Have you ever felt as if you were being someone else when you speak a foreign language?
Sometimes when I speak in English, I feel like I'm being someone else.
It's not like being a totally different person from yourself but you feel that some parts of your personality are different or a bit changed.
Well, having written this topic so far, I jut started worrying that I could come across as a weirdo haha
Hoping someone can relate to my feeling and share your opinions or experiences about it :)
Sorry for my bad English.
Most probably it is speaking foreign languages at a very early age. I was used to speak French, German and English on holidays with my parents, when I was 11, 12. (Dont think my language ability was perfect at that age though, I am not that good.) So using another language is just a natural thing, like using another tool.
Me, I, myself? No, never. But I never think people are strange so dont worry.
I don't even know who I am, so how could I feel like being someone else...
I always wonder about this topic too. For westerners, they might feel very different when they learn adn speak languages which are very far from their cultures. And the same thing might be applied to Asian people studying European languages, in my opinion.
I also wonder what about foreign languages close to our culure?
Do we feel the gap as much, say, when to speak some East Asian language?
It is hard for me to imagine because I have never studied other language but English.
I could only imagine it could be less so when staying in some East Asian country and speaking their language that is close to my mother tongue.
The strangest thing to me is that when I speak Englsih in Japan,
I do not feel the gap as much as I was in the US. Even talking with native English speakers in Japan, less gap. So, the environment is doing some trick, I think.
It feels a bit strange to post this English comment in Japan!
Absolutely!! I posed this same question to some of my students when I was working as an ESL teacher in Japan. I said to them that when I speak French (or even the little bit of Japanese that I know) that my voice changes, tone, pitch, volume, and that I will say things or use words in the foreign language that I would not normally use in my native English. My facial expressions change, and my posture changes.
I had some students tell me that they are more comfortable saying "no" in English than in Japanese, and that they speak louder and that their entire body language changes when they use English. One girl said that she was even more able to speak her mind when she spoke in English.
Isn't that interesting? Here are a couple of articles that discuss how language and grammar may shape even the way we think! http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-10-25/new-research-suggests-language-structure-may-play-factor-personal-saving
And here: http://www.newsweek.com/why-language-may-shape-our-thoughts-81725?piano_t=1 ; (this link might not work because I have used up my 5 free articles on newsweek. )
