Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

Boys and foreign languages

Scroll to see replies

Lots of guys do Spanish because it's one of the easiest languages to learn and it's very useful (another big language in the USA and spoken in South America. After doing Spanish it's also a small step to other languages). A similar thing with German, it's a little bit easier to learn that French.

Though don't classical subjects like Latin or Athenian Greek tend to be dominated by guys? I went to an all-boys school till sixth form so it's hard for me to judge.

Reply 41

dothestrand

There were no boys doing languages at A-Level in my year.
That said, I was the only one doing French and another girl did German and that was it.
In my uni classes there's more girls than boys, but I think overall it's a fairly even split, as it seems to be in lectures.

Reply 42

Ivanka

In the most advanced Spanish class at our school there are four of us and we are all girls :smile:

All the boys from our year doing Spanish (2, I think) are in a less advanced group, because they didn't want to do the language at a higher level. I'd love to say that the prejudice about girls preferring humanities and social studies and boys preferring science is false, but from this I can't conclude it! :biggrin:

Reply 43

Kalysto

Original post by James Gregory

As previous posters have said, it is dependent on the language. In Britain we associate France with fashion and food and style, and some girls think it is a sexy language, so girls study French. We associate German with cars and engineering, and it sounds strong and guttural, so boys study German. We associate Japanese with computer games and anime, so Japanese is heavily male-dominated, though maybe not as much as German. We associate Spain with...actually I've no idea. Spanish men? For some reason it seems like 50% of the female population of England wants to learn Spanish. Actually, why is it that so many girls want to learn Spanish?

There are more girls studying Japanese at my uni than there are guys o_O Well, in my year, anyway (Manchester uni).

Reply 44

Lawlet

it is a unofficially statistic that boys are more stupid then girls in terms of language and arguably in general.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 45

Ivanka

Original post by Lawlet

it is a unofficially statistic that boys are more stupid then girls in terms of language and arguably in general.

Mmm, I disagree. Firstly, there is no reason why one should be "clever" solely in terms of languages - I know from my own experience there are intelligent people that master only limited field of studies, but it is either because there various factors affecting their lack of knowledge (they are unmotivated by a teacher, have personal problems, do not like subjects therefore do not prepare for lessons, etc.) or these people are talented only for certain skills - languages mostly require hardcore logic, so I would say these people are naturally good at maths too. Then there are people who prefer essays, have good imagination (= good at art and natural sciences), you name it.

Secondly, my friend's father is a sociologist and he carried out research studying the spread of intelligence among boys and girls. He found out that the average IQ value is the same, but the curve of distribution isn't; girls tend to have higher distribution for average intelligence, hence few of them among retarded people and the superiorly intelligent ones whilst boys consist of more "deviators" - there are more of them whose intelligence is under average and above average than those whose intelligence is average.

Reply 46

Lawlet

Original post by Ivanka

By stupid, i don't mean intelligence- i meant other things such as emotions (most girls are more emotional)

Also am good at maths but i'm crap at european languages ( I found learning Japanese and Korean quite easy. As for essay writing i would say my standard is above average, not the best though.

Nevertheless i think the research your father carried is completely true

Reply 47

bobbycrisp

doing AS Spanish, only me (guy) and one other guy... in French, there's only one girl and German only one guy (and he's a native speaker!), although it is a small school with about 75% boys... which sucks! haha

Reply 48

VickyDoodle

In my AS Spanish class at the beginning of the year there was.. 9 of us? 4 boys,5 girls, but now there's 3 boys and 5 girls (one guy left, one girl left,another girl joined).

Reply 49

Sime

I'm studying French, Spanish and Japanese - and I'm a boy (honest!)

In my French class it is 5 boys to about 8 girls

In my Spanish class it is 4 boys to about 12 girls

My Japanese group (as we are external candidates) is me and three girls, and my friend has just started learning it too and she's a girl.

I think the German class at my college is even split though.

:biggrin:

Reply 50

Jess6893

In my A-level French class there's 4 guys and about 11 girls i think

Reply 51

cognito_08

In my French lecture at uni, there are less than 10 boys with over 100 girls and half of those boys are gay, including me... no seriously.
In my German lecture it's much more 50/50.

Reply 52

Vindobona

I'm taking Russian and Spanish at uni, and it's true that there are more girls than guys.

Reply 53

Jesse_Mac

I didn't do any at A-Level, but outside of college I've learned Welsh fluently and I can get by in French and Chinese.

Reply 54

Sime

I have heard that boys score a lot higher in languages in single-sex schools as opposed to mixed schools, so it could be a subconscious psychological thing. I have thus far remained unaffected! ...might be because I am gay too haha :awesome:

Reply 55

BeckyIsOptimistic

I don't go to a mixed school but I went on a Spanish course and a Spanish trip which were both 90% female at least..as others have said I think it's just to do with the different connotations that we subconsciously give Romance languages and Germanic languages. I'd always assume German to be a more male thing anyway!

Reply 56

*Hannah

I do French for AS and there are no boys in my class - just 10 girls. Interestingly, English Lit and Latin are also all girls - the only one of my classes to have any boys in is English Language :/

Reply 57

LeSacMagique

Out of the 8 people in my German AS class, 6 are male and 2 female. But as far as I know only both French and Spanish only have 1 boy doing them (and it's the same one, too).