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Do you feel like a different person when you speak a foreign language?
- yamrzou 3y agohttps://archive.is/jRhZJ https://archive.is/jRhZJ
- firebaze 3y agoNo, neither for english, spanish, romanian, or latin. Nor does my wife, their parents, my parents, my sister and anyone I know speaking english as their 2nd language. Growing up in a first language is a different thing, and there are hints that the first language influences thinking, concepts and lots of other stuff. But the connection to "feel like a different person" is not just weak, but non-existent, both from personal experience and from anything I read. Lots of animated gifs in the linked article don't help, even if they include happy bunnies.
- yamrzou 3y agoAre you bicultural? According to the article, the effect is more apparent for individuals who are bilingual and bicultural.
- 082349872349872 3y agoI code switch between languages, and between registers in those languages, so I'd say that the way I express my basic* personality changes (more pronounced in the case of register shifts, less so for just language change) but not at all that I feel like a "different person". To be honest, the example of south italian dialect sounds to me much more like a register change —which even monoglots should be familiar with— and not at all like a personality change. * see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits