The languages of our dreams

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linguoboy
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The languages of our dreams

Postby linguoboy » 2014-05-20, 15:52

I thought I'd created this topic already, but I can't seem to find it. We could use the Random Language Thread for these posts, but it might be more interesting to devote a dedicated thread to them instead.

I chiefly dream in English, but occasionally in other languages as well. Often, it's a touristic situation and usually there are errors (either in my speech or the speech of the others around me) that I don't notice until I review the dialogue after waking up. Sometimes the supposed foreign language is chiefly or entirely nonsense; I've even had moments where I was aware I was making up words but that this was acceptable within the context of the dream.

Last night was typical: I dreamt my spouse and I were travelling in Egypt. We were visiting the Jewish quarter of a large city (possibly Cairo) and I was surprised to see most of the signs in Latin script and in Iberian Romance of one sort or another. We went into a bakery. At first there was no one behind the counter, but then a woman breezed by saying "Vé, vé". "She says she's coming[*]," I explained to my spouse. When she came back, I explained to her that we were looking for "alguna cosa de dolç" [sic] particularly something "molt típica" of the local cuisine. I didn't catch all of her explanation, but she pointed me toward something which was made with sweetened squash (presumably akin to the cabell d'àngel of Mallorca) and I told her we'd take "dos peces"--correcting myself almost immediately to "dues peces" (with proper gender agreement!).


[*] "Vé" is actually third-person singular. An actual Catalan speaker would say something like "Ja [hi] vinc!"
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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mōdgethanc
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-05-20, 17:01

In my dreams (if I dream at all, and if it has any spoken words at all, both of which are rare) it's either in English or a language I'm into at the moment. Most of the time it's grammatically correct and sadly enough, better than what I could produce in real life. I've had dreams in German, Chinese, Spanish and probably more. Once I dreamed I was speaking Urdu to a Pakistani guy on the bus, which makes no sense because I wasn't even learning it and just repeating phrases I'd read somewhere.
linguoboy wrote:I was surprised to see most of the signs in Latin script and in Iberian Romance of one sort or another
It's the virus!
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loqu
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby loqu » 2014-05-20, 17:09

linguoboy wrote:I told her we'd take "dos peces"--correcting myself almost immediately to "dues peces" (with proper gender agreement!).

Incidentally, dos peces is correct in Valencia.

Weird dream you had there! But quite amusing.

It's been long since the last time I had a dream in a language different from Spanish. :?
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Levike » 2014-05-20, 17:23

I can't really recall any speaking in my dreams, maybe random sounds.

There was once a dinosaur speaking on the radio,
but I'm not sure if he spoke any particular language.

My dreams don't make any sense at all,
usually they include everything from a ghost car to an ostrich driving it.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby razlem » 2014-05-20, 20:59

Although I'm not fluent in anything, Parts of my dreams may be in Mandarin, Spanish, or even Angos.

I had nightmares about learning Latin, but I don't think that counts :mrgreen:
American English (en-us)::German (de)::Standard Spanish (es) Swedish (sv) Mandarin (zh)::Choctaw (cho) Finnish (fi) Irish (ir) Arabic (ar)
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby melski » 2014-05-20, 23:19

When I'm still not completely asleep, I try to control my dream and there I usually invent situations with several languages, even using it to add to the plot. For instance, I would dream of the Roman empire invading Germany and use Italian and German. I usually think (rather than dream, strictly speaking) in multiples languages. But that doesn't mean my real dreams are multilingual: most of them must be in French.
................Native: French (fr) French
................Fluent: English (en) English , Italian (it) Italian
.........Intermediate: German (de) German, Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br) Portuguese
.........Conversational: Catalan (ca) Catalan, Spanish (es) Spanish
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby JuxtapositionQMan » 2014-05-21, 2:09

Nearly all of my regular dreams have no dialogue. However, whenever I have a nightmare of any kind, it's always me shouting for help or something, and I have the occasional dialogue-containing dream, both of which are mostly in English, Esperanto, and oddly: Spanish. I'm not even that good with Spanish yet! :shock:
One time, I had a dream in German, but it never happened again, and I later learned it was phrased incorrectly. :?
Well, that was a thing.
speak: [flag=]en[/flag][flag=]eo[/flag]
learning: [flag=]fr[/flag][flag=]de[/flag][flag=]ru[/flag][flag=]pt[/flag][flag=]es[/flag][flag=]ro[/flag][flag=]art-jbo[/flag]
hiatus: [flag=]fi[/flag][flag=]it[/flag][flag=]la[/flag][flag=]wa[/flag][flag=]sv[/flag][flag=]eu[/flag][flag=]zh.Hans[/flag][flag=]is[/flag]
want to learn: [flag=]fo[/flag][flag=]be[/flag][flag=]ko[/flag][flag=]he[/flag][flag=]sw[/flag][flag=]hi[/flag][flag=]tr[/flag][flag=]nl[/flag][flag=]cy[/flag][flag=]hu[/flag]

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Lauren » 2014-05-21, 2:34

The vast majority of my dreams have speaking of some sort, mostly in English. Two times a couple months ago I dreamed a bit in Jamaican Creole. I was interested in it but never actually studied it. :hmm:
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onlyhuman

Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby onlyhuman » 2014-05-21, 8:47

I mostly can remember my dreams directly after waking up and I think I dream in languages most of the time. I hardly ever dream of music, books or film that I've read. In my dreams it's all about situations, me beeing at different places, and speaking many langauges fluently. I'm preparing my trip to Italy this summer so I read my guide every night in bed, and I speak Italian quite well in my dreams although I've never learned it...

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby OldBoring » 2014-05-21, 9:33

Most of my dreams are in Italian or Qingtianese Wu (when dreaming about family), and Mandarin (since I live in Beijing).
Rarely in Wenzhounese Wu, because although I can understand it completely, I don't speak it fluently anymore and I don't think in this language. Also, it could be because I don't speak it with family members or close friends.

Once I was shocked, cause I dreamt about being in a bus in Beijing, and there was a woman talking about her job. Some days later, I was at the internship in he medical clinic, and a woman patient said exactly the same dialogue!!!

Occasionally I dream in is English, usually casual conversation with strangers or songs.
I still remember that when I was a kid and had just started learning English, I dreamt about being in an English lesson, but all with invented words (I guess I created a conlang in my dream?) The teacher was teaching us the Popeye's song, and the word for war was written guerra (as in italian) but pronounced /gurra/.

There was a time I chatted online a lot in Portuguese, and I used to dream about chatting in Portuguese.

onlyhuman

Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby onlyhuman » 2014-05-21, 9:39

Youngfun wrote:Most of my dreams are in Italian



After all you DO speak Italian . :mrgreen:

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Vlürch » 2014-05-21, 18:43

My dreams often switch between Finnish and English, the same as my thoughts, although if the dream is clearly set in Finland, it's generally all in Finnish, and if it's elsewhere, then it's in English... but language barriers exist even in my dreams, so if I'm in France or something, the people are like really rude about me not knowing French (and angry at me for not learning it despite trying my best, haha), which is kinda funny in a way. :P

Oddly enough, I sometimes have dreams where I'm sorta fluent in some strange language that sounds mostly like Latin and Hindi combined, and can even remember some sentences and individual words when I wake up, which have occasionally had some results on Google in both Hindi and Latin, also in Sanskrit and even some gibberish pages. Pretty often, I have dreams where I'm in some strange country where everything is really weird and surreal, and the people there speak that mixed language.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Prowler » 2014-05-23, 20:04

There's rarely any speaking in my dreams, and when there is it's usually in Portuguese.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby OldBoring » 2014-05-25, 16:02

Youngfun wrote:Rarely in Wenzhounese Wu,

Just three nights ago I dreamt of being at a university class, and the professor was doing the entire lecture in Wenzhounese and speaking with some students, but only some of them (those who can speak it) were replying him.
At first I thought: Wow! A lecture in Wenzhounese, that's awesome.
Then I thought: what an asshole! More than half of the students don't understand him!

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-06-02, 19:48

I almost always dream in English, but I have occasionally dreamt in Irish, Spanish, French, Swedish and Japanese.

The earliest one I remember is from when I was studying Japanese in school (I was about 16) and I invented my own style of swimming which I called "Sakanate" (sakana - "fish" + te - "hand") by analogy with "Karate". I was very pleased with myself when I woke up and realised I had formed the word correctly in my dream.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby OldBoring » 2014-06-06, 3:58

Please describe how this swimming style is! :D

Ciarán12

Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-06-06, 12:55

Youngfun wrote:Please describe how this swimming style is! :D


:lol: I remember it being kind of like Karate punching that somehow propelled you forward. Pretty sure it would be a horribly ineffective way to swim in reality :P

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby OldBoring » 2014-06-06, 15:20

Well, when I was a kid I was taught the dog style swimming, with the palms facing up, and hands forward moving up and down. Not very different. :lol:

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-06-06, 16:50

Youngfun wrote:Well, when I was a kid I was taught the dog style swimming, with the palms facing up, and hands forward moving up and down. Not very different. :lol:


Palms up? I was taught that with palms down, grasping forward in a kind of cycling motion with the legs kicking behind.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-06-06, 17:48

This morning I had a dream that I was in my friend's apartment trying to turn off her alarm clock which just would not stop no matter what I did. Then I woke up and found the alarm on my phone had been going off for ten minutes. Nice.
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