“Women’s tongues are like lambs’ tails–they are never still.” –Old English saying

The notion that women talk more than men is pervasive. The female chatterbox who never lets men get a word in edgeways, according to  recent research, is nothing more than a myth. In the new study, the biggest to date, the two sexes are in fact pretty much neck and neck. Girls have a jump on boys in verbal fluency early in life, but research is confusing on the subject of whether they actually talk more than boys do as adults. One oft-cited statistic, whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time, has it that the average woman utters 20,000 words a day, compared to only 7000 issuing from the laconic male.

Refuting the popular stereotype that females talk more than men, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have found women and men both use an average of 16,000 words each day.  [continue reading…]