Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 89 posts

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#11

Post by enki »

i grew up speaking german and i live in SF.

I call bullshit on TFA, because last time I checked the german speaking area was culturally diverse in the traits mentioned.

Repeating stereotypes: people in Vienna don't yell and call bullshit on people (they are more likely to talk behind each other's backs), while people in Berlin yell at each other all the time to resolve conflicts (which seems way more healthy to me). These are stereotypes sure, but not more so than the ones mentioned in TFA.

So if there's no uniform behavior identifying even stereotypical german speakers, how can this guy pick up on behavior that is different just because of the language?

OTOH, hanging out in a culture that is more verbose (or not) about their conflict resolution can surely change you. But that's independent from language.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#12

Post by studer »

enki wrote: post #11

i grew up speaking german and i live in SF. I call bullshit on TFA, because last time I checked the german speaking area was culturally diverse in the traits mentioned. Repeating stereotypes: people in Vienna don't yell and call bullshit on people (they are more likely to talk behind each other's backs), while people in Berlin yell at each other all the time to resolve conflicts (which seems way more healthy to me).…

"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.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#13

Post by Luc »

marktucker wrote: post #9

I live in America and only speak swiss german with my wife. Apparently I talk like a girl when I speak swiss now.

Ha, that's funny, I thought I was the only one. I have noticed that when I speak English (to my wife and daughter) I speak in a higher pitched voice. As soon as I switch back to my native Dutch, I drop to a lower pitch, because to my ear it would sound ridiculous otherwise.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#14

Post by nat »

marktucker wrote: post #9

I live in America and only speak swiss german with my wife. Apparently I talk like a girl when I speak swiss now.

I had the same problem when learning Japanese. Whether teachers or friends, I didn't often speak it with other men, and definitely picked up some softer turns of phrase and pronunciations.

Once I became able to hear this in myself I started overcompensating somewhat, and had a few people comment that I sounded unusually brusque or was saying something almost cartoonishly masculine.

I don't think there was anything inherent in the language that changed my personality, but it definitely added another layer of concern and thought to how I interacted with people. A lot of it also had to do with just the more limited set of words available to me, though. Maybe I wanted to say something snarky or yell at a taxi driver or whatever, I might just not have known how.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#15

Post by pradocchia »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #10

I 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…

I'd definitely fall into the coordinate bilingual w/ personality shift camp. I think, speak and act in one language or the other, and have difficultly translating, though my comprehension is fluent, like two hemispheres of the brain with impaired communication.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#16

Post by spython »

It's getting more interesting when you have mastered a language to such a degree, that you can think in it. Having lived the first half of my life in Russia and the second in Germany I can think in both, russian and german, and switch between them instantly. I found out, that I am more happy and more relaxed while thinking in Russian, while thinking in German helps my problem solving skills. Probably it's correlated with my life experiences. I also talk in a higher, more boyish pitch while talking in Russian, while my German voice is deeper. At parties I often enjoy talking in English, as I have no cultural baggage at all associated with it, and can use it to say things I would hardly say in any other language (knowing how it may be interpreted). While it has its upsides (being able to switch to another cultural mindset on the fly helps with taking things easy), having two personalities occupying my brain makes both of them less deep, and while it's more or less interconnected now, translating the pieces of information between the languages feels often impossible in polynomial time.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#17

Post by waivej »

For a few years I dated a girl (translator) that spoke several languages fluently. She would talk with her father on the phone and sort of regress to the age/personality she had when she primarily spoke that language.

In English she was a young professional. In Italian she was a teenage girl. In Maltese she was a much younger child. I still wonder if they had a richer communication by going through the languages like that. It was so abrupt and obvious that I loved to sit and listen.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#18

Post by marktucker »

Luc wrote: post #13
marktucker wrote: post #9

I live in America and only speak swiss german with my wife. Apparently I talk like a girl when I speak swiss now.

Ha, that's funny, I thought I was the only one. I have noticed that when I speak English (to my wife and daughter) I speak in a higher pitched voice. As soon as I switch back to my native Dutch, I drop to a lower pitch, because to my ear it would sound ridiculous otherwise.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one! It's the pitch and also the things I say... apparently a lot of it is very "cute". Needless to say, our sex life is in English.

Re: Do you have a different personality when you speak a different language?

#20

Post by russell »

marktucker wrote: post #9

I live in America and only speak swiss german with my wife. Apparently I talk like a girl when I speak swiss now.

Some years ago I spent a few months in Brazil. My Portuguese was barely conversational, so I had to pay very close attention to vocabulary and usage to understand anything. I noticed that women had a distinctly different vocabulary from men. For example, men had one word for dog and women had an entirely different one, not just the "dog", "doggie" distinction. Talk only to women and you end up talking like a girl, :-)
Post reply on HN