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Second Language Personality Change | ||
Tags: Cultural Identity | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5447 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 9 of 27 17 July 2010 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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In English, you have a lifetime of experience to guide you in what you can and cannot get away with. In German, you have a very limited range of feedback from people who haven't really gotten to know you and who, not having a completely shared cultural background, were probably reluctant to judge you, just as you were probably reluctant to judge them. It's a recipe for not getting the social signals you need in order to present yourself as the sort of person you want people to think of you as being. And I'll bet there's a certain giddiness to it too. How exciting to hang out with people who will only know the glorious stories of your past that you tell them and not have the memory of other things you wish people would forget about. It leads to a lot of social experimentation. It can be hard to dial it down after that.
I don't think this is the phenomenon though of developing a different personality for your new language. When your personality changes with the learning of a new language, it's because the different cultural context requires you to find a different way to express who you are since you're not going to find a social niche in your target language culture that is identical to the one you inhabit in your native language culture - and you're not going to find a social niche anywhere that always lets you do, be and say whatever you want. It's an extreme version of the way that you act differently in front of your boss than you do in front of your best friend. The thing is that this is a more subtle modification that takes place subconsciously over a period of time as you evaluate feedback until you find yourself in a place where the new personality - the German you - is something that feels right for you. That doesn't seem to be the case here. If you truly want to get far enough into German that you get comfortable in your German skin, think about the German people you liked, the ones you related to, and how they acted. Think about what it would be like to hang out with them and - to borrow from myself - how you would interact with them in order to be the person you want them to remember. You'll soon realize that the German people who made the biggest, best impression on you may be completely unlike your American friends and yet there's something that tells you that you'd like to be a kindred spirit, something that clicked. This is your entrée into finding the real German you. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 10 of 27 18 July 2010 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
Exactly! That’s how it works for me as well. While I feel I can understand and express myself in English pretty well, there is still a distance between me and the language that I don’t think will ever completely go away and that’s alright because it makes me feel less awkward talking about personal or embarrassing things. Things that sound sentimental, weird or embarrassing in Dutch hardly ever sound that way when I say them in English. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Violaine Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5244 days ago 6 posts - 13 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 11 of 27 18 July 2010 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
So if I understand you well, you think it depends more on people you talk to than on the language itself, right ? This is interesting, but I think I have a different experience. I have been in that context where everyone is from a different country (for me, it was often Spain, France, Germany or Italy) and everyone was talking in English. I have also been in that context where everyone was French except ONE person so we would all speak in English, and I felt the same way. If I speak in English with a group of French people with one other person from somewhere else, I would feel different than talking to them in France. For me I don't think it depends on the people, I think it really comes from the feelings I have for the language I use. French sounds very sentimental and personal to me whereas English really doesn't, so it makes me feel very confortable, no matter who is in front of me. I would adapt of course, but if it's English with French people, I sound really different from when I use french with French people - I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5310 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 12 of 27 18 July 2010 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say personality wise, I'm more or less the same in the French and English (the two languages I've used and known enough to evaluate). But, like it seems several of you, I feel much more comfortable with emotion in french. I'm very closed as a person, yet quite often I feel that I could express or say my thoughts in French, when I can't in English. Very annoying around my mostly monolingual friends...
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| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5327 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 13 of 27 28 July 2010 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||
It's the same for me. I can say/hear puto or scheissen all day, but they just don't feel as strong as their English counterparts (same with other foreign swearwords). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zamie Groupie Australia Joined 5253 days ago 83 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 27 28 July 2010 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose that natives have a special connotation to their language's words that
learners don't have. Edited by zamie on 28 July 2010 at 9:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6342 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 15 of 27 28 July 2010 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am much more open when I speak in Chinese, especially if I speak in a dialect, than
when I speak English. Perhaps this is because my willingness to learn the language places me ahead of 99% of the foreigners living in China when I communicate with locals and whenever I say something stupid, locals tend to give me the benefit of the doubt and associate it to cultural differences. Speaking in English doesn't give me any of these advantages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| RealGodiva Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5231 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2 | Message 16 of 27 30 July 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am a vulnerable and thus reserved person. When I communicate in English I feel less vulnerable may be because I am less open, without any specific efforts, just due to some language limitations and social speaking patterns. This surprisingly makes me more relaxed and even positive, as if I feel "safe".
Speaking in Russian often makes me be like an "open nerve" compared to English, which doesn't benefit me in social situations. Probably, this could be a problem if I had a native English speaking man as a husband - being more difficult to open. But my husband is not a native speaker and it's OK with all other people. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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