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languages
Seeing as my post on Brexit turned into a discussion about English I thought I’d ask if you guys think and dream in English or German. Do you write your songs in German and translate or are you fully assimilated into English?
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17 Replies
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At the moment I mainly dream in German but if, in my dream, I’m having a conversation with someone who I know would speak English in real life, I would also speak English in the dream. The “narrating voice” is mainly German but I have noticed that it also depends on what language I use most during the day.
While we were on tour for example, and speaking mainly English for a few weeks, my narrating dream voice would switch to English more often than not. Funny how the subconscious keeps babbling on in whatever language we were using during the day 🙂
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Good question Michael and interesting answer Lisa. One wonders how multilingual people get on but I guess your answer is logical. Whatever language you are using the most during the day. Funny, all my dreams are in English, except those occasions when my Australian strine kicks in!
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Agreed; this is a really fascinating topic that I had never considered before. I found this brief article on the subject, written by a professor of psycholinguistics:
Just a few nights ago I dreamed that I was conversing with Mona and Lisa in my living room, and they were both speaking perfect American English. (A cozy dream for me; a nightmare for Howard!)
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Interesting article David. Regarding your dream however, you must have realised you were dreaming if Mona and Lisa were speaking perfect American English. Surely they would only do this in one of their drama classes or a comedy sketch perhaps!
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I’d luv to hear them do the Canadian EH way of accent ????
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Fascinating question and equally fascinating answer. Can I ask a sub question to this? Because I would be interested to know if you (Mona and Lisa) were raised bi-lingual, or did you learn English later in your teens, perhaps as a necessity because of your music? You speak English so well!
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This is fascinating, and brings to mind my schooling years where we were taught Parisienne /France French classes once a week or twice, something like that, as the Quebec French is not quite the same and has alot of slang and uses of English /French in their language, conversations, etc. I can understand the very basics of it. In Montreal, I’d speak English, as my French is not fluent.
And I have friends of different ethnic/cultural backgrounds over the years to which when over at their house, the use of their mother tongue intertwined with English and French made for interesting chat to hear and figure out just what exactly was being said… Lol… I learned a few Italian swear words in my career as a HSW, with elderly clients… Why is that bad/swear words are easier to learn… Lol?!
Anyways, this is quite an interesting topic and I’m enjoying all the replies, and what Mona & Lisa add to it with their replies as well as other Club members?
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Well Paul, if I could put my two bobs worth in here I’d suggest that Mona and Lisa learnt English as a second language at school like most Europeans do. They also spent six months in Adelaide, Australia in 2009 on a school exchange for the express purpose of improving their English. There has been much discussion about their time here in the Forum.
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Jacki, that brought a funny Canadian moment to mind. I had a friend in Alberta that had worked as a translator at the UN. I can’t remember if it was 17 languages or 27. She joked about how she had been stopped many times but never gotten a speeding ticket. She would just chatter away in some unknown language and they would always let her go.
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John: That’s a really funny one, Eh?!…. Gotta Luv it, Only in Canada–EH???
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@Paul, We learnt English in high school (year 5 to 10) as part of the standard curriculum but our student exchange to Australia and the trips to the States really helped too. So did watching movies, YouTube etc. in English a lot 🙂
The article about language and dreams David posted was spot on!
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Thank you very much Lisa!
I wish I had learned German in my youth. My dad learned late in life, but never became fluent in it. Interestingly enough, dad’s mother grew up in a house that primarily spoke Polish, and his father in a German speaking house. When my dad was young, he was not allowed to learn Polish OR German. Dad’s mother insisted that he only spoke English. If he had learned either, I would probably be bilingual also.
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I have the habit/knack of picking up/taking on accents when talking to/with someone who is from somewhere else, ie: UK penpals (now online FB pals.. Lol), when we spoke on phone, I started talking in her dialect accent with her, didn’t even notice I was doing that until she mentioned it, she was impressed… Lol… I do the same with Irish, Scottish, Aussie, NZ folk. Now I can read in Italian a bit and speak a little (I learned swear words really quickly… Lol), I had past Italian clients in my career, where English was not their best, so they spoke Italian most of time, I came to grasp the basics of some stuff but not all, and when I had to read a local Italian community newspaper to a client, once more, the accent kicked in and I spoke with Italian accent, the client never complained, guess I was convincing enough she didn’t realize that I’m not Italian.. Lol I’m just like that, if I surround myself with people whose Mother Tongues not necessarily English, I’ll end up talking with an accent, it seems to come to me naturally… Thankfully I never used swear words learned, just had them used at me or in household with other family members.
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It’s interesting that you say that about accents Jacki. I lived in Christchurch New Zealand from 1991 to 1993… about 23 months total, along with my children (and my ex-wife). My children were 5 and 7 when we moved there, and attended the local schools. By the time we moved back to the US, both had pronounced NZ accents! When we moved back, other kids would ask my son if he was from a foreign country. It took a while before the accents really disappeared completely.
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Did you eat lots of fesh and cheps while in Christchurch Paul?
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