of people who comment are incredibly supportive! I think going public in this way has made me a better language learner, because all the feedback I get really motivates me to improve and to keep learning.
Polyglots or not, girls seem to have been (and still are?) more likely to move to another country for six months or longer.
When I was in high school (at the end of last century…) there was a handful of students each year who studied in another country for one year - four out of five (maybe nine out of ten) were girls. The ones who had been to the States came back with a perfect “Valley girl” English. I know of one who went to Belgium but I never heard her speaking French (before or after). And vice versa - our school mostly got female students from whatever country. A friend of mine was in Germany for one year in high school (=perfect German) and Ireland a decade later (perfect Irish accented English).
This being said, I also know people (women) who have lived in USA/France some decades ago, but whose accent and overall proficiency in English/French wouldn’t fool anybody.