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Dreaming in other languages | ||
Tags: Dreams | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 28 27 January 2010 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Returning from a long weekend, I felt quite exhausted, and indulged in an extra-long siesta on the couch. I suspect my brain must have been desperately trying to get out of doing some more Listening-Reading that day, and tricked my body into taking an extended little nap instead. Hence I awoke later, a little grumpy and muttering to myself in German, with the fleeting memory of a vivid dream...
In the "German dream", I was alone on board a luxury steamship, swimming happily in a pool in the sunshine. When all of a sudden a strange woman, a film director who introduced herself later as Marionette, walked in with a glass of champagne and began to chat away and tell me her whole life story. At first I just stood there and listened politely to her confessions, trying to be friendly and speak back in pigeon German. I soon realised however that all my responses and polite questions were just being ignored, it was as though she was just speaking at me, reading boisterously from a script. I soon grew very bored and irritated and just yearned to slip away...and it was at this exact moment I woke up, and discovered I'd left my background passive German listening selection on whilst sleeping. Curious, I checked the last track in the playlist, and lo and behold it was the voice of this very same woman, narrating "Der Marionettenspieler" by Hans Christian Andersen. Listening through this again, now awake and bleary-eyed, I made a note of key words and phrases that stood out clearly: "Dampfschiff, Direktor, Wasser, polytechnisch (pool), freundlich, quatschen, allein, Marionetten, zuhörer, steht, gestand, Gläser und Wein, Sonnenschein, glücklichsten Mensch, langweilte, Elend...". Hmm...notice any similarities? So does this mean that passive listening in the background whilst you sleep, or at least whilst you drift off or wake up, can help you dream in the language? And does this have a positive effect on language acquisition? Successful language learners such as Khatzumoto (All Japanese All the Time) have done exactly this, with Japanese playing constantly in the background 16-24 hours a day. Others have taken the middle path and used an MP3 alarm clock to send themselves off to sleep and wake themselves up in their desired study language in the morning. I'm not sure it's all for people like me though. Peace and quiet after a day's earful of straining to a foreign language can be quite blissful, and I guess my sleeping hours are sacred in this regard. Besides, listening constantly, even to my own native language, would swiftly drive my poor brain into a spiralling insanity. At the moment I'm more in favour that it disturbs deep sleep and effectively weakens study and memory recall the next day. What do you think folks? There's little doubt that dreaming in another language can be quite motivational. You feel as though you are truly internalising this new language, at least on some subconscious level, and making positive progress. Have you dreamt in the language you're learning recently? Does this usually only happen after certain trigger events, conversations or patterns that day? Do you, as once did Professor Arguelles, even keep a "foreign dream log"? I'd be interested to hear other peoples' experiences and views on dreaming in other languages... :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ChrisVincent Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Mauritius quicklearn.t35.com Joined 5437 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 2 of 28 27 January 2010 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dreaming in a foreign language is quite frequent for people living in a foreign country. It occurs much less for people merely studying a second language and still living in their native country. There are exceptions - that person talks several hours with another person fluent in that language, or that he does a lot of self practice, or if he is constantly subject to an audio or video external stimulus in that language e.g. through recorded conversations, songs, films, etc.
According to educators and psychologists, sleep is a means for the brain to assimilate the material learned. Dreams help in this assimilation process, and also help to resolve internal conflicts. This is why they advise students to study/revise before going to sleep. What may have happened in your case is that a mixture of events has led to your dream - the fact that you are learning German, that you listened to that audio track (song?) many times, coupled with the fact that you were very tired, so in a certain way you were already in more or less a second state when you took your nap. Since learning German must be quite important to you, your dream was a way for your brain to integrate your learning while picking up a familiar situation (material from the audio track). The reason you felt tired after waking up and remembered the dream so vividly is because you didn't complete the sleep cycle (the different phrases). Firstly, you always intended the nap to be quite short, and secondly, you were sleeping in an unfamiliar location (your couch). So, you awoke when the dream was not fully 'digested'. If you had slept well (full cycles) and that you had slept comfortably in your bed, the chances are that your brain would have assimilated your dream, you would have forgotten the dream and you would have awoken completely refreshed. You would also have felt the same urge to learn German more although you would not have not exactly where it came from. I am curious about one thing - did you speak German better in your dream than you currently can? Or was it at the same level or below. Recently, I came across a small Survey carried out in 1996, in which the majority of people interviewed reported they spoke the foreign language better in their dream than they actually can when fully awake. They also said that they noticed a temporary rise in their language skill following the dream. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fsc Senior Member United States Joined 6331 days ago 100 posts - 117 votes Studies: French | Message 3 of 28 27 January 2010 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am studying French. The first time I had a dream in French, I was talking to a man that I knew in the dream was/spoke French. I was speaking to him in French and he said in English "I can't understand what you are saying". Hahahaha.
I think it comes from my fear that no one will be able to understand me. I have had several other dreams in French but don't recall the details. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nowneverends Newbie United States Joined 5437 days ago 26 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 28 27 January 2010 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've found that when I dream in German I speak much better than I do in real life. I also
thought I was speaking German much better than normal (and was actually conversing with someone) one time while intoxicated. I wonder if both of these come down to loss of inhibition, or if one or both is because of a change in perception (I merely think I am speaking more fluently than normal). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrasiteren Newbie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5542 days ago 10 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English | Message 5 of 28 27 January 2010 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last year I was engaged in English intensely. There was an American English teacher in
our school. And we were talking all the time. In breaks, in lessons..And when I got back to home, I was speaking English with my family, although they didn't understand me :) In that period, I had few dreams in English :) And yes, it's quite motivating 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5925 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 6 of 28 27 January 2010 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I seem to dream more in French than I do in Spanish which I've always found strange since I live in Mexico.
I've always wondered about lucid dreaming and language learning/practice. Anyone dabbled? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5449 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 7 of 28 27 January 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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When you're in theta (slow brain wave cycle), the zone where you're falling off to sleep, you can still hear and your brain will sometimes integrate what you're hearing into your dreams. I listen to hypnosis programs in French or Spanish right before bed and find it increases the odds of dreaming in the language. (If you listen to them during the day, it will have the feel of a waking dream or daydream in the language you're listening to.) Of course for hypnosis to work, you have to know the language well enough to go with it, not get your brain going trying to understand it.
I'm skeptical of sleep learning - the idea you can put on a recording and learn what it says during the night. But there's no reason background audio that you understood couldn't filter into your dreams, especially if you're a light sleeper. So I'd keep listening. There's one thing I've wondered about but haven't tried. They say the best way to have a lucid dream is to wake yourself up (via alarm clock for example) a couple hours before you're actually supposed to get up, spend ten or twenty minutes up and then go back to sleep. I wonder if you could have lucid dreams in the language of your choice by using the time right before falling back asleep to listen to some content in that language. Note, again, that this wouldn't be about learning new material, just dreaming in the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 8 of 28 27 January 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks ChrisVincent - lots of great info there! :)
I completely agree that sleep is essential for assimilating what we've learned throughout the day, ideally waking up with many of our challenges at least partly resolved and fresh new ideas at the ready. We all too often disregard the role of sleep in the holistic language learning process, for which it probably plays the principle part. From my own experiences, I view the dream process as a conscious little skylight on what's going on inside my head just prior to waking or whilst semi-consciously treading the tightrope between the lighter stages of sleep. Although a dream may have seemed to have lasted for days or even years, these actually turn out to be very short bursts of brain activity in our sleep cycles. Our minds however are ultra-clever at composing a natural (or more often supernatural) story from those elusive bits and pieces already fading from our memory on rousing. If only we could make up such interesting stories just as quickly in TPR classes or kanji/vocab study during the day! I'm particularly interested in your notion that after dreaming in German you should i) feel an "urge to learn German more although you would not have known exactly where it came from", and ii) perhaps notice a "temporary rise in language skill following the dream". Is this something you've experienced yourself?
I've had a few dreams where I spoke in German now, and even a smidgeon of Russian once, and have always been pleasantly gifted with a slightly higher level in my "better-but-not-too-unrealistic" dreamworld. This time however, I was oddly struggling for words much more than in reality. I hope my language skills are not devolving in my sleep... ;) Edited by Teango on 27 January 2010 at 8:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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