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Do you know of any research into bilingual people and the effect of switching languages? I feel like I become an almost different person if I switch back to spe

Do you know of any research into bilingual people and the effect of switching languages? I feel like I become an almost different person if I switch back to speaking Dutch for more than a day.

throwaway81523 1y ago
I'm not fluent in anything but English, but I've had some basic exposure to a few other languages. I've found when travelling that trying to struggle by in another country's language (avoiding English) is almost like reformatting my brain. It takes a few days to to reach the point where my surface thoughts are in the new language, but at the same time, my knowledge of the new language is so primitive that those thoughts can't have any complexity. I've wondered if that's anything like the mind-emptiness that Zen meditators are known to seek. Of course I could switch back to English when I had to. I'm pretty sure that doing this a few times made my English permanently worse. I guess it's ok since I'm not a literary stylist or anything like that, but it's something to be aware of.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Maybe study a bit of ancient Greek or Latin to boost your English a little.
- vanderZwan 1y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that doing this a few times made my English permanently worse. I guess it's ok since I'm not a literary stylist or anything like that, but it's something to be aware of. Oh, that's just your brain suffering from hash collisions during lookup for words. After a while it adapts and switches to a new data structure, speaking from experience.
Dansvidania 1y ago
I don’t, but anecdotally I know this to be true. I speak 4 languages pretty fluently and I can confidently say that my personality is different depending on which language I am using. I only got to experience this well after having left university and all my academic aspirations so never got deeper than experiencing it first person. Just for fun, I theorised that it’s a rewinding to the emotional states - and consequently behaviours - I had when getting proficient in the language.
- vanderZwan 1y ago
  Well, for what it's worth, that was my hypothesis as well for explaining my anecdotal experience with this! I switched to effectively speaking English full-time in my late twenties, due to having a foreign partner and later moving abroad with her. I've noticed that I emotionally regress a little bit to teen/tween behavior and anxieties whenever I speak Dutch again for longer periods of time. This effect is at its strongest when I'm visiting my parents in the Netherlands, so there's an obvious location-component to it as well. Linking places to emotional states is pretty well established IIUC, so the latter shouldn't be surprise.

Do you know of any research into bilingual people and the effect of switching languages? I feel like I become an almost different person if I switch back to speaking Dutch for more than a day.

throwaway81523 1y ago

I'm not fluent in anything but English, but I've had some basic exposure to a few other languages. I've found when travelling that trying to struggle by in another country's language (avoiding English) is almost like reformatting my brain. It takes a few days to to reach the point where my surface thoughts are in the new language, but at the same time, my knowledge of the new language is so primitive that those thoughts can't have any complexity. I've wondered if that's anything like the mind-emptiness that Zen meditators are known to seek. Of course I could switch back to English when I had to. I'm pretty sure that doing this a few times made my English permanently worse. I guess it's ok since I'm not a literary stylist or anything like that, but it's something to be aware of.

HPsquared 1y ago
Maybe study a bit of ancient Greek or Latin to boost your English a little.
vanderZwan 1y ago
> I'm pretty sure that doing this a few times made my English permanently worse. I guess it's ok since I'm not a literary stylist or anything like that, but it's something to be aware of. Oh, that's just your brain suffering from hash collisions during lookup for words. After a while it adapts and switches to a new data structure, speaking from experience.

Dansvidania 1y ago

I don’t, but anecdotally I know this to be true. I speak 4 languages pretty fluently and I can confidently say that my personality is different depending on which language I am using. I only got to experience this well after having left university and all my academic aspirations so never got deeper than experiencing it first person. Just for fun, I theorised that it’s a rewinding to the emotional states - and consequently behaviours - I had when getting proficient in the language.

vanderZwan 1y ago
Well, for what it's worth, that was my hypothesis as well for explaining my anecdotal experience with this! I switched to effectively speaking English full-time in my late twenties, due to having a foreign partner and later moving abroad with her. I've noticed that I emotionally regress a little bit to teen/tween behavior and anxieties whenever I speak Dutch again for longer periods of time. This effect is at its strongest when I'm visiting my parents in the Netherlands, so there's an obvious location-component to it as well. Linking places to emotional states is pretty well established IIUC, so the latter shouldn't be surprise.