Thread: Dream Characters Speaking Foreign Languages

In my dreams me and my characters always speak italian But your post reminds me of hypnotherapy, where some patients, once induced into a trance state, can sometimes speak languages they have never known or got in touch with. This phenomenon is called xenoglossy.

You can read a brief description at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy

P.S. next time you become lucid, ask your characters if they organize english classes

I think it's much simpler than that, because after all my DCs don't know more than me. I know (more or less ) what the proper pronunciation is, only that I can't do it. My DCs can, though.

The 'a' in words like 'cat' is specially challenging, I end up saying 'cut'

I am currently in Spanish 2, my vocab is ok, speaking isnt so good (I blame it on the teachers), and grammer is good.

One night I had a dream where a DC said something about "Patineta" and I was trying to figure out what that means. My mom (in the dream) said "Skates" translating for me. When I woke up I looked it up and turns out she was wrong. It actually means "Skateboard" close but no cigar!

I was pretty amazed even though my DC mom translated it wrong.

For me DC speak English, most of the time it makes no sense or the sentences seem so random.

Well I was talking to a person who only speaks spanish on MSN once... and they used the verb "encanta" and in my dream I was in a spanish class and somehow that came up and I was thinking the past participle of the verb is "enchantado" and my teacher (dc teacher) corrected me and said "encantado" and I think he told me what it means, even though I forgot. You speak spanish, by the way? Wanna help me practice?

Sometimes my DC's speak Simlish....which isn't technically a language, but still....

Occasionally I'll hear German too, since that's the language I'm studying. It's usually just words I know though, which isn't a lot, considering I just started learning it this year.

Originally Posted by ataraxis

You speak spanish, by the way? Wanna help me practice?
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(Excuse me if this post is a bit offtopic)

Sure, it can be fun. However I'm gonna be away from home the next 8 weeks and will probably connect only on weekends. And if you live in America we may have problems with the time difference with Europe. I'll send you my email address so you can add me to your MSN list. If somebody else wants to join, just ask for it!

BTW 'encantar' if used as a reflexive verb (I think it's how they're called) means 'to love something' or 'to like something a lot' for example 'me encanta bailar' -> I love dancing

Used as a 'normal' verb it means 'to enchant' ('espada encantada' -> enchanted/cursed sword) so you almost got it!
End of lesson

Originally Posted by stranger

(Excuse me if this post is a bit offtopic)

Sure, it can be fun. However I'm gonna be away from home the next 8 weeks and will probably connect only on weekends. And if you live in America we may have problems with the time difference with Europe. I'll send you my email address so you can add me to your MSN list. If somebody else wants to join, just ask for it!

BTW 'encantar' if used as a reflexive verb (I think it's how they're called) means 'to love something' or 'to like something a lot' for example 'me encanta bailar' -> I love dancing

Used as a 'normal' verb it means 'to enchant' ('espada encantada' -> enchanted/cursed sword) so you almost got it!
End of lesson
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Hmm now that you mention it... it's not reflexive but more of like, used with an indirect object. Like gustar. If it was reflexive you would say "me encanto" (I love myself) vs. me encanta (direct translation: it is loving to me)

I know it's pretty arrogant of me to correct you but I think that it's only because my teachers jam this stuff into my head and I know the inner workings of it... you just know it because you know it by heart. You can probably tell me why you do certain things in english that I never knew

Anyways, about the topic:
I'm going to Ecuador this summer for a month... to learn spanish and just be in ecuador. It might be interesting to see how that would affect my dreams! How long have you been taking English? Or just what's your experience with it?

Originally Posted by QwinsepiaSquared

Sometimes my DC's speak Simlish....which isn't technically a language, but still....
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Simlish? now thats just stupid-funny...

Honestly, I don't even know if my characters are speaking English (my native language). I know exactly what they're saying, but I never really pay any attention to HOW they're saying it, and in a couple dreams, soon after I woke up (both times after an abrupt wake-up), I thought about the dream and thought "Wait...What was he/she just SAYING?" because a lot of it seemed kind of like gibberish.

Then again, I might be crazy, because people have gotten angry at me in dreams for being far too verbose (which I am in real life, honestly...and I admit it regularly as well), so if I'm speaking gibberish in dreams, that'd certainly be odd...Lol.

~D-Draw

Your written english seems pretty good, so you will have heard other people speaking english - you know HOW the words are meant to sound, it's just your mouth that's not saying it right... your brain can let you haear the sounds in your dream

In my dreams I never hear people speaking anything but English... they do have different accents though - the Indian guy from the post office had an Indian accent. I guess it's the same with you.

It must have been triggered by this thread... but last night I had two spanish related dreams. The first one didn't have as much spanish, but I was in Ecuador and there were some spanish people there and I think I spoke spanish with them. In another one, I was in my art room and my mom was there and I guess she only spoke spanish now. I remember speaking a little spanish with her actually... I said something like "que paso con tu... something" because she said something happened to her son or friend. Then she responded and I couldn't really understand it much... a bunch of images flashed into my head as she responded and I think I got the gist of it in my dream, forgot it now.

Originally Posted by ataraxis

Anyways, about the topic:
I'm going to Ecuador this summer for a month... to learn spanish and just be in ecuador. It might be interesting to see how that would affect my dreams! How long have you been taking English? Or just what's your experience with it?
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Sorry for the delay, I'm back home for the weekend
Well I studied English when I was in elementary/high school. That's ten years ago now! I also studied for the First Certificate in English when I was at university. But I don't remember a single grammar rule of either language (Spanish or English), I just use them. Oh and I buy a lot of books from the US to save money, that helps a lot!

BTW I started to dream in English when I spent a month in London. I was 15 then (sniff&#33. So I'm sure that being inmersed in a Spanish environment will affect your dreams. I think it will happen to you when you start to think in Spanish (at some point you'll do it naturally to avoid translating all the time)

im an english speaker, but I am hispanic. im not fluent in spanish and I've always had trouble making sentances that make any sense, let alone understanding spanish that wasnt the usual command you get from your parents.

but there was one dream where I understood every word spoken, despite that the DCs were speaking spanish it was weird!

I speak fluent Portuguese, and sometimes I have dreams in Portuguese. The other night, I had a dream that I was in Europe in some supermarket with my friend, and she ran into this French friend that she knew from somewhere. The French girl's phone rang, and she answered it but she spoke in Portuguese. So I asked her, "aaah você fala?" (you speak?) but that's all the specific Portuguese I remember from that dream.

Oh and hello, this is my first post by the way.

I've been taking Spanish for four years and I sometimes get dreams where I am speaking a few phrases with others. Once there was a musical dream where this couple was singing some language I can't even begin to guess.

I have a friend who says he does not know a lick of Arabic and yet he was sleeping, his mom woke him up and told him he was speaking, in his sleep, Arabic fluently.

Strange.

Originally Posted by Sagea

I have a friend who says he does not know a lick of Arabic and yet he was sleeping, his mom woke him up and told him he was speaking, in his sleep, Arabic fluently.

Strange.
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Does his mom know Arabic?

Originally Posted by Sagea

I have a friend who says he does not know a lick of Arabic and yet he was sleeping, his mom woke him up and told him he was speaking, in his sleep, Arabic fluently.

Strange.
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Now this is REALLY strange...

Well, for me, my DCs talk foreign languages better than me sometimes I woke up and have to search the meaning for some words in the dictionary...

I have had that in doing language learning.

haha, this has happened to me on a few occasions, I took american sign language all throughout highschool, and during my senior year, I had goofed off alot in class so I was behind and hadn't learned as much as the rest of the students,

this was stressing me out and I would have dreams where I would go and visit my sister and her husband for the weekend and she is an interpreter and her and my brother inlaw would only speak to me in sign language, the funny thing was that I couldn't understand what they were saying,

but I remembered some of the signs and I told them to my teacher and he laughed cause they were actually signs, like one of them was "do you want scrambled eggs with cheese or bacon this morning" and I remember that part of the dream was at the breakfast table, so I think I absorbed the language in my sub-concious just not so much my concious mind, either that or my sister and me were just having shared dreams on those occasions

I have had dreams with DC's speaking voreign languages, and to me it sounds like they are making sense!! Like I was on the phone to a Mexican Police man and a certain Russian member here said some Russian to me in a dream too.

We have the desire to extend are communication.

This is an interesting topic for me, as I have taken two years of German in High school and someday hope to become fluent in real life. As it goes in RL I find myself grabbing out for words, etc. However many times in my dreams I have wound up being a High Ranking Schutzstaffel officer or Luftwaffe Airman, in these dreams the German flows very easily and I can comprehend what fellow Nazi officers are talking about. I find this fascinating and have studied it fairly deeply, it is as though in my dream suddenly all the stops have been pulled out allowing me to speak and comprehend even the tiniest little bits of knowledge I've picked up throughout life.

Heh, I see the turnover rate here has changed considerably since I signed up. Only 76 posts in two years, while some people joined in August of this year and have 2k+, Lol.