Dreaming in other languages...

[jaded]

I'll just explain, my family speak no other languages other than English and although i studied French and Spanish for 5 years, my skills have only ever been conversational and along the lines of "Sorry i dont eat food that is still looking at me" or "no, i dont have a boyfriend actually". I would never start up a conversation about quantum physic or claim to be anywhere near fluent waffle waffle. Anyway, the last couple of weeks i've been peppered by a spate of quite boring and ordinary dreams where everyone (including me) is speaking perfect French! I can understand everything perfectly and all the woman have kind of 1940's war hair. The point is, its been a few years since i've spoken or read either language and i reckon that just because im not fluent it dos'nt mean that my sub-conscious aint. Does any one else dream in another language? What if your bi or multi lingual?

[Amethyst Star]

Well, I'm a foreign language major and I'm taking Russian and Spanish. I can only remember one dream where I was speaking Russian and when I woke up I realized that what I had said in Russian was not what I was thinking in English. I think that if I was lucid and I was trying very hard to converse I would probably be more accurate. However, my subconscious has an intersting sense of humor, so... As with many things, I think it just depends on the person. The subconscious has a better memory than the conscious. -Amé

[A Lost Soul]

Originally posted by Amethyst Star The subconscious has a better memory than the conscious. -Amé That's very true. I have a terrible memory when I'm awake and walking around, but it’s very different when I go to sleep and dream. I've been independently studying Japanese and I quite often have dreams in which Japanese is the primary language used. I can understand perfectly what is being said. I reply in English (or what my mind 'hears' as English), yet the words that come out of my mouth are Japanese. What’s even stranger is that, the next day, I’ll write down some of the things that were said and try to translate them. It usually turns out that whatever was being said in my dream was actually a valid conversation. It frustrates me because my Japanese in the ‘waking’ world is terrible. What’s even more frustrating is when I dream in Dutch. I’m American, but living in the Netherlands for a little while. I can only say a few things in Dutch, and vaguely understand what’s being said. Yet in my dreams, I’m suddenly brilliantly fluent in Dutch… It’s a little frustrating at times because I wish I could just ‘unlock’ the part of my brain that’s keeping all that information is apparently kept secret from the rest of me.

[Peregrinus]

I'm fairly fluent in German (or used to be) and can speak a bit of Russian, and both have shown up in my dreams. One time the dream started out in Russian, but I fairly quickly exhausted my knowledge of that language, so I switched over to German and the dream continued. I didn't know any more Russian in the dream than I had been exposed to in waking life, but it certainly came more quickly and naturally. People don't "download" previously unknown languages in their sleep. You use in dreams what you have in waking life - you just often have smoother, quicker access, I think, because you're not consciously trying to translate from your mother tongue to the foreign language. You can think in the language of your dream.