Ninja Bunny Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5811 days ago 42 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Danish, Mandarin, Afrikaans, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French
| Message 1 of 57 24 January 2009 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
Hello all,
I have had a number of dreams in several foreign languages and wondered who here has as well.
I began studying German in high school but my first dream occurred while in college.
I also took a 2nd year intensive course in Russian (a full year's worth of material learned in eight weeks). I went to three hours of classes in the morning, broke for lunch, worked on my homework in the afternoon, broke for dinner and studied vocabulary in the evening. One night I had a dream in Russian and the next day I lamented to one of my classmates, "Even in my sleep I can't escape it!" He replied, "No, it's a good thing. It means you're really absorbing the language."
Soon after I had a single dream in German, Russian and French (the latter I hadn't actively studied but probably picked up passively).
Since then I have had several dreams in Italian and German. Recently, after spending an evening learning a few basic phrases in Norwegian, I went to sleep and had a dream in...Czech. Go figure.
I think my favorite overall was one where I was standing in the doorway looking into a room and saw neon green Chinese characters streaming down in front of me in several columns Matrix-style - and I could read all of them!
I often don't remember the content of the dreams - the German/Russian/French one involved an large manor and a horse and carriage and I was speaking to a couple people, one a girl in a bonnet - but I do remember the languages I'm quite happy about it the next morning.
What have your experiences been?
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Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5840 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic
| Message 2 of 57 25 January 2009 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
I have yet to have an entire dream consist entirely of something besides English. But I've had a few with a German word or phrase here and there; maybe it's because I always read before going to bed, and the books I read are German. Last night I had a dream that I won tickets to go see Die Ärzte in concert, and was trying to come up with $2,300 (that's how much it was in my dream, I don't know how much it'd really cost) to fly over to Germany xD I was sad when I woke up and realized it was just a dream... *sigh*
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6291 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 3 of 57 28 January 2009 at 9:13am | IP Logged |
I rarely remember my dreams but on occasion when I have been preoccupied with an L2, it does influence my dreams. I certainly remember dreams partly or entirely in German and Turkish (different periods of my life).
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ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 6013 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 4 of 57 28 January 2009 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
A fair portion of my dreams these days are in french. No surprises there.
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SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6678 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 5 of 57 29 January 2009 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
This has happened to me several times. The weird part is that people I know will speak languages in my dreams that they don't speak in waking life.
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Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5917 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German
| Message 6 of 57 29 January 2009 at 11:14am | IP Logged |
I dreamed that I was in a room where it was many chairs and because it was a tropical country the windows hadn't glass. the ground of the room was slippery and all the chairs have slipped at one side of the room (suddenly and quickly). One lady went through the window and was on the ground which was concrete and she wasn't conscious and blood was on her head. I asked them if they had phoned the ambulance, but they hadn't, therefore I had to do it. I found a mobile phone and have tried to phone 112, but every time the phone put the incorrect number, for example 011, 012 it was stressful and panicky. After, I had to tell to the person immediatley send us an ambulance : I had to say this in English, because the place of this dream was an English-speaking one.
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Jeito Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5836 days ago 55 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin, German, Italian, Portuguese
| Message 7 of 57 29 January 2009 at 5:28pm | IP Logged |
The first time this happened to me I was about 19 years old and living on my own in Guayaquil, Ecuador. I remember the exhiliration of waking up and realizing that I had a whole dream in Spanish. Since then, I have studied a number of languages some of which I know pretty well. I dream in them from time to time. But what I think is funny sometimes, I dream in a language that I have not pefectly mastered such as Mandarin and still in the dreaming state I know if I, or somebody else in the dream has made a mistake in grammar or vocabulary...it's pretty funny to wake up and know you used the wrong particle or some other minor grammatical flub in the dream you just had. Does this happen to anybody else?
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Satoshi Diglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5842 days ago 215 posts - 224 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese
| Message 8 of 57 30 January 2009 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
Well, when I have dreams in English I tend to be very proud of them. Though I can only remember one such dream, where everyone around me (including my family) was speaking English and everything. What is nice is that the dream never focused in being in English. It simply was. I only realized it was English after waking up.
Little time ago I dreamt about Japanese. Not really IN Japanese, but I dreamt about the kanji stroke orders and I was writing them down and trying to remember vocabulary. But in my dream I was thinking in Portuguese.
Nice thing, though. Unconscious language practing.
I even marked the day on my calendary. I was very happy when I woke up.
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