Why are there more guys learning Chinese than girls?

[Silent]

Imron, you don't have to convince me. I have registered:) Virtually all the benefits you mention can be enjoined without registering. And yes, you're right about the showing off. That's why I put it in quotes. Many people are already impressed by the intend to learn Chinese. So going public with it could be considered showing off.

Nevertheless, I think there's a big difference between learning Chinese and talking about learning Chinese.

[Meng Lelan]

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Right. Laugh and the whole Chinese Forums laughs with you.

[amandagmu]

How many women register for a site and list themselves as female? Usually that's an optional feature and I never check the option button... granted on this English language forum my name gives me away as a female, but I don't always use this handle.

With that said, I'm going with gato's response. It's the girls!

[ma3zi1]

When I was in college, I was in a heritage class for students who spoke any dialect of Chinese at home that was not Mandarin. Just to clarify, I was in the wrong class, I spoke only English at home growing up. I unknowingly picked the class because it fit my schedule. It turned out to be a good thing though, because the learning pace was much faster than the non-heritage class, which suited me quite well.

My class was, as others have indicated, about half boys and half girls; perhaps it is just an internet thing then, no?

我本科時選的中文課是一門針對在家說方言的學生的課。說清楚一下，我選錯那門課，我長大的時候只說英文。我無意間選它，因為那門課剛好適合我那個學期的日程。其實，因為那門課學習資料的進度比一般課快得多，所以這個選擇蠻合適我。

話說回來，關於我的那門課的學生，約一半是男的，一半是女的。這句話描繪的觀察就是跟其他用戶描述的差不多。難道這種多男少女的現象原來僅僅是一種上網論壇存在的現象嗎？

[roddy]

granted on this English language forum my name gives me away as a female

Oh, I always thought you were a Central Asian guy called Dagmu. A man, Dagmu. Seemed to make more sense than there being a woman on the Internet.

I just had a quick look at the database. The ratio of declared gender (the bulk of people don't say), is about 10 male to 3 female. Make of that what you will.

[xianhua]

Women are just as good at memorizing as men

And at no point did I say otherwise. I said the challenge of memorisation may appeal more to men.

[gato]

A man, Dagmu.

Hmm.

[gato]

I said the challenge of memorisation may appeal more to men.

Maybe, though not me.

People generally like things that they are good at, and for the most of the part, women tend to be better at learning languages than men. That's certainly the case with Chinese learning English in China. Chinese girls tend to be much better at English than guys, especially spoken English.

[amandagmu]

Well, there was a period in 8th grade when I was taunted on the bus endlessly with "Hey look! it's a man, duh!"

[Silent]

I think this in a large part has to do with attitude. About everywhere I've been it's the girls that are serious about what they do and the boys are more interested at showing off. When girls approach me they seem to have a clear goal. No matter what that goal is, practice English, learn a different culture, sell something, prostitute themselves or whatever, they tend to be serious about it.

Boys tend to be more interested in showing off. Their attitude is more like: Look I dare to approach a foreigner. Look I've a foreigner as a friend.... After that goal is reached they loose interest.

Considering that different attitude it's very easy to explain why girls have better skills/more in depth knowledge. This difference is not only visible in language acquisition. Also in many other fields this happens.

[trevelyan]

We don't technically collect gender information, but as far as I can tell, a bit more than half the people who signup at Popup Chinese are women. So I don't think the gender gap is really as wide as people think.

[anonymoose]

So what is it about this site then? Roddy, I think you need to change the theme colour to pink, or something.

[renzhe]

A provocative statement, but why would a serious student register here?

Because we don't know any serious students in real life, and it's nice to exchange ideas with other learners. If you're not studying Sinology, it can be a very lonely hobby outside of China. I might be the only Chinese language learner in this whole province.

On topic, I think that when you consider the active posters, the numbers are not really that skewed. If at all. Many of the regular posters are women.

[rezaf]

About 40000 people have registered to use this site (assuming that's where Roddy got all his email addresses from), yet only about 5 of us are girls.

:rolleyes: Does it mean Anonymoose is a girl? I always pictured her(or him?) as a mean guy.

[anonymoose]

:rolleyes: Does it mean Anonymoose is a girl? I always pictured her(or him?) as a mean guy.

I don't know why you'd think that.

[rezaf]

Nothing, my mistake! I guess haven't seen many women who tend to analyze things.

[Liebkuchen]

I didn't have my gender specified as an initial internet safety precaution and never bothered to update it (until now)

Female and proud!

[jbradfor]

Note that very few, if any, of the regular posters here are learning Chinese in a "typical" university setting. It seems about half are outside China learning as a hobby, and most of the rest are in China, umm, "surviving?". So the demographics here in no way represent people learning Chinese, which I would expect in pure numbers is dominated by people learning in schools.

So then my question is, what is the sex ratio of people learning Chinese outside of a school environment, just as a hobby? I have no way of guessing....

[wedge]

Why are there more expat guys in Pattaya than expat girls? I'm sure it's because Thailand attracts those left-brained engineers looking for a challenge.

[luozhen]

Wikipedia is male dominated because of the nerd imbalance: guys are generally more obsessive about a topic, will go into great depth, and provide it for free. There are a lot of basic questions on here, but also a lot of in-depth topics and things such as the TV project.

More guys aren't learning Chinese, this is just a place that attracts male language learners.