Hi friends of Italki from all over the world, I'm writing this discussion for two reasons. The first reason is the most common on Italki, I want to train and improve my writing skill, and I will be thankfull if you'll correct me, even for the minus mistakes. For this reason I won't read what I wrote when I'll finish to write this, so it can emerge my weak points. But the second one, that for me is more important, is that I want to share my impression with people from other countries and cultures, and I want to know their points of view.

Well, the question is simple, I was guessing how the real personality of each one can emerge when we speak in another language, especially if this language is not very well known. Language, within body language, are the first two things trough we can express our feelings, and our personality. In our mother tongue, we link facial expressions, body movements, voice tone, with our speech. This create empaty with the person that we have in front of us, because he/she shares with us the same link between language and body language. But, what happen when we have in front of us a person from another countries? Are these links completely different? And this leads to be misunderstood?

I thought about this when I realized that the main obstacle for me in the speaking skill is the tone modulation. It's a really common, in Italy, to put emphasis in tone modulation, and I also realized that I have to fight with my inner nature because it's not only a question of language, but also a type of non verbal comunication.

Even this, of course, can be a good thing for understand other's cultures, maybe can be shadow the real personality of a person, expressed trought not only the words, but also trought the hidden non verbal comunication. For example sarcasm, irony, or other figure of speech, can't be expressed by a person that have a limited knowledge of a language; and if this person uses a lot of these figure of speech in his mother tongue, a part of his personality "decay", the personality become smooth, at least when he try to speak in the foreign language.

Of course living in the foreign country can be very usefull, but during the learning period, the person can result very different in personality.

So, what do you think about this? There are psychological study about the non verbal comunication between foreigns? What is your experience living in foreigns countries? Your personality emerged in any case, or perhaps you seemed to be different?

Thanks to everyone for the answers!