I've noticed that when I speak Spanish (or Japanese) I become a much more outgoing person. I've suffered from fairly bad social anxiety most of my life, but when I switch to another language I don't run into the same mental walls that I do when I speak English.
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?
#32I 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,…
That's funny--Colombia was one of the few places I visited during a 9-month trip through Latin America where I was routinely mistaken for a native. (My Spanish is good, but definitely not native.) I chalked it up to people being lighter-skinned (at least in the cities), like me, and also the lack of foreign tourism to accustom people to gringo peculiarities. That, and going to places most tourists didn't bother with (Barranquilla anyone? :) Other places (esp. Cuba) it was much harder to blend.
FWIW I definitely feel like a different person when I speak Spanish. But I think that's mostly I have a very wry, subtle sense of humor which does not translate well. Even to other Americans sometimes :)
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
"people in Berlin yell at each other all the time to resolve conflicts" Oh, I thought the real German stereotype was that you sued people if they annoyed you even the slightest.
The US is famous for their lawyer epidemic and nutcase lawsuits like McDonalds coffee that is too hot.
I wish people would make themselves familiar with examples before citing them as evidence of vague general claims:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonalds_Restaurant...
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#34Another interesting data point. My brother speaks English as his first language, but Mandarin is his primary language.
One thing that he found is that when he immersed himself in Chinese culture, he had no problems. However if he went through a period where he hung out with other Americans and Canadians, he shifted back towards his Westerner persona, and would start to have trouble with the cultural differences.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in most Indian languages.
And French, "tu" (familiar singular) and "vous" (formal singular, or plural). English used to have "thou", but of course that's long since extinct.
In Italian is almost like that: "tu" (familiar) and "voi" (very formal) or "lei" (less formal)
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#36I 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 gro…
Here's a bit of my experience to back up how hard it is to separate out the cultural aspect: The English singular 'you' has two words for it in German, 'sie' and 'du'. The first one is used in situations where there is some distance between the speakers, the second when they are (much) more familiar. It used to be fairly unheard of to hear a German 'subordinate' use 'du' to their superior, whereas in English it would…
Korean and Japanese have several levels of deference, which go beyond a simple dual 2nd person pronoun. There are, for example, different 1st person pronouns which are used for self-reference when the listener is of various social ranks, or under different social circumstances.
In Japanese, for example, a man will say "watashi" for "I" under formal circumstances, and "ore" while getting a beer with the mates.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#37[deleted]
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#38Interesting Wiki page that is helpful here on code-switching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
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Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#39I've always been of the belief that cognition is deeply rooted in language. This is essentially the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis.
Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?
#40Interesting Wiki page that is helpful here on code-switching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
Another on linguistic relativity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity