Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
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Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#2This seems to be my week to finally "de-lurk" around here.
I did a collaboration a few years back on this; it's a fascinating topic. If you're curious to learn more and have access, check out: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...
I'll see if I can dig up a summary but am on iPhone at the moment.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#3When I started to get good at my second language (Japanese), I found it easier to be outgoing than when I was using English. Now it's been several several years and I speak Japanese and English every day, though I use Japanese a lot less (maybe 10% of the time), and I think the distinction has gone away. Sometimes I do find myself wanting to use a Japanese phrase when I'm having an English conversation, though.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#4I speak 2 languages fluently and a few others adequately. I definitely think my behavior is a little different when speaking Spanish versus English, but I don't think there are any deep-seated psycholinguistic reasons for this - it's more because of cultural differences.
An example: in Colombia, when demonstrating the height of a child, you hold your hand vertically, while when talking about the height of an animal, you hold your hand horizontally. If you do the wrong thing, people may assume you're a foreigner and don't know, or they may assume you're just rude. The fact that I learned to hold my hand a certain way when speaking Spanish with Colombians doesn't mean my personality has changed, it means I've absorbed a cultural lesson and if I do it, I do it because I am trying to fit in.
The same things goes for the way in which you express yourself with speech. The way you greet people, how long you make small talk before "getting down to business", how to flirt in a bar; all of these things vary a LOT from country to country and if you want to fit in, then you need to pay attention and learn some things. But again, doing that does not mean that your personality has changed; you're just behaving differently.
One more thing - as somebody who studied theoretical linguistics and speaks the two languages fluently, any time people start making ridiculously subjective claims about a language like "English, a more unemotional and efficient language than Spanish" - keep in mind you're reading complete bullshit.
That's like saying the firewire cable that you use to transfer movies from your video camera is more "artistic" than the USB cable you use to attach your hard drive to your computer. It's confusing the signal with the carrier, and making some pretty subjective claims about the signal too.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#5When working overseas and immersed in a foreign language, I found the processing power required for translation occupied my brain enough that I was less filtered and, as a result, more outgoing. I also picked up a new set of social cues and linguistic mannerisms since I was working with a blank slate of sorts. Both contributed to a slightly different personality.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#6I think it's a lot more cultural acclimatization than language, although the language you're using at the time may "force" a cultural context. I've certainly been different people when living in different places: the back-woods bilingual (English and "sawmill French") Stan of Northern Ontario had a lot in common with the distictly Maritime-accented Stan who lived in Halifax, Summerside and St. John's, but is almost no relation to the Stan who lived in Montreal or the current Torontonian version -- unless you can drag a bit of Newfanese or joual d'scierie out of me in a conversation. When that happens, the "my time is precious", stacatto-speaking urban a-hole melts away and a mellower (yet, oddly, harder-working) kind of fellow takes over. Granted, that's "anecdote", not "datum", but it frames an alternate way of studying the phenomenon.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#7I've been living in Spain for 8-9 years now and notice this whenever I go back to visit Canada or even the UK.
Interestingly, when we go to foreign places where English isn't the official language I find that I take on my "Spanish identity", perhaps like this author did when using German in the Czech taxi.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#8Interesting Wiki page that is helpful here on code-switching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#9I live in America and only speak swiss german with my wife. Apparently I talk like a girl when I speak swiss now.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#10I have an unpublished, unfinished PhD thesis investigating this question. I'm working on getting permission to publish it, but for now I can only give you the summary.
The author administered standardised personality tests to people tested as fluently bi-lingual in English and German. Each of the four possibilities was tested. Everyone got both tests, some tested first in English, the others first in German. Each group had roughly equal numbers of those claiming English as their first language and those claiming German as their first language.
The data showed two distinct types of behaviour. Some of those tested showed no personality shift at all, while others showed an unmistakable change. There were none who changed a little - either they did, or they didn't.
It's been suggested that those who didn't change were, for example, compound bilinguals, whereas those who did were coordinates. Or vice versa.
The conclusion was that a personality shift for some types of bilinguals is clear and unavoidable.
I really hope I can get this material onto the web.
ADDED IN EDIT: Separating the effects of cultural influences from those of the language itself is difficult, and the author of the thesis went to great lengths to look for changes based on the language. that's what makes this research so important (in my opinion). My next step is to contact the supervisor(s) of the candidate, but that's awkward. Working on it.