Can Learning a Language Change Your Personality?
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🤯 Ever wish you could hit the reset button on your personality? Turns out, you can actually do this when learning a new language. Sort of. I’ve got the science to back this up, and a few surprises you won’t want to miss!
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Reset your personality
0:36 – What do you mean . . . new personality?
3:48 – Your personality makeover
7:39 – How do you argue?
8:20 – Your language-shaped stories
10:48 – The science: your chameleon brain
12:35 – Creative freedom
13:15 – Culture shock: your personality’s secret weapon
15:39 – Memory trick: Language as a time machine
17:34 – A language split personality?
19:15 – Level up your character
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
Check out what happens to your brain after years of learning languages. 👉🏼 https://youtu.be/npvm4-B5d1M?si=_0RoTrjLnwgKfYcv
Can you talk about Conlangs?
I’v been enjoying your show and am thinking about learning my 4th language. Do you have any ideas on little known language that little information for learning is available?
i love how you like the brazilian culture
As a person who speaks 4 languages I can confirm this is true 😌
I agree. In fact I discovered that this is a good way to get over self consciousness in making mistakes. It’s not me making them, it’s that other guy.
@patwelsh5561 lmao that’s brilliant. I’ll try that.
@@patwelsh5561I was so much more confident approaching women in Colombia than in America and I think it’s because I felt like I was watching someone else on tv so I was less nervous. Also, they were prostitutes so it was pretty much a sure thing.
I wonder how much the personality changes depend on the experiences and relationships we build in these languages? Brains love to tie learning to context, so it’s possible that switching languages changes our contexts enough to give us the chance to naturally learn new ways of being in relation to the world.
I’ve noticed that I often feel very childish in a language until I get confident about being able to explain myself without needing my conversation partner to bend over backwards to help me. This dependence on others may encourage us to enter a mindset that’s more open to accepting help, advice, and influence, leading to us be more willing to speak, think, and act like those around us while we are with them or until we switch to another language with its own learned context.
I think the context the language was learned in and is used in has a lot to do with it.
I feel having a [verbal] fight in different languages at each other makes it so that each person feels like they’re winning (or feel like they haven’t lost the fight), because the other side cannot articulate an effective rebuttal.
I don’t think it’s a personality change, but a respect and adaptation to the culture of the language you are speaking.
Thank you for this comment. This reflects my own experience. French = cool, detached, nonchalant(e). 😆 Spanish = as crazy as you want to be
Absolutely. The way in which a language is spoken is usually a direct mirror into the way a certain culture acts.
Totally agree with you! What actually changes is the form in which we CHOOSE to create sentences (or in general how we MUST create sentences in the language)
I’m definitely more assertive and up front (maybe even a bit argumentative) in Swahili than I am in English. It’s part if how Swahili is spoken and the street environment I learned it in. I’ve had to stick up for myself. Whike my English side is more passive and agreeable, and not so forward. Sometimes the two sides get mixed together now. 😂😂
How do they get mixed together for you? 🙂
I think we pick up on the culture that the language is a part of. I doubt personalities would change much if we only ever read in a foreign language.
I find I’m sillier in German because a lot of the words in the German language make me laugh. My favourite German word is Handshuh, which is “glove”. Direct translation is Hand Shoe.
My sense of style changes based on the language I’m learning, which is weird. When I was studying Danish, I wore more sporty, athletic clothing. I decided to re-learn French and now I want to wear more sophisticated stuff. 🤷🏼♀️
I’d like to speak NT. Being the small minority of ND seldom brought me fortune. So for 40+ years I’ve tried to learn NT. But I can’t, and now often refuse to fake it.
When I studied Coptic Greek, I was first struck with the fluidity of a word’s meaning in context. Greek packs so many related but varied meanings for words. And the idea of a verb placing the action very specifically in time and space in and of itself, wow. From Irish I was struck by the richness of idiom in language. So many poetic and humorous ways to express mundane occurrences. I learnt Spanish as a child from Navajo friends I played with, and it was years until I realized I spoke Spanish with a Navajo accent, and heaping helping of Navajo grandmother admonitions.
Love it!
I’ll have to ask my friends, since I haven’t paid much attention to how much my personality changes. But I think that in English I’m the most comfortable and relaxed (at least at the moment), German brings out my no-nonsense German heritage, and Finnish maybe brings out some level of confidence.
I speak English, American Sign Language, Sign Exact English, Pidgeon Signed English and Spanish. I grew up speaking/signing all of them. One thing I find it hard to do is translate language specific meanings/idioms. I mean I can literally translate it verbatim, but interpreting it to get the full affect can be tricky.
Translation is another skill set! It’s separate from speaking (signing) and writing. It’s separate from listening (seeing) and reading.
It’s another skill you have to actively develop due to the nuances each language has. You’ve gotta go beyond saying exactly what was said, you’re learning to communicate meaning. 🙂
i’m learning 6 languages and i’m (almost bilingual in (british) English and french my mother tongue) I can express myself (almost) freely in japanese and spanish and I can confirm that my personnalty changes when I switch to italian for example (mainly when I want to curse I use italian or English I start talking with my hands but when I want to think about something deeply I use japanese or english
Very well-put!! Your points confirm what I already ‘knew’: different language = different UNIVERSE.
not only do i find i act very differently when i speak french, i find it had a lasting effecting on my personality in english.
I’m the exception… Do not feel more relaxed or even able to convey ideas with passion in my native language at all…
But when I’m speaking English? Oh boy, let me tell ya! I feel like I’m in control of everything and am the most confident man on planet Earth!
I suppose partially because I do not have any trauma in English, only positive reinforcement, which is very different from my experience living life speaking in my native language!
It’s a mix of detachment when speaking another language but also proving a sense of passion and unapologetically authenticity whenever I speak in English.
I feel like on top of the world when speaking English.
But in my mother tongue, it is not even close.
My actual social anxiety dissipates when I switch to English; It is quite fascinating!
Shame we don’t have many studies that go deeper into the neurolinguistic science behind that; I would love to dive deeper into such a topic!
When I was a child I fell in love with Japanese which was the language taught at school. At uni I learnt more Japanese and realised as we delved into the culture I realised that I was drawn to Japanese because it matched my own introverted personality that was perceived as weird. Later I watched kdrama when going through a health crisis and I felt like the Koreans where closer to who I wanted to be. I felt freer in korean as I started to learn it.
Then I moved onto Cdrama and started learning Mandarin. I don’t know why but for some reason I feel like the grammar of Mandarin is similar to the grammar in Tok Pisin and that the Tok Pisin I learnt as a child but cannot speak a word of any more helped me learn the Mandarin I now know. For some reason I act cute and childish when practising Mandarin.
I’m gonna agree with the fact that I’m more rational in english than in Spanish, even my arguments tend to escalate way less hahaha