During my studying medicine, I could easily discuss the diseases of the reproductive system, but I feel it a sensitive topic when I talk about them in arabic ( my native language)
Likewise! I've always been "clinical" and "detached" when explaining reproductive health to patients (I'm also a medical doctor) in English and more limited Afrikaans and Filipino, but I feel disgusted with myself if I have to talk about it in my home language, or Malay 😢
I was driving a uhaul in New York City and it stalled in an intersection. The tow truck driver spoke Bamankan, which I had learned in the Peace Corps. My daughter was stunned as her stressed out mom turned into a chill person the moment I started speaking Bamankan. I instantly reverted to a person who had learned to laugh at daily problems.
Germany lets me be more introverted without it being seen as a deep character flaw than I could get away with in America. So I do take advantage of that. But that is more that the culture gives me the opportunity to express my true personality better without negative judgement than truly having a different personality.
I’ve never felt like I have a different personality when speaking another language. I’m more extroverted when speaking my other languages, but as you suggested, that’s a deliberate strategy for language learning, not a change in personality. I’m also quite aware of the cultural differences and try to adapt to them, but, again, that’s not a change in personality, that’s just me trying to be respectful of the other cultures.
I totally agree with you when you say that, rather than changing personality, we create a new persona when speaking L2. In my L1, Italian, I'm shy and insecure; in my L2, English, I'm confident, open and outgoing. I put it down to my overall personality and sense of humour being considered odd by Italians, but fairly common by British people. So, feeling liked by the people I'm interacting with is what ultimately boosts my self esteem and my confidence, and it happens more often when I am using L2.
Something interesting when you mentioned "being more open in Spanish because it's a cultural script" I know people here in Brasil, native Portuguese speakers, who have a better time speaking their feelings in English, because English registers as "less real" in some senses. It's the language of the movies, not the language of your mom, so when you speak your heart, you're also deflecting a bit; kinda like the verbal version of not looking someone in the eyes to tell them something heartfelt.
@@languagejones6784 Exactly. These same people swear a lot more in English (and I do too, to be fair) because it sounds fake. "Motherfucker!" is an exclamation you hear in the movies, it doesn't sound as real as the equivalent translation.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks the whole "different personalities in different languages" is bullshit. As you wonderfully explained, it’s not our personalities that change, it’s our way we interact with other people, our “personas”. I can say the exact same sentence in three different languages, and I’d be perceived as an asshole, a friendly guy or a very polite man depending on the language I’m using. Heck, even in the same language depending on the person I’m talking with my vocabulary and grammar change. By the way- and at the risk of sounding like a stereotypical Spanish speaker -, your Spanish is quite good. You still have a noticeable English intonation, but overall, your diction is clear and your sentences are precise. Keep up the good work!
I think it's also the expression toolkit that comes with the language and the culture that follows it that can make it appear as you're... a different person. This is probably more particular to bi/trilinguals than any polyglots. I'd easily get into an argument in one language, but dismiss the same thing in another, just because that's how those languages...function, and how I was raised to use them.
Hello, i am a practicing neuropsychologist and I agree that personality - meaning temperament or the biological machinery in your brain that generates personality - does not change. If your brain does not get damaged your personality is pretty stable across time even using self-assessment.
I feel for me it's more like my true personality shows when my fluency is at a high enough level. So a different personality in a different language is more level of fluency.
My personality doesn’t change, the way it is perceived does. In French I’m “somewhat blunt” (I don’t do it on purpose, I have subpar social skills and limited flexibility). In Canadian English I’m apparently “very very blunt”. Perhaps in Dutch I would be “not particularly blunt” and in Japanese “insanely rude”? But I’m still saying the same things…
This reminds me of when I heard someone say the Dutch are super polite and I did a double take. The speaker was Israeli. The bluntness was appreciated. If you haven’t seen Ted Lasso, they’ve got a few jokes about the bluntness of a Dutch footballer. “Jan’s not being rude; he’s just Dutch.”
I fully agree! But some of it is also the tone used.If ask someone what they want to drink in German with the same tone I use in France, they will ask if I'm mad at them or got up with the left foot first...
I definitely don’t feel different personality wise when speaking German (my second language). I do feel different bc the language has such a different vibe. Esp when using grammar and words that have no “direct translation”. But I am definitely not an analytical person in any language haha
Always felt that my personality was the same regardless of which one of the four languages I speak I speak in, but there is definitely a change in how much the different cultures those languages belong to accepts my personality as the average.
My personality doesn’t change, and I’ve never really understood this argument. In languages I’m not proficient in, the way I express myself-and therefore my personality-is limited, but it hasn’t changed. This also serves as a general guide for me to gauge my current level in a language: if I can joke around, make people laugh, and express complicated ideas in a way that’s easy to understand, just as I can in English, then I know I’ve reached a fairly good level in that language.
Muy bueno tu español😚 Llevo 6 años aprendiendo y es un idioma tan lindo que me encanta cada ves más… I’m more aware of showing respect in Spanish because of tú and usted (although it’s an over simplification to say it’s formal vs informal/ often close friends or family members use usted). Also the language/culture is more openly expressive of emotion and also spiritually (than English in my opinion). It changes the way I express myself. Thank you for such an interesting theme and for your fascinating insights into the beautiful world of language! Saludos y un abrazo desde California💛
About the point that it is more accepted to talk about feeling in certain culture I would also had that sometimes it is difficult to talk about something emotions, feelings or trauma in our L1 because it is too close and using a L2 can bring a certain distance that allows people to talk about such things more openly almost clinically. I think it is also why doctors use so much jargon. GSW is longer to pronounce than gun shot wound but it provokes less of an emotional reaction.
While I cannot speak for other medical doctors, I can speak for my own experiences. Some of these abbreviations are culture or institution-specific; I've once worked for a hospital that informally refers to HIV as H4 among other professionals in a care team (yes, the IV was parsed as roman numeral 4,) to comply with certain patient privacy laws that do not allow the mention of a patient's HIV status except by the patient themselves (some exceptions apply). Meanwhile, the preferred term (if I remember and am translating correctly) used back when I trained in South Africa is "retroviral infection positive". It's likely due to the stigma of outright referring to it as HIV/AIDS in the country.
On the other hand, our use of jargon has more to do with keeping doctors and other healthcare professionals from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds on the same page. Even in the same language, layperson terminology for certain diseases may be imprecise, or otherwise inaccurate when used in a healthcare setting. It's a responsibility of ours to accurately "translate" these technical terms to our patients.
I wonder if part of it is also learned stigmas. That is, maybe someone won't swear in their L1 because they have an automatic reaction against those words. In an L2, however, such stigmas are not (yet?) so ingrained, so they may be much more willing to swear as it has a lot less of an emotional impact on themselves. This would still relate to culture, but not just that there are different cultures with their own sets of stigmas, but that one may not have been imbibed in the L2 culture long enough to have picked up the relevant stigmas.
Very good points! I have also used imitation as a language learning strategy and that has an effect on the “persona” I’m acting while speaking that language. Or I might pick up on certain verbal expressions that have associated mannerisms/non-verbal expressions, which don’t exist as a pairing in other languages I speak.
Personas are weird. I'm naturally an outgoing person, even as an American, but not overly so. When I lived in Japan for a year, I felt like a crazy, over-the-top foreigner, first because that was how my personality was interpreted, and later because that's just what was expected out of me, even after I learned what the expected behavior was. When I moved back to the states, people thought I was really apologetic and reserved, because I had slowly habituated those parts of the Japanese cultural script, even when switching back into English. (It went away pretty quickly)
it’s like the language is somehow influencing the way one ‘comes across’ to others…🤔😄 BTW, Dr. J, your Spanish was so easy for me to understand, and I haven’t felt that way since my last (6th?) Spanish class over 40 years ago.
My personality doesn't change, but I do follow social norms for each culture which are very different. I'm more polite, quiet, and very little physical contact in Japan, where I'm more outspoken, demonstrative, and agreeable in Spanish (Argentina). My favorite colors or that I'm a coffee drinker do not change from country. Very interesting topic! Thanks for presenting this point.
I really do think it comes down to culture and the context you learned that language in. I never swear in French, because I grew up with adults telling me not to. I do frequently swear in English though (it even slips out when I'm speaking French, and yet I am still completely unable to swear in French). The speed at which I talk also varies, and I speak a lot more quickly and more energetically in Spanish (I also have an easier time arguing in Spanish, where I'm usually very uncomfortable with doing that). And where I regularly complain about anything and everything in French (just a regular conversation topic), I would never do that in Korean. So not exactly a different personality in the academic sense of the term, but the way I present myself and act does change
I certainly agree that what people think is a change in personalities is rather a matter of how the "toolbox" you get from each language and the respective cultural baggage is more on one's self perception. It was really difficulty for me to be as fluid as I am in my native Spanish when learning English because I learned it at an academic setting and didn't have the actual common speaking rhythm until I started to include jargon, slang and shorten phrases, dropping syllables etc because that's exactly how I do speaking Spanish I'm from the Caribbean and the accent is very relaxed, not stressing every single syllable and actual shortening phrases and words was key to apply into my English and now speak in a more natural flow true to how I am as a person
I’m late to the comment section. But I’ll leave a comment before watching the video because this is an interesting topic for me. I’ve never felt like my personality changed when I was speaking Spanish and this claim has never made sense to me personally
Somehow it seems easier to be assertive and direct in Russian, to be polite and charming in French.. and just my usual waffly, vague self in English. But you're right, this is not shift in personality. Interesting discussion!
I am perfectly fluent in English and French, to the point where I can jump from one language to the other seamlessly, and I can think spontaneously in both languages. It's absolutely true that these two languages have a different feeling and that they lead to fairly different approaches to the production and to the sharing of forms and meaning. My English persona is more laid back and matter-of-fact, while my French persona (my mother tongue) has more mannerisms and supports more formal modes of expression. I am not limited by my English vocabulary, nor by my command of the vernacular ; it's more that English feels more factual to me, while French is in love with its own voice.
Unique phrases and forms of speech notwithstanding, the way I see it, it's just your comfort level with a language changing your attitude toward it. You speak it well, you will express the same sentiments the same way you would (even phrasally if there is any compatibility) in any other you speak with the same familiarity (note how I didn't say fluency).
My experience. I am thinking back to when I lived in Quebec. I would say that no, my personality did not change between languages. I hadn't even thought about it until I listened to your video. I would say however that French and English lived in different compartments of my life. English was the language of family and church. French was the language of everything else: school, sports, socializing, love-life, work. Any difference of personality one might have observed in between the languages was most likely due to the difference in settings.
Not sure about personalities but my voice and the way I speak is different with every language. Meaning that people who I meet think of me differently and would probably think I have a different personality, ie if I speak louder, more confidently and less polite etc. So not really what I am as a person but how others may perceive me. I just realised you said some of this in the video as I was typing.
100%, as an English-Spanish bilingual, I think my personality only changes if viewed through a different cultural lens, as native speakers of both languages tend to describe me in the same way. I think my persona only changes in order to correctly reflect my personality in each language. This is why if you don't adapt to the cultural norms when speaking an L2, you risk being perceived as something that you're not
Personalities may not change - but moods and humors do… also depending on our own perceptions of how the language we speak indexes social behavior, we will adapt to fit that perception… if anything, our own perception of the language seems to influence how we interpret the social behavior associated to the language
I grew up bilingual, and I've never felt like the two languages (English & Czech) involved different personalities for me. I literally grew up speaking both of them *to the same people* and *in the same contexts*. With languages I learned later though, I've definitely seen the way that L2 learning influences in what I say: I learned German more academically, so I tend not to make as many dirty jokes as English. In Slavic languages (Russian, Polish), on the other hand, I tend to be awkwardly/inappropriately blunt -- but I think it's because I learned them way more casually (youtube binges anyone?) and spend so much energy converting into them from Czech that my brain loses the "don't say that" filter. The overwhelming "can I say it" vs the more advisable "should I say it." Anyway, this seems to me more like an influence on what I say than my personality, and it seems like the effort/contexts of using an L2 are to blame moreso than any "different personality." Followup question, though: If you switch personalities between languages, what personality might one expect when an individual engages in code-switching?
So true: when around a year and a half ago, I started learning English, I became a completely different person. Languages change people. 😄 Thanks. Greetings from Ukraine. Keep it up!
@languagejones6784 Well, a key realization struck me: I belonged to this culture, not the one I'm actually from. To this day, I know this simple truth, and even my native language started disappearing from my brain. I mean I can speak it, of course, but I'm literally searching for some words or saying something really clunkily, which I think makes understanding me - a native speaker of the language I used for my whole life - difficult. Thank you so much, btw. 🙏
@@ArtemHahauz-nm7bk So you might be interested in another video from this channel: "Forgetting English words after studying another language?". ruclips.net/video/IZ2JccFN52M/видео.html
I think any changes in my personality are more related to my ability in the target language than to any cultural shift stemming from the language itself or the originating culture of said language. In a nutshell, I suspect that if I were as much at ease in my target language as I am in my native language, my personality would change very little between the two...if at all.
I get the same personality test results in my native language and target language. I've actually found that over the years my personality in English has changed a little due to studying Russian. I've developed more directness in dating that often isn't appreciated in the West.
I hope everyone would agree that some things are easier to say in some languages than others. And I can see how that might impact how your personality is expressed in different languages. But you're still the same person you're just seeing different parts of yourself
I don think I can express myself more adequately in other languages and the culture they are spoken in. It just resonate with me better than my native one. But it is not another personality, but another expression of me.
I remember feeling my consideration of the world shift when I was in Peace Corps and switching between Hausa with my neighbors, French with colleagues, and English, with other volunteers. The Hausa I spoke I spoke without translation (that I was aware of) and fluidly. But it was super limited. Greetings, weather, shopping, health. I felt like I didn't consider ideas that I didn't have the language for. When I switched to French, my world opened up. Switching to English was even more dramatic. I think that being constrained to a smaller world changed (my expression of) my personality. Many years later, I speak French much better than then, and I don't feel the transition between the languages so much. I expect I do have different personas, but like most people, I have several personas in my native language as well.
Before even watching this video, as a person who can speak five languages at a fairly high level and who has some competency in three others, I will answer this question for myself and it is a resounding NOOOOO! I have heard many people say over the years that they have a different personality when they speak in a different language, but I have found that my personality (boring and introverted) comes through in every language I have learned to speak. If I have sounded different in a given language, it's due to the way I went about learning it than that language having some intrinsic quality that forces a person to adopt a personality that supposedly goes with that language. For example, with French, I started out doing the grammar approach and probably sounded robotic at first, but then after I did a French immersion course in Quebec, I acquired more colloquial expressions and probably sounded more natural but still boring and introverted. My parents are originally from Greece and I have found that a lot of Greek people, especially older ones, can be very rude and abrupt and so I have on occasion spoken in a more aggressive manner in Greek, not because Greek is an inherently rude language, but because for some reason Greek people tend to be very animated and in Greek tourist areas they can be very impatient. Finally, I studied Japanese and lived in Japan for many years. For some reason that I've never comprehended, Japanese teachers insist on teaching very formal Japanese to beginner students because they insist that it's important not to offend anyone. But when I used my newly learned Japanese on Japanese people, they occasionally commented that I sounded rather formal and even a little effeminate because I was being more formal than what was expected of a man. I lived in Osaka, which has a dialect that is often regarded as "dirty" compared to standard Tokyo Japanese and I often peppered my own speech with some of these so-called dirty words, but my boring and introverted personality always shone through. Again, in all three cases, the way I behaved or spoke in a given language was greatly influenced by how I learned that language at certain stages and how I interacted with the culture associated with that language. Saying that you take on a certain personality as a result of speaking a certain language is to me a form of linguistic determinism akin to saying that Navajo Indians have no concept of time because their language doesn't contain any words referring to time (when in fact it does).
I am French and married an American lady. While she knows French, we built our relationship speaking English. She wanted to get better at French and asked me to talk to her in French after a while, but by then I was feeling cold and distant when using French with her (though I don't feel like I am this way with my own family, with whom I obviously speak in French). It's just that I haven't built the automatisms, the safe places, the idioms I tend to reach towards to communicate affection in French. I'm sure we could, but it feels so foreign that we're now sticking to English (and it's my fault).
The thing is that the language we used is heavily tied to the experiences we have with it. I have found that I am way more polite and composed in English while I’m way more outgoing and playful in my native language and it’s probably because the people around me in my native language have been like that for the most part while the English speaking ones not. When we communicate we are just repeating what we have heard previously but in slightly altered ways for the most part, if you really think about it.
This reminds me of how I used to say I'm more argumentative in French, not because I have a different personality, but because I grew up in a bilingual environment, and French was the language for teachers to scold kids (while English was the language for kids to relax and have fun). I never learnt the "scripts" for how to have a relaxed, casual conversation in french, so the way I express myself always comes out argumentative or harsh
I'm fluent in three different languages, and I use each of them in three completely different settings. At home, I speak Russian, because that's the primary language my family uses. We moved from Ukraine to Czechia when I was almost 8, so I didn't have much time to pick up the ways it is spoken in other environments. As a consequence, my dialect is predominantly influenced by that of my parents, and I have trouble switching into tones that we don't use while talking to each other (e.g. formal or obscenely vulgar). And although I like them, I don't tell them everything about what I do, so my sociability is somewhat limited there. Outside of home, I speak Czech, because that's the official (and majority) language of the aforementioned country I live in. I don't have a lot of friends in real life, so I rarely actively use it in informal settings, but during school lessons, in shops, etc. I need to say things out loud, and I usually avoid slang when doing so. This possibly results in me sounding a bit too serious in scenarios where formality is not expected. Additionally, said lack of friends means I get few opportunities to discuss anything from my personal life. The only place where I frequently describe my feelings is at my therapist. On the internet, I speak English, because that's where I've learnt most of it from. This is also where I find pretty much all of my friends, so not only do I use a ton of informal vocabulary, I'm also a lot more open about my interests and emotions. However, I've also read many Wikipedia articles, and watched hundreds of video essays, so I have less difficulty with the kinds of English found outside of everyday conversations than I do in Russian. This makes it easier for me to speak (or write) in multiple styles with distinct flavors. Would I say that I have a different personality in all of these settings? Absolutely not. My core stays exactly the same. But I have different degrees to which I feel confident in _expressing_ myself, and that manifests in me _appearing_ as if my character changes based on where I am. And because my language of choice is so strongly tied to these settings, it may look like the language I speak influences my personality, when in reality - like you explained in the video - it's the contexts those languages are employed in that cause me to construct different _personas._
Congratulations in your Spanish accent. Your R rolling is much better than most Native English speakers, and your vowels are very clear and distinct Be mindful of the accents. You pronounce almost everything using the default accenting rules (I.e. the words that don’t have graphic accents. But it’s very grating, because your good pronunciation otherwise, when you ignore the irregularly accented syllables. Example, you say facíl (stress on te I) instead of fácil
With the definition of personality being the application of the big 5, I would say my personality does change in foreign languages. I have the experience of being more conscientious and less neurotic in Japanese, for example. I feel as though I have two selves in my native language and the strength of their footholds varies with the language I speak. I've heard of a psychiatrist that has spoken of this experience before, but I cannot recall the label used to describe it. The problem with anecdotes and science is that they aren't necessarily related. Psychology is about the mind at the level of populations, which doesn't necessarily apply to individuals as they may have unique aspects. Anecdotes often have high bias and lack scientific validity so this phenomenon is likely less common than it feels.
One thing I think about is that words in your second language have less emotional resonance than the ones you grew up with--such as how curse words don't feel as powerful, and talking about body parts or functions doesn't feel as awkward. I think that adds to the more analytical feel of speaking in a second language
Interesting video! I also wonder how much your language skills affect how you express yourself. I used to think that I'm more straight-to-the point in Czech, but then I realized that me not being fluent basically forced me into that. Or, let's say, an academic who uses English for their work but not much in their private life/spare time might sound more serious in English, simply because they don't know as much slang and informal language.
I think it is a slight difference in how you speak a language, very notable with Italian, where you tend to be more outgoing and use more gestures, but that is a cultural difference, not a personality change. Of course I do not behave exactly the same way when I speak English or Italian, but my personality is still the same.
I know that my personality does not change. But even in my native language I have different personas to match my situation. I’ve always struggled with projecting my entire personality to others; so have adapted many mannerisms that, while are consciously performed, are parts of “true” me that I have learned to signal in a given situation. Aka the champion masker. I do that in other languages within their cultural norms too. I think it’s probably very common, but people who don’t have to usually mask in their native language to a great extent might think it weird.
If I'm switching personalities when I speak other languages, then I'm also switching personalities between when I'm visiting my grandma and when I'm having a night out with my friends. :^)
Does this have something to do with how translating the ~~vibes~~ between different languages is so hard (or in other words, why machine translations always seem to feel off in this department)?
2:24 I really forced myself to look at your eyes and not the subtitles, and see how much I was able to get considering that I haven’t really spoken or listened to Spanish much in the last 44 years. Also, I laughed out loud at this point. Back in high school, my buddy worked in a factory programming a computer that did CNC milling, and he taught me street Spanish that he learned from the factory workers. He was the one I spoke Spanglish with, we would speak Spanish to keep our parents from knowing what we were talking about, and drop into English if we didn’t have the word.
I learned English starting in kindergarten in an American school abroad. As a middle aged dad I moved to England and worked in my profession. I definitely find myself more gregarious and open to new things in English than in my mother tongue. However, having experienced this more gregarious and open self has rubbed off on my Swedish personality - to a degree.
Very much agree with the point about how one fulfils the same social goal differently between different cultures/languages. Eg.: I had to relearn to write formal emails when I moved to Germany. My goal is to be respectful, and to treat the other person as a human being. In the UK, that meant I'd surround the request I was making with social-niceties and hedging language before getting to the point. That doesn't work here, where people consider that a waste of time, and want to get straight to the point (which as an autist, was fairly hard for me to believe was actually okay for me to do 😅). Hopefully Germans don't begrudge me getting straight to the point, but still ending emails with a "I hope you're having a good day/have a nice weekend/life's treating you well/etc." 😅
We’re going to have an entire episode on that on the new podcast. It’s a big cultural difference, and one that plays out in subcultures in the US, so it can create workplace conflict
I'd say it's more about tweaking your social attitude. It would be strange to be seen apologising all the time in English and using high register all the time, but it's perfectly normal in Japanese. In French switching between high and lower register is also an attitude you take on when using the language. Using plain you form in German is risky, when meeting someone for the first time, but perfectly normal after your interlocutor has told you their name. I guess it's more about adjusting to given cultural norms, that are heavily reflected in the language, rather than any personality change. People might find it more convenient to use one language over another (I prefer using English than my native Polish), but I doubt it influences the core characteristics of personality, which is can be changed only to a some degree and not across the board.
I tend use the term "friend" more loosely than the German equivalent "Freund" and I've definitely called people friends in English who are in solid good acquaintance territory in German. It's not a personality shift though, just slightly different cultural connotations.
As someone fluent in English French and Mandarin, I think if there are any "personality differences", most of it is probably just due to the fact that multilingual people all have different levels of fluency in each language and each context. It's not possible have the exact level of fluency in every single context (work, family, friends, school, arguments, love live etc) in all of your languages. But sure assuming such a hypothetical person were to exist, I could be convinced that the language itself could become a real variable in some parts of his personality.
I China, I come across as more extrovert, thankful and lovely, not because I change, but because the reference frame changes. In China being thankful, especially to service staff, is not really a thing, people express their love with secret self-sacrifice, not openly with a hug for example and people generally are more introvert. No offence meant. So this gets attributed to my personality. In contrast for a British I (Swiss German) would come accross as introvert, cold and not even too friendly. I don't think you have a different personality in different languages but you stand out for different features in each setting, this of course then can again reflect back onto you, making you experience different things and feel different about your personality in each cultural setting.
I'm more outgoing in English than in my native German, and I don't think it's just expectations. It's easier for me to express my thoughts and keep the conversation going in English without being self-critical of how my contributions are perceived. So, therefore I'm much less skeptical of these claims than you are. Maybe at least for the introverted/extroverted scale, though, a more robust experiment is actually possible. I want to propose this study: Put participants on a table of 5 people each and let them have a conversation in language A. Take note of speaking times for each participant. Then shuffle the participants around to new tables, and repeat this experiment twice for language A. Finally, do it three more times, but have them speak in another language B. Now you can see if there's a statistically significant difference in each participant's share of the conversation depending on what language they're speaking in. Although, now that I think about it, a lot of people are probably going to speak significantly *less* in their L2, for reasons entirely unrelated to personality...
I thought changing personalities was just cope for people who have more difficulty expressing things in a foreign language Did not know it was this complex with my layman hypothesis being just 1 possible factor
The problem with this viewpoint is the assumption that personality is inherent rather than performed. I'm not sure if we can take it as read that that a "true" personality exists outside of a social context. Of course our personality changes according to the nature of interaction we are taking part in.
I'm hoping you'll be able to get Luca Lampariello, Richard Simcott, Stuart Jay Raj, or The Metatron on the podcast as a guest at some point. I love what you guys do.
I study Spanish, German, and Dutch. With Spanish I find myself to be significantly more outgoing, I speak more calmly in Dutch, and I always feel confident when speaking German. Edit: Spanish is the only one I have any sort of proficiency in. As I get better with the others it's likely to change.
I don't think my personality changes when I speak another language. It's just situational. Naturally I'll be more outgoing in Spanish, I live in a Spanish speaking country. I'll be more careful in German because we all dread the English switch over if we make too many mistakes 😂
I think there is a language layer to do with expression that people may confuse for personality (think specific hand gestures in Italian). I speak 2 languages - English and Farsi - Farsi has a lot of complex cultural norms, courtesy, deference, humbleness and politeness built into the language that I cannot execute well due to my more basic understanding of the language but I don’t feel like I think differently or change personalities when speaking it. My tone, language related mannerisms, and how melodic my voice is changes but these are the language layer in my opinion.
I used to speak differently with my parents, to the extent that, when I finished a long phone call home, my mouth muscles were more fatigued. I don't think it's a personality shift, though.
Considering the c2 criterion you mentioned in your prior video, if one doesn’t have the large vocabulary in ie. a 3rd language and doesn’t fully understand the social norms in that country. Would it be wrong to assume, that one could appear to be a less nuanced person when speaking that language?
Astrology "works" in a similar way. A person who believes in astrology tells himself a story about himself, which is called, for example, "Pisces with the Ascendant in Cancer" and forms an image of himself accordingly. It may even have some marginal effect on the personality in terms of feedback. The question is to what extent psychological models are more scientific. The MBTI has long been questioned, the 5 factor one has decent reliability, but how about validity is the question. However, probably anything is better than a simple feeling about it.
I took the same personality test in 4 different languages and got different results. I retook the same test a few months later and had results consistent with the first set of tests I took. Was it the connotation of certain words changing with translation and affecting my answers? Was it because I was remembering situations that happened to me in each language to inform my answers? Was it because I evaluated my behavior in comparison of the norm in the country I associate with each language or maybe because the test did and adapt the questions to expectations in different countries? If I ask five different people to describe a painting I might get five very different descriptions but the painting did not change. I think this is the issue with these types of studies: personality cannot be assessed in itself so we use language and behavior as proxies to assess it. But, in the end, how can we know if it is the personality that changed or the proxies?
I've never felt like my personality shifts in any real way language to language. In dutch, I don't think anything really changes at all othe than the sounds, but there is not a lot of cultural gap between dutch and NY-er in the first place, so, it would be more weird if there was a significant shift. For french... I'm maybe a bit more polite, but, that's more because I've only learned more formal french [so I sound more polite by default, because I don't know the colloqual register of the language well enough to speak comfortably in it], and the french care about that sort of thing more than the english speakers where I grew up are likely to anyway. But none of that is my personality changing, it's just, adapting my behaviour to fit both my proficiency in the language, and the cultural/social communication standards and expectations of the people I'm trying to communicate with.
Honestly it doesn't feel any more dramatic a shift than code-switching between like, interacting with other queer folks at a queer event, and having to interact with straight people in a less rainbow-decorated setting? Like, I definitely act and speak differently in the latter than in the former, because of context, social pressures, cultural diffeences, etc., but, it's not like *I* change, just the context I have to navigate things did.
Two factors that is worth mentioning is that in some languages, at least on the surface, or way of expression, YOU HAVE TO "change". In Japanese you "cannot' be confrontational and you must be humble and all of that stuff. If someone tells you that your Japanese is any good you "should" disagree saying it's crap. Until you learn that you can hit and you can hit HARD in Japanese you just need to soften the blow first. You can't say "thank you" if a dude tells you your Japanese is good but you can say, "For being studying it 3 to 8 hours day every single day for more than a decade my Japanese is pretty crap. If I try to read, for instance, 清少納言 (Sei Shonagon) I feel like an illiterate child with cognitive deficiency." You are not only mentioning that you even KNOW who in hell is Sei Shonagon (maybe not even the Japanese person is certain) but that you dare to READ it (o try it, as least). That's anything but humble. But the way you express it IS humble. What brings Me to: "Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.” (Bruce Lee). You may feel forced to be different up until a certain stage until you find people more like you IN that language THAT you can mimic (Thank you あおちゃんぺ @ aochanp and ひろゆき). Another thing is that things that you are used to say maybe you just don`t say that often in that culture. You don`t talk much abut politics and economy in Vietnam. And nope, it`s not because of censorship. I`m approached all the time by anti-communists in Vietnam on the internet (yeah, they exist) that think I`m a communist, but I`m no, I`m just not an ANTI-communist either, and they try to convince me of how the Vietnamese government supposedly is bad. But they don`t understand that what I like is the ECONOMIC system of Vietnam, not necessarily the political one... But the point is that besides THEM those things are not things you just talk to "normal" people, contrary to English or Portuguese in Brazil. So, since in Vietnam people don't usually argue about divisive themes, like politics and economics, I do feel more CALM and at easy in Vietnamese. But that's because we are not talking about people electing TRUMP, or Bolsonaro trying a coup in Brazil, or Netanyahu, and I don't have to make hundreds of posts a day about stupid economic decisions made in Brazil because ONE of the reasons I started learning Vietnamese IS because I like their economic decisions most of the time. So it's all peace, and fun, and flirting with girls, and light stuff in Vietnamese. But in English and even Japanese I fight a lot more!
I can share anecdotally as an Irish person living in Germany for 7 years. Literally zero scientific rigour here but fun to think about nonetheless. German is a very explicit language, and hiberno-English is extremely implicit. There's a lot of double meanings. (Some people have theorised its a post-colonial thing as the Irish language was banned under 800 years of British occupation and it was handy for doing business with fellow Irish under the nose of the British. Its a nice story, hard to verify tho.) Anyway, even with my very limited German I'm a lot more direct, a lot more harsh, and even in my interactions with people I find it much easier to find myself doing and saying things that in Irish culture would be considered extremely rude. On some level I find myself being shorter and less tolerant. You kind of have to commit to the first thought. Maybe because often the action is completed with the verb at the end of the sentence. I think at least in hiberno english you can start with something and find yourself meandering to something completely different or changing the entire meaning of the sentence with an emphasis on a certain word. There's a bit more space to feel your conditioned response (often not the kindest one) and then switch it to something maybe a bit more nuanced or funnier down the line. A lot of my german friends take everything very literally and don't understand dead-pan humour. We're all good natured about it though, luckily. The two cultures are so radically different in many ways its a cause for a lot of humour.
How much of a factor is someone's level in an L2? My English is probably C2 (native speaker, MA in English) and many of my other languages are at a B level. I am probably likely to come off as less certain or confident in those languages....or I might just not know exactly what some of the connotations of my words are. I may smile at my own awkwardness, and that may be perceived differently in some situations.
As an autistic person who is famously ignorant to cultural norms, I do not feel like my personality or persona changes at all when I speak another language
I would really be interested in knowing the Russian cultural script-because I’m currently learning Russian lol. When I was learning French, I remember noticing I spoke in a lower register and I spoke slower and seemed more relaxed. No idea what this says about me lol
I learned to take on a different personality as a coping skill when faced with the fear of speaking another language, especially early on in learning one. Consequently, I can do anything in another language because I’m not the one making the mistakes; it’s the other guy.
En línea, not online. Aside from that, congratulations! Quite good. You've reached the Pete Buttigieg level. Keep at it, so that you may reach the Jeb Bush level.
I don't know about different personalities but I have noticed that almost all women speak in a lower register when they speak German as to when they speak English.
![BRASIL vs. URUGUAY [1-1] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-hWBAuxF1eY/mqdefault.jpg)
During my studying medicine, I could easily discuss the diseases of the reproductive system, but I feel it a sensitive topic when I talk about them in arabic ( my native language)
Interesting point about cultural sensitivity
Likewise! I've always been "clinical" and "detached" when explaining reproductive health to patients (I'm also a medical doctor) in English and more limited Afrikaans and Filipino, but I feel disgusted with myself if I have to talk about it in my home language, or Malay 😢
i don't know about personality but the tone of voice definitely changes!
I was driving a uhaul in New York City and it stalled in an intersection. The tow truck driver spoke Bamankan, which I had learned in the Peace Corps. My daughter was stunned as her stressed out mom turned into a chill person the moment I started speaking Bamankan. I instantly reverted to a person who had learned to laugh at daily problems.
That’s really interesting!
Tana te! Here doron!
Germany lets me be more introverted without it being seen as a deep character flaw than I could get away with in America. So I do take advantage of that. But that is more that the culture gives me the opportunity to express my true personality better without negative judgement than truly having a different personality.
I’ve never felt like I have a different personality when speaking another language. I’m more extroverted when speaking my other languages, but as you suggested, that’s a deliberate strategy for language learning, not a change in personality. I’m also quite aware of the cultural differences and try to adapt to them, but, again, that’s not a change in personality, that’s just me trying to be respectful of the other cultures.
I totally agree with you when you say that, rather than changing personality, we create a new persona when speaking L2.
In my L1, Italian, I'm shy and insecure; in my L2, English, I'm confident, open and outgoing.
I put it down to my overall personality and sense of humour being considered odd by Italians, but fairly common by British people. So, feeling liked by the people I'm interacting with is what ultimately boosts my self esteem and my confidence, and it happens more often when I am using L2.
It's like each language is a mask that is an expression of our true personality underneath. Super cool video!
Something interesting when you mentioned "being more open in Spanish because it's a cultural script"
I know people here in Brasil, native Portuguese speakers, who have a better time speaking their feelings in English, because English registers as "less real" in some senses. It's the language of the movies, not the language of your mom, so when you speak your heart, you're also deflecting a bit; kinda like the verbal version of not looking someone in the eyes to tell them something heartfelt.
That’s really interesting. It’s like how swearing in an L2 doesn’t light up the same parts of the brain as in your L1
@@languagejones6784 Exactly. These same people swear a lot more in English (and I do too, to be fair) because it sounds fake. "Motherfucker!" is an exclamation you hear in the movies, it doesn't sound as real as the equivalent translation.
The difference between persona and personality is a nuance many people struggle with, just in general it seems.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks the whole "different personalities in different languages" is bullshit. As you wonderfully explained, it’s not our personalities that change, it’s our way we interact with other people, our “personas”. I can say the exact same sentence in three different languages, and I’d be perceived as an asshole, a friendly guy or a very polite man depending on the language I’m using. Heck, even in the same language depending on the person I’m talking with my vocabulary and grammar change.
By the way- and at the risk of sounding like a stereotypical Spanish speaker -, your Spanish is quite good. You still have a noticeable English intonation, but overall, your diction is clear and your sentences are precise. Keep up the good work!
I think it's also the expression toolkit that comes with the language and the culture that follows it that can make it appear as you're... a different person. This is probably more particular to bi/trilinguals than any polyglots. I'd easily get into an argument in one language, but dismiss the same thing in another, just because that's how those languages...function, and how I was raised to use them.
Hello, i am a practicing neuropsychologist and I agree that personality - meaning temperament or the biological machinery in your brain that generates personality - does not change. If your brain does not get damaged your personality is pretty stable across time even using self-assessment.
I feel for me it's more like my true personality shows when my fluency is at a high enough level. So a different personality in a different language is more level of fluency.
My personality doesn’t change, the way it is perceived does. In French I’m “somewhat blunt” (I don’t do it on purpose, I have subpar social skills and limited flexibility). In Canadian English I’m apparently “very very blunt”. Perhaps in Dutch I would be “not particularly blunt” and in Japanese “insanely rude”? But I’m still saying the same things…
this!
This reminds me of when I heard someone say the Dutch are super polite and I did a double take. The speaker was Israeli. The bluntness was appreciated. If you haven’t seen Ted Lasso, they’ve got a few jokes about the bluntness of a Dutch footballer. “Jan’s not being rude; he’s just Dutch.”
I fully agree! But some of it is also the tone used.If ask someone what they want to drink in German with the same tone I use in France, they will ask if I'm mad at them or got up with the left foot first...
Is this why you can count on a Dutch uncle to give it to you straight?
Culture informs language, language informs culture.
I don't think my personality changes but the expression of it can.
I definitely don’t feel different personality wise when speaking German (my second language). I do feel different bc the language has such a different vibe. Esp when using grammar and words that have no “direct translation”. But I am definitely not an analytical person in any language haha
Always felt that my personality was the same regardless of which one of the four languages I speak I speak in, but there is definitely a change in how much the different cultures those languages belong to accepts my personality as the average.
My personality doesn’t change, and I’ve never really understood this argument. In languages I’m not proficient in, the way I express myself-and therefore my personality-is limited, but it hasn’t changed. This also serves as a general guide for me to gauge my current level in a language: if I can joke around, make people laugh, and express complicated ideas in a way that’s easy to understand, just as I can in English, then I know I’ve reached a fairly good level in that language.
Muy bueno tu español😚 Llevo 6 años aprendiendo y es un idioma tan lindo que me encanta cada ves más…
I’m more aware of showing respect in Spanish because of tú and usted (although it’s an over simplification to say it’s formal vs informal/ often close friends or family members use usted). Also the language/culture is more openly expressive of emotion and also spiritually (than English in my opinion). It changes the way I express myself.
Thank you for such an interesting theme and for your fascinating insights into the beautiful world of language! Saludos y un abrazo desde California💛
About the point that it is more accepted to talk about feeling in certain culture I would also had that sometimes it is difficult to talk about something emotions, feelings or trauma in our L1 because it is too close and using a L2 can bring a certain distance that allows people to talk about such things more openly almost clinically. I think it is also why doctors use so much jargon. GSW is longer to pronounce than gun shot wound but it provokes less of an emotional reaction.
While I cannot speak for other medical doctors, I can speak for my own experiences.
Some of these abbreviations are culture or institution-specific; I've once worked for a hospital that informally refers to HIV as H4 among other professionals in a care team (yes, the IV was parsed as roman numeral 4,) to comply with certain patient privacy laws that do not allow the mention of a patient's HIV status except by the patient themselves (some exceptions apply).
Meanwhile, the preferred term (if I remember and am translating correctly) used back when I trained in South Africa is "retroviral infection positive". It's likely due to the stigma of outright referring to it as HIV/AIDS in the country.
On the other hand, our use of jargon has more to do with keeping doctors and other healthcare professionals from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds on the same page.
Even in the same language, layperson terminology for certain diseases may be imprecise, or otherwise inaccurate when used in a healthcare setting.
It's a responsibility of ours to accurately "translate" these technical terms to our patients.
I wonder if part of it is also learned stigmas. That is, maybe someone won't swear in their L1 because they have an automatic reaction against those words. In an L2, however, such stigmas are not (yet?) so ingrained, so they may be much more willing to swear as it has a lot less of an emotional impact on themselves.
This would still relate to culture, but not just that there are different cultures with their own sets of stigmas, but that one may not have been imbibed in the L2 culture long enough to have picked up the relevant stigmas.
I use 3-4 languages daily at home and my personality definitely does not change. That would be very confusing to the poor people I am talking to!😅
Very good points! I have also used imitation as a language learning strategy and that has an effect on the “persona” I’m acting while speaking that language. Or I might pick up on certain verbal expressions that have associated mannerisms/non-verbal expressions, which don’t exist as a pairing in other languages I speak.
Personas are weird. I'm naturally an outgoing person, even as an American, but not overly so. When I lived in Japan for a year, I felt like a crazy, over-the-top foreigner, first because that was how my personality was interpreted, and later because that's just what was expected out of me, even after I learned what the expected behavior was. When I moved back to the states, people thought I was really apologetic and reserved, because I had slowly habituated those parts of the Japanese cultural script, even when switching back into English. (It went away pretty quickly)
it’s like the language is somehow influencing the way one ‘comes across’ to others…🤔😄
BTW, Dr. J, your Spanish was so easy for me to understand, and I haven’t felt that way since my last (6th?) Spanish class over 40 years ago.
My personality doesn't change, but I do follow social norms for each culture which are very different. I'm more polite, quiet, and very little physical contact in Japan, where I'm more outspoken, demonstrative, and agreeable in Spanish (Argentina). My favorite colors or that I'm a coffee drinker do not change from country. Very interesting topic! Thanks for presenting this point.
I really do think it comes down to culture and the context you learned that language in. I never swear in French, because I grew up with adults telling me not to. I do frequently swear in English though (it even slips out when I'm speaking French, and yet I am still completely unable to swear in French). The speed at which I talk also varies, and I speak a lot more quickly and more energetically in Spanish (I also have an easier time arguing in Spanish, where I'm usually very uncomfortable with doing that). And where I regularly complain about anything and everything in French (just a regular conversation topic), I would never do that in Korean.
So not exactly a different personality in the academic sense of the term, but the way I present myself and act does change
I certainly agree that what people think is a change in personalities is rather a matter of how the "toolbox" you get from each language and the respective cultural baggage is more on one's self perception. It was really difficulty for me to be as fluid as I am in my native Spanish when learning English because I learned it at an academic setting and didn't have the actual common speaking rhythm until I started to include jargon, slang and shorten phrases, dropping syllables etc because that's exactly how I do speaking Spanish
I'm from the Caribbean and the accent is very relaxed, not stressing every single syllable and actual shortening phrases and words was key to apply into my English and now speak in a more natural flow true to how I am as a person
I’m late to the comment section. But I’ll leave a comment before watching the video because this is an interesting topic for me. I’ve never felt like my personality changed when I was speaking Spanish and this claim has never made sense to me personally
Somehow it seems easier to be assertive and direct in Russian, to be polite and charming in French.. and just my usual waffly, vague self in English. But you're right, this is not shift in personality. Interesting discussion!
I am perfectly fluent in English and French, to the point where I can jump from one language to the other seamlessly, and I can think spontaneously in both languages. It's absolutely true that these two languages have a different feeling and that they lead to fairly different approaches to the production and to the sharing of forms and meaning. My English persona is more laid back and matter-of-fact, while my French persona (my mother tongue) has more mannerisms and supports more formal modes of expression. I am not limited by my English vocabulary, nor by my command of the vernacular ; it's more that English feels more factual to me, while French is in love with its own voice.
Unique phrases and forms of speech notwithstanding, the way I see it, it's just your comfort level with a language changing your attitude toward it. You speak it well, you will express the same sentiments the same way you would (even phrasally if there is any compatibility) in any other you speak with the same familiarity (note how I didn't say fluency).
My experience. I am thinking back to when I lived in Quebec. I would say that no, my personality did not change between languages. I hadn't even thought about it until I listened to your video. I would say however that French and English lived in different compartments of my life. English was the language of family and church. French was the language of everything else: school, sports, socializing, love-life, work. Any difference of personality one might have observed in between the languages was most likely due to the difference in settings.
Not sure about personalities but my voice and the way I speak is different with every language. Meaning that people who I meet think of me differently and would probably think I have a different personality, ie if I speak louder, more confidently and less polite etc. So not really what I am as a person but how others may perceive me. I just realised you said some of this in the video as I was typing.
100%, as an English-Spanish bilingual, I think my personality only changes if viewed through a different cultural lens, as native speakers of both languages tend to describe me in the same way. I think my persona only changes in order to correctly reflect my personality in each language. This is why if you don't adapt to the cultural norms when speaking an L2, you risk being perceived as something that you're not
Personalities may not change - but moods and humors do… also depending on our own perceptions of how the language we speak indexes social behavior, we will adapt to fit that perception… if anything, our own perception of the language seems to influence how we interpret the social behavior associated to the language
I grew up bilingual, and I've never felt like the two languages (English & Czech) involved different personalities for me. I literally grew up speaking both of them *to the same people* and *in the same contexts*. With languages I learned later though, I've definitely seen the way that L2 learning influences in what I say: I learned German more academically, so I tend not to make as many dirty jokes as English. In Slavic languages (Russian, Polish), on the other hand, I tend to be awkwardly/inappropriately blunt -- but I think it's because I learned them way more casually (youtube binges anyone?) and spend so much energy converting into them from Czech that my brain loses the "don't say that" filter. The overwhelming "can I say it" vs the more advisable "should I say it." Anyway, this seems to me more like an influence on what I say than my personality, and it seems like the effort/contexts of using an L2 are to blame moreso than any "different personality."
Followup question, though: If you switch personalities between languages, what personality might one expect when an individual engages in code-switching?
your spanish accent is super interesting, it almost sounds kind of russian??? idk how to explain it exactly but it was cool to listen to!
So true: when around a year and a half ago, I started learning English, I became a completely different person. Languages change people. 😄
Thanks.
Greetings from Ukraine.
Keep it up!
Only a year and a half? Your English is great! Good job.
@meizhongbai
Thanks. I'm actively working toward improving it even further.
Im so curious about this! What changed for you?
@languagejones6784
Well, a key realization struck me: I belonged to this culture, not the one I'm actually from. To this day, I know this simple truth, and even my native language started disappearing from my brain. I mean I can speak it, of course, but I'm literally searching for some words or saying something really clunkily, which I think makes understanding me - a native speaker of the language I used for my whole life - difficult.
Thank you so much, btw. 🙏
@@ArtemHahauz-nm7bk So you might be interested in another video from this channel: "Forgetting English words after studying another language?".
ruclips.net/video/IZ2JccFN52M/видео.html
I think any changes in my personality are more related to my ability in the target language than to any cultural shift stemming from the language itself or the originating culture of said language. In a nutshell, I suspect that if I were as much at ease in my target language as I am in my native language, my personality would change very little between the two...if at all.
I get the same personality test results in my native language and target language.
I've actually found that over the years my personality in English has changed a little due to studying Russian. I've developed more directness in dating that often isn't appreciated in the West.
Directness vs indirectness is a huge point of cross cultural contention!
I hope everyone would agree that some things are easier to say in some languages than others. And I can see how that might impact how your personality is expressed in different languages. But you're still the same person you're just seeing different parts of yourself
I don think I can express myself more adequately in other languages and the culture they are spoken in. It just resonate with me better than my native one. But it is not another personality, but another expression of me.
I like that!
I remember feeling my consideration of the world shift when I was in Peace Corps and switching between Hausa with my neighbors, French with colleagues, and English, with other volunteers. The Hausa I spoke I spoke without translation (that I was aware of) and fluidly. But it was super limited. Greetings, weather, shopping, health. I felt like I didn't consider ideas that I didn't have the language for. When I switched to French, my world opened up. Switching to English was even more dramatic. I think that being constrained to a smaller world changed (my expression of) my personality. Many years later, I speak French much better than then, and I don't feel the transition between the languages so much. I expect I do have different personas, but like most people, I have several personas in my native language as well.
Before even watching this video, as a person who can speak five languages at a fairly high level and who has some competency in three others, I will answer this question for myself and it is a resounding NOOOOO! I have heard many people say over the years that they have a different personality when they speak in a different language, but I have found that my personality (boring and introverted) comes through in every language I have learned to speak. If I have sounded different in a given language, it's due to the way I went about learning it than that language having some intrinsic quality that forces a person to adopt a personality that supposedly goes with that language. For example, with French, I started out doing the grammar approach and probably sounded robotic at first, but then after I did a French immersion course in Quebec, I acquired more colloquial expressions and probably sounded more natural but still boring and introverted. My parents are originally from Greece and I have found that a lot of Greek people, especially older ones, can be very rude and abrupt and so I have on occasion spoken in a more aggressive manner in Greek, not because Greek is an inherently rude language, but because for some reason Greek people tend to be very animated and in Greek tourist areas they can be very impatient. Finally, I studied Japanese and lived in Japan for many years. For some reason that I've never comprehended, Japanese teachers insist on teaching very formal Japanese to beginner students because they insist that it's important not to offend anyone. But when I used my newly learned Japanese on Japanese people, they occasionally commented that I sounded rather formal and even a little effeminate because I was being more formal than what was expected of a man. I lived in Osaka, which has a dialect that is often regarded as "dirty" compared to standard Tokyo Japanese and I often peppered my own speech with some of these so-called dirty words, but my boring and introverted personality always shone through. Again, in all three cases, the way I behaved or spoke in a given language was greatly influenced by how I learned that language at certain stages and how I interacted with the culture associated with that language. Saying that you take on a certain personality as a result of speaking a certain language is to me a form of linguistic determinism akin to saying that Navajo Indians have no concept of time because their language doesn't contain any words referring to time (when in fact it does).
I am French and married an American lady. While she knows French, we built our relationship speaking English. She wanted to get better at French and asked me to talk to her in French after a while, but by then I was feeling cold and distant when using French with her (though I don't feel like I am this way with my own family, with whom I obviously speak in French).
It's just that I haven't built the automatisms, the safe places, the idioms I tend to reach towards to communicate affection in French. I'm sure we could, but it feels so foreign that we're now sticking to English (and it's my fault).
The thing is that the language we used is heavily tied to the experiences we have with it. I have found that I am way more polite and composed in English while I’m way more outgoing and playful in my native language and it’s probably because the people around me in my native language have been like that for the most part while the English speaking ones not. When we communicate we are just repeating what we have heard previously but in slightly altered ways for the most part, if you really think about it.
This reminds me of how I used to say I'm more argumentative in French, not because I have a different personality, but because I grew up in a bilingual environment, and French was the language for teachers to scold kids (while English was the language for kids to relax and have fun). I never learnt the "scripts" for how to have a relaxed, casual conversation in french, so the way I express myself always comes out argumentative or harsh
I'm fluent in three different languages, and I use each of them in three completely different settings.
At home, I speak Russian, because that's the primary language my family uses. We moved from Ukraine to Czechia when I was almost 8, so I didn't have much time to pick up the ways it is spoken in other environments. As a consequence, my dialect is predominantly influenced by that of my parents, and I have trouble switching into tones that we don't use while talking to each other (e.g. formal or obscenely vulgar). And although I like them, I don't tell them everything about what I do, so my sociability is somewhat limited there.
Outside of home, I speak Czech, because that's the official (and majority) language of the aforementioned country I live in. I don't have a lot of friends in real life, so I rarely actively use it in informal settings, but during school lessons, in shops, etc. I need to say things out loud, and I usually avoid slang when doing so. This possibly results in me sounding a bit too serious in scenarios where formality is not expected. Additionally, said lack of friends means I get few opportunities to discuss anything from my personal life. The only place where I frequently describe my feelings is at my therapist.
On the internet, I speak English, because that's where I've learnt most of it from. This is also where I find pretty much all of my friends, so not only do I use a ton of informal vocabulary, I'm also a lot more open about my interests and emotions. However, I've also read many Wikipedia articles, and watched hundreds of video essays, so I have less difficulty with the kinds of English found outside of everyday conversations than I do in Russian. This makes it easier for me to speak (or write) in multiple styles with distinct flavors.
Would I say that I have a different personality in all of these settings? Absolutely not. My core stays exactly the same. But I have different degrees to which I feel confident in _expressing_ myself, and that manifests in me _appearing_ as if my character changes based on where I am. And because my language of choice is so strongly tied to these settings, it may look like the language I speak influences my personality, when in reality - like you explained in the video - it's the contexts those languages are employed in that cause me to construct different _personas._
Congratulations in your Spanish accent. Your R rolling is much better than most Native English speakers, and your vowels are very clear and distinct
Be mindful of the accents. You pronounce almost everything using the default accenting rules (I.e. the words that don’t have graphic accents. But it’s very grating, because your good pronunciation otherwise, when you ignore the irregularly accented syllables. Example, you say facíl (stress on te I) instead of fácil
Oh, thank you!!! I’m still a total neophyte; this is really helpful!
With the definition of personality being the application of the big 5, I would say my personality does change in foreign languages. I have the experience of being more conscientious and less neurotic in Japanese, for example. I feel as though I have two selves in my native language and the strength of their footholds varies with the language I speak. I've heard of a psychiatrist that has spoken of this experience before, but I cannot recall the label used to describe it.
The problem with anecdotes and science is that they aren't necessarily related. Psychology is about the mind at the level of populations, which doesn't necessarily apply to individuals as they may have unique aspects. Anecdotes often have high bias and lack scientific validity so this phenomenon is likely less common than it feels.
One thing I think about is that words in your second language have less emotional resonance than the ones you grew up with--such as how curse words don't feel as powerful, and talking about body parts or functions doesn't feel as awkward. I think that adds to the more analytical feel of speaking in a second language
Interesting video! I also wonder how much your language skills affect how you express yourself.
I used to think that I'm more straight-to-the point in Czech, but then I realized that me not being fluent basically forced me into that.
Or, let's say, an academic who uses English for their work but not much in their private life/spare time might sound more serious in English, simply because they don't know as much slang and informal language.
your personality changes drastically when you switch to the language of violence
🤣🤣🤣
Very well said but unrelated to the video's subject.
Dutch?
Maybe yours does 😂
@@legonlavia the language of violins makes me more submissive, I think it's the constant bowing
I think it is a slight difference in how you speak a language, very notable with Italian, where you tend to be more outgoing and use more gestures, but that is a cultural difference, not a personality change. Of course I do not behave exactly the same way when I speak English or Italian, but my personality is still the same.
I know that my personality does not change. But even in my native language I have different personas to match my situation. I’ve always struggled with projecting my entire personality to others; so have adapted many mannerisms that, while are consciously performed, are parts of “true” me that I have learned to signal in a given situation. Aka the champion masker. I do that in other languages within their cultural norms too. I think it’s probably very common, but people who don’t have to usually mask in their native language to a great extent might think it weird.
If I'm switching personalities when I speak other languages, then I'm also switching personalities between when I'm visiting my grandma and when I'm having a night out with my friends. :^)
Does this have something to do with how translating the ~~vibes~~ between different languages is so hard (or in other words, why machine translations always seem to feel off in this department)?
As you may have assumed, noticing the wrong vibe in an otherwise correct translation makes me unreasonably angry
2:24 I really forced myself to look at your eyes and not the subtitles, and see how much I was able to get considering that I haven’t really spoken or listened to Spanish much in the last 44 years. Also, I laughed out loud at this point. Back in high school, my buddy worked in a factory programming a computer that did CNC milling, and he taught me street Spanish that he learned from the factory workers. He was the one I spoke Spanglish with, we would speak Spanish to keep our parents from knowing what we were talking about, and drop into English if we didn’t have the word.
I’m not the best test case for that, since I’m still a beginner! But I appreciate the vote of confidence.
I learned English starting in kindergarten in an American school abroad. As a middle aged dad I moved to England and worked in my profession. I definitely find myself more gregarious and open to new things in English than in my mother tongue. However, having experienced this more gregarious and open self has rubbed off on my Swedish personality - to a degree.
Very much agree with the point about how one fulfils the same social goal differently between different cultures/languages.
Eg.: I had to relearn to write formal emails when I moved to Germany. My goal is to be respectful, and to treat the other person as a human being. In the UK, that meant I'd surround the request I was making with social-niceties and hedging language before getting to the point. That doesn't work here, where people consider that a waste of time, and want to get straight to the point (which as an autist, was fairly hard for me to believe was actually okay for me to do 😅). Hopefully Germans don't begrudge me getting straight to the point, but still ending emails with a "I hope you're having a good day/have a nice weekend/life's treating you well/etc." 😅
We’re going to have an entire episode on that on the new podcast. It’s a big cultural difference, and one that plays out in subcultures in the US, so it can create workplace conflict
@@languagejones6784 I will be looking forward to that episode immensely!
I'd say it's more about tweaking your social attitude. It would be strange to be seen apologising all the time in English and using high register all the time, but it's perfectly normal in Japanese. In French switching between high and lower register is also an attitude you take on when using the language. Using plain you form in German is risky, when meeting someone for the first time, but perfectly normal after your interlocutor has told you their name.
I guess it's more about adjusting to given cultural norms, that are heavily reflected in the language, rather than any personality change. People might find it more convenient to use one language over another (I prefer using English than my native Polish), but I doubt it influences the core characteristics of personality, which is can be changed only to a some degree and not across the board.
I tend use the term "friend" more loosely than the German equivalent "Freund" and I've definitely called people friends in English who are in solid good acquaintance territory in German.
It's not a personality shift though, just slightly different cultural connotations.
Addressing someone as “acquaintance” is absolutely a face threatening act in English, by implying you’re not anything more. Really interesting
As someone fluent in English French and Mandarin, I think if there are any "personality differences", most of it is probably just due to the fact that multilingual people all have different levels of fluency in each language and each context. It's not possible have the exact level of fluency in every single context (work, family, friends, school, arguments, love live etc) in all of your languages. But sure assuming such a hypothetical person were to exist, I could be convinced that the language itself could become a real variable in some parts of his personality.
Tu español es fantástico!! (Soy hablante nativo)
¡Secundo! 🎉
¡Gracias!
I China, I come across as more extrovert, thankful and lovely, not because I change, but because the reference frame changes. In China being thankful, especially to service staff, is not really a thing, people express their love with secret self-sacrifice, not openly with a hug for example and people generally are more introvert. No offence meant. So this gets attributed to my personality. In contrast for a British I (Swiss German) would come accross as introvert, cold and not even too friendly. I don't think you have a different personality in different languages but you stand out for different features in each setting, this of course then can again reflect back onto you, making you experience different things and feel different about your personality in each cultural setting.
Total side note, but love you little 马 pfp!
I'm more outgoing in English than in my native German, and I don't think it's just expectations. It's easier for me to express my thoughts and keep the conversation going in English without being self-critical of how my contributions are perceived. So, therefore I'm much less skeptical of these claims than you are.
Maybe at least for the introverted/extroverted scale, though, a more robust experiment is actually possible. I want to propose this study: Put participants on a table of 5 people each and let them have a conversation in language A. Take note of speaking times for each participant. Then shuffle the participants around to new tables, and repeat this experiment twice for language A. Finally, do it three more times, but have them speak in another language B.
Now you can see if there's a statistically significant difference in each participant's share of the conversation depending on what language they're speaking in.
Although, now that I think about it, a lot of people are probably going to speak significantly *less* in their L2, for reasons entirely unrelated to personality...
I thought changing personalities was just cope for people who have more difficulty expressing things in a foreign language
Did not know it was this complex with my layman hypothesis being just 1 possible factor
The problem with this viewpoint is the assumption that personality is inherent rather than performed. I'm not sure if we can take it as read that that a "true" personality exists outside of a social context. Of course our personality changes according to the nature of interaction we are taking part in.
I'm hoping you'll be able to get Luca Lampariello, Richard Simcott, Stuart Jay Raj, or The Metatron on the podcast as a guest at some point. I love what you guys do.
That might be a lot of fun. I’d love to have them take big 5 personality tests in multiple languages
I study Spanish, German, and Dutch. With Spanish I find myself to be significantly more outgoing, I speak more calmly in Dutch, and I always feel confident when speaking German.
Edit: Spanish is the only one I have any sort of proficiency in. As I get better with the others it's likely to change.
Video starts at 2:50
I don't think my personality changes when I speak another language. It's just situational. Naturally I'll be more outgoing in Spanish, I live in a Spanish speaking country.
I'll be more careful in German because we all dread the English switch over if we make too many mistakes 😂
I think there is a language layer to do with expression that people may confuse for personality (think specific hand gestures in Italian). I speak 2 languages - English and Farsi - Farsi has a lot of complex cultural norms, courtesy, deference, humbleness and politeness built into the language that I cannot execute well due to my more basic understanding of the language but I don’t feel like I think differently or change personalities when speaking it. My tone, language related mannerisms, and how melodic my voice is changes but these are the language layer in my opinion.
I used to speak differently with my parents, to the extent that, when I finished a long phone call home, my mouth muscles were more fatigued. I don't think it's a personality shift, though.
Considering the c2 criterion you mentioned in your prior video, if one doesn’t have the large vocabulary in ie. a 3rd language and doesn’t fully understand the social norms in that country. Would it be wrong to assume, that one could appear to be a less nuanced person when speaking that language?
In Swahili I'm more argumentative and quicker to react. I think its the complex street environment I learned it in.
Where are the IPA videos parts 2 to 4? 🥺 Please, pretty please 🙏🏾
If there's anything that I'm conscious of, it's that when I use the imperative in spanish I feel like I'm being more assertive, but idk
11:35 Topologists everywhere on their way to a collective UHM ACTUALLY
Astrology "works" in a similar way. A person who believes in astrology tells himself a story about himself, which is called, for example, "Pisces with the Ascendant in Cancer" and forms an image of himself accordingly. It may even have some marginal effect on the personality in terms of feedback. The question is to what extent psychological models are more scientific. The MBTI has long been questioned, the 5 factor one has decent reliability, but how about validity is the question. However, probably anything is better than a simple feeling about it.
I took the same personality test in 4 different languages and got different results. I retook the same test a few months later and had results consistent with the first set of tests I took. Was it the connotation of certain words changing with translation and affecting my answers? Was it because I was remembering situations that happened to me in each language to inform my answers? Was it because I evaluated my behavior in comparison of the norm in the country I associate with each language or maybe because the test did and adapt the questions to expectations in different countries? If I ask five different people to describe a painting I might get five very different descriptions but the painting did not change. I think this is the issue with these types of studies: personality cannot be assessed in itself so we use language and behavior as proxies to assess it. But, in the end, how can we know if it is the personality that changed or the proxies?
I've never felt like my personality shifts in any real way language to language. In dutch, I don't think anything really changes at all othe than the sounds, but there is not a lot of cultural gap between dutch and NY-er in the first place, so, it would be more weird if there was a significant shift.
For french... I'm maybe a bit more polite, but, that's more because I've only learned more formal french [so I sound more polite by default, because I don't know the colloqual register of the language well enough to speak comfortably in it], and the french care about that sort of thing more than the english speakers where I grew up are likely to anyway.
But none of that is my personality changing, it's just, adapting my behaviour to fit both my proficiency in the language, and the cultural/social communication standards and expectations of the people I'm trying to communicate with.
Honestly it doesn't feel any more dramatic a shift than code-switching between like, interacting with other queer folks at a queer event, and having to interact with straight people in a less rainbow-decorated setting? Like, I definitely act and speak differently in the latter than in the former, because of context, social pressures, cultural diffeences, etc., but, it's not like *I* change, just the context I have to navigate things did.
as someone who is multiple people in one body (dissociative identity disorder): hehehe
ive been told im a completely different guy when i speak english
What is said after "since it's psychology and not... astrology" at roughly 06:05 ?
"ein mazal l'yisrael", 'there is no constellation for Israel', essentially that Jews' future is not determined by astrology or fate
Two factors that is worth mentioning is that in some languages, at least on the surface, or way of expression, YOU HAVE TO "change". In Japanese you "cannot' be confrontational and you must be humble and all of that stuff. If someone tells you that your Japanese is any good you "should" disagree saying it's crap.
Until you learn that you can hit and you can hit HARD in Japanese you just need to soften the blow first. You can't say "thank you" if a dude tells you your Japanese is good but you can say, "For being studying it 3 to 8 hours day every single day for more than a decade my Japanese is pretty crap. If I try to read, for instance, 清少納言 (Sei Shonagon) I feel like an illiterate child with cognitive deficiency." You are not only mentioning that you even KNOW who in hell is Sei Shonagon (maybe not even the Japanese person is certain) but that you dare to READ it (o try it, as least). That's anything but humble. But the way you express it IS humble.
What brings Me to: "Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.” (Bruce Lee).
You may feel forced to be different up until a certain stage until you find people more like you IN that language THAT you can mimic (Thank you あおちゃんぺ @ aochanp and ひろゆき).
Another thing is that things that you are used to say maybe you just don`t say that often in that culture. You don`t talk much abut politics and economy in Vietnam. And nope, it`s not because of censorship. I`m approached all the time by anti-communists in Vietnam on the internet (yeah, they exist) that think I`m a communist, but I`m no, I`m just not an ANTI-communist either, and they try to convince me of how the Vietnamese government supposedly is bad. But they don`t understand that what I like is the ECONOMIC system of Vietnam, not necessarily the political one... But the point is that besides THEM those things are not things you just talk to "normal" people, contrary to English or Portuguese in Brazil. So, since in Vietnam people don't usually argue about divisive themes, like politics and economics, I do feel more CALM and at easy in Vietnamese. But that's because we are not talking about people electing TRUMP, or Bolsonaro trying a coup in Brazil, or Netanyahu, and I don't have to make hundreds of posts a day about stupid economic decisions made in Brazil because ONE of the reasons I started learning Vietnamese IS because I like their economic decisions most of the time. So it's all peace, and fun, and flirting with girls, and light stuff in Vietnamese. But in English and even Japanese I fight a lot more!
I can share anecdotally as an Irish person living in Germany for 7 years. Literally zero scientific rigour here but fun to think about nonetheless.
German is a very explicit language, and hiberno-English is extremely implicit. There's a lot of double meanings. (Some people have theorised its a post-colonial thing as the Irish language was banned under 800 years of British occupation and it was handy for doing business with fellow Irish under the nose of the British. Its a nice story, hard to verify tho.)
Anyway, even with my very limited German I'm a lot more direct, a lot more harsh, and even in my interactions with people I find it much easier to find myself doing and saying things that in Irish culture would be considered extremely rude. On some level I find myself being shorter and less tolerant. You kind of have to commit to the first thought. Maybe because often the action is completed with the verb at the end of the sentence. I think at least in hiberno english you can start with something and find yourself meandering to something completely different or changing the entire meaning of the sentence with an emphasis on a certain word. There's a bit more space to feel your conditioned response (often not the kindest one) and then switch it to something maybe a bit more nuanced or funnier down the line.
A lot of my german friends take everything very literally and don't understand dead-pan humour. We're all good natured about it though, luckily. The two cultures are so radically different in many ways its a cause for a lot of humour.
This kind of has nothing to do with anything but you got me yapping.
I know who I am in any language. So I respond to the question of being changed: claro que si. Por que no?
Jejmode engaged.
Wow, tu español es muy bueno!
Gracias!
What is that "funniest word you could think of" that sounds like sirAHNT? And what are you saying at 6:05-6:07? Autocaptions didn't help :)
How much of a factor is someone's level in an L2? My English is probably C2 (native speaker, MA in English) and many of my other languages are at a B level. I am probably likely to come off as less certain or confident in those languages....or I might just not know exactly what some of the connotations of my words are. I may smile at my own awkwardness, and that may be perceived differently in some situations.
As an autistic person who is famously ignorant to cultural norms, I do not feel like my personality or persona changes at all when I speak another language
I would really be interested in knowing the Russian cultural script-because I’m currently learning Russian lol. When I was learning French, I remember noticing I spoke in a lower register and I spoke slower and seemed more relaxed. No idea what this says about me lol
Jajajaj el código joder
I learned to take on a different personality as a coping skill when faced with the fear of speaking another language, especially early on in learning one. Consequently, I can do anything in another language because I’m not the one making the mistakes; it’s the other guy.
En línea, not online.
Aside from that, congratulations! Quite good. You've reached the Pete Buttigieg level. Keep at it, so that you may reach the Jeb Bush level.
How did you get so good at spanish in just a few months?
He he. I am definitely horribly rude in Russian 😂
I don't know about different personalities but I have noticed that almost all women speak in a lower register when they speak German as to when they speak English.