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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 9 of 28 27 January 2010 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Probably a bit of both, and with me it's always helped that the listener is a little intoxicated too :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6661 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 10 of 28 27 January 2010 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Several weeks ago I dreamed that I was in a language class and the teacher taught us to ask "Donde vieni?" I didn't remember ever hearing this question in waking life and wasn't even sure which language it was or even if it was a real question in a real language.
Some days later, I Googled the phrase and learned to my delight that it means "Where do you come from?" in Italian, a language I speak imperfectly in real life. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5555 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 11 of 28 27 January 2010 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the 2.5 years I've been studying Finnish, I've only dreamt in the language a handful of times, including during the 4 months I spent living in Finland. Pretty much 100% of the time these few dreams were bilingual in English and Finnish, usually with much more English used than Finnish. I actually had a dream in Finnish last night in which I remember a huge amount of Finnish being used, but alas I can remember neither the "plot" nor what was being said.
I don't really speak very good Finnish in my dreams, and sometimes I find myself speaking gibberish when I don't know how to say a word or how to phrase something in particular. I speak much better Finnish in real life than in my dreams. I really wish I would dream in my L2 more often, but alas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6127 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 12 of 28 27 January 2010 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've had flash card dreams -- where I'm endlessly reviewing flash cards, except all the kanji are strange and wrong. Recently, I fell asleep listening to Finnish, and in my dream, I kept repeating on the idea that I'd forgotten every single word of Japanese.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5450 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 13 of 28 27 January 2010 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
this is what's been happening to me with Russian, from time to time, over the years (I've never been to Russia and have studied Russian long time ago). The interesting thing is that it is usually happening when I spend some time reading my favorite Russian poets - but not in Russian (because my Russian is not good enough to fully enjoy poetry in it's original). And yes, I speak much better Russian in these dreams and after waking up can repeat phrases that I wouldn't be able to come up with right now...It doesn't happen often, though... :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5969 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 28 27 January 2010 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have wondered about this, too. When I studied and used Spanish everyday, I would frequently have Spanish dream-conversations. That language seems to diffuse into the dreamworld easily, but German does not. I don't know why. I've had very few dreams about or in German, even when I study and listen a lot.
I did have one strange experience in Germany during an 8-hour long car ride north to Leipzig. I fell asleep, or half-asleep, with the radio on (no, I was not driving!) and somehow, I could suddenly understand everything! It really felt as if I had an instantaneous and previously untapped wealth of perfect German comprehension, and it was a very nice feeling! Alas, all illusion! I think I probably recognized a few words and my semi-conscious brain filled in the rest with something that felt like fluency but certainly was not. I don't know why German does not enter my dreams very often. Maybe it does and I don't remember. Most of my dreams are about grocery shopping (seriously, I have no creativity at all when I am not awake). But one interesting thing happened early on in my German study. I didn't dream in German: I dreamed about German grammar! I dreamed that I was trapped inside a very long, convoluted German sentence. I was afraid I would never escape and I did not know why. Then the answer came in a great booming authoritative German voice: SATZKLAMMER! Oh, well, of course. Grammatical brackets. But it was really very frightening at the time! (this is true, I did not make this up!) I think I probably do dream a little in other languages and just don't recall this. I often wake up with echoes of foreign words in my thoughts. Edited by meramarina on 27 January 2010 at 11:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5611 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 15 of 28 27 January 2010 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh wow, do I dream.. Dreams have always been something I remember and have been interested in, eg I lucid dream sometimes as well! And I definitely dream in all my languages, sometimes up to 4 in one dream(!) I feel like I'm going insane sometimes and I wake up feeling rather confused. XD
Most surprising was Hindi - after watching a 4 hour Hindi Bollywood movie (the first one I ever saw) I went to bed and had a dream in Hindi. Whether it was correct Hindi, I have no idea, but I think it just shows how impressionable my dream mind is in terms of languages! I also have had numerous instances of my grammar being corrected in my dreams, or of people in my dreams using words I didn't realise I knew, and speaking much faster and better than I. What I do remember usually seems to be correct! Of course in some instances it is all terribly wrong, haha, but that is perhaps part of the dreams where you keep getting embarrassed and saying the wrong thing, or speaking the wrong language to people who don't understand... Maybe the dreams I find weirdest are those where I have a full on conversation with someone in say, Spanish, who in real life doesn't speak that language at all. It's so weird to hear their voice and speech patterns in a language I'll never actually hear them speak. Oh and to the person who asked about lucid dreaming: I don't really get lucid often enough, but I have had lucid conversations in various languages, if only it was more frequent it would be a great way to practise! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 28 28 January 2010 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
I sometimes wake up too early in the morning, and then I sleep very lightly afterwards with some internal clock set that wakes me up in time to get to my job, - and this last sleep period is often lucid. Besides I was unemployed during a period in the 80s, and I slept up to 10 hours daily back then. And I noticed that the last, 'superfluous' sleep cykle often was lucid when I slept that long. But I have not really used lucid dreams to train my languages - too much effort and I wake up. The general pattern is that whenever I am supposed to be in Denmark in my dreams I speak Danish, but often I dream that I'm in some foreign place, and then I sometimes communicate with someone in another language. This has also happened with languages that I don't speak well, like Russian, but I don't remember cases where I understood a language better than in real life. I have described one half-dream in my log, where I 'thought' about language relationships in terms of birds, - with the Gaelic languages as a row of almost identical green parakeets sitting on a branch, and with other language families symbolized by other kinds of birds. This was a very dreamlike experience (including the typical lack of contact with the external world), but completely lucid. Both lucid dreaming and 'speaking in tongues' in dreams are interesting phenomena, but I don't think they are easy to use for anything useful. I see them as just one more source of entertainment. Edited by Iversen on 28 January 2010 at 12:40am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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