The languages of our dreams

[Vlürch]

Earlier this week, I had a dream where I was a cameraman for some TV show where celebrities built their dream houses. The celebrity of that episode was Genghis Khan. He wanted to have a massive yurt in a clearing in a forest, and he spoke a mix of Mongolian and Kazakh. At times, he tried to impress everyone with his language skills by using English words, but his pronunciation was so bad that it was even harder to understand than the mix of Mongolian and Kazakh.

Of course, I'm pretty sure the supposed Mongolian and Kazakh were just gibberish with Mongolian and Kazakh phonology since my knowledge of both languages is really shallow and definitely doesn't include any vocabulary relevant to whatever he was talking about. I don't remember any details from the dream except that at some point his horseback warriors started cutting trees to make the clearing perfectly circular, though.

[vijayjohn]

Shortly before I woke up, I had a dream where I was in a Korean or generically East Asian restaurant softly singing the North Korean sweet potato song, then felt stupid about doing that and stopped, only to see someone else softly singing the same song. Then we sang it together even though I was conscious enough to know that I don't really know most of the words.

[vijayjohn]

I had another dream this morning where I was trying to speak Arabic but mixed in at least one word in English. I can't remember what I actually said now, though.

[linguoboy]

I dreamt that my Irish teacher asked me what the Irish word was for "satire" and I couldn't remember. He then reminded me of a publication called something like the "Satirical Times" in Irish and I realised I had a grammar book with several cites from it, so I could find the word that way. But--as is typical in my dreams--whenever I really need a piece of information, it disappears from where it was just moments earlier.

I tried to think if it might be something every obviously English-derived, like *sáitir, but then I remembered that there's a long tradition of satirisation in Irish tradition. Old Irish texts often talk about poets satirising those who have offended them, which is a very effective attack in a society where your reputation was everything. So I concluded that there must be an inherited word for "satire" and I either remembered it or I didn't.

(I looked it up this morning and that word is aoir, which I don't recall ever knowing before.)

[Antea]

I dreamt that Vijayjohn was coming to Spain, and that he was staying at my place. In my dream he was very good looking and very elegant and well dressed, and also very nice with the children . And moreover he spoke Spanish almost as a native, so that I almost couldn’t distinguish his accent. I told him, in my dream, and he said that he also could understand Catalan, but that he didn’t speak it so well as Spanish.

I suppose I need a break from Unilang

[vijayjohn]

Thanks, though! I can't really say much about the rest, but the part about not speaking Catalan as well as Spanish is definitely accurate. I like kids, too. I've had Mexicans and non-native speakers of Mexican Spanish tell me I sound native, but I'm not sure whether Spaniards would agree.

[linguoboy]

Last night I dreamt that I was eavesdropping on a group of Finns. Some of them were trying to practice their English and one said, "I put gin in my football." I laughed because I knew that jalkapallo was Finnish slang for a kind of fizzy lemonade popularly drunk at football games and that they had transferred the meaning to English without realising it didn't make sense. I also questioned whether the "gin" was really gin or if they just thought that was a generic English expression for strong clear alcohols like vodka and akvavit.

[Ciarán12]

I just dreamt that me and a Spanish colleague of mine (as well as some other people I couldn't identify) were on a train somewhere, when one of the people we were with was talking to my colleague in Spanish and used the word "cualguién" for "someone" and I asked my colleague if that was actually a word and he said yes. They then said that synonyms for this were "Parama", "Patacarra".

[Vlürch]

Last night I dreamt that I was eavesdropping on a group of Finns.

Maybe it's a sign that you should learn Finnish. Or not, but I couldn't resist the urge to say that.

[Linguaphile]

"cualguién"

I asked my colleague if that was actually a word

Sadly, no, not in real life. Probably because you and your dreams were not around when words were being invented. It would have been a good one, though.

I also questioned whether the "gin" was really gin or if they just thought that was a generic English expression for strong clear alcohols like vodka and akvavit.

Ironically the word gini is used in Finnish with the definition "(englantilainen) katajanmarjaviina" meaning "(English) juniper berry wine", with katajanmarjaviina (juniper-berry-wine) as a less specific near-synonym, so in real life I think they've got the specific meaning down pretty good. (In Estonian it's kadakamarjaviin or džinn.)

[Dormouse559]

I dreamed that my grandmother was quizzing me on my French vocabulary and I had to say the names of aquatic mammals. I remembered baleine, phoque and another word that I don't recall now. In the dream, I believed I couldn't remember the words for "seal" and "walrus", nevermind that phoque means "seal".

[voron]

I remembered baleine, phoque

They are balina and fok in Turkish.

[Dormouse559]

I remembered baleine, phoque

They are balina and fok in Turkish.

I'm sure that's a complete and utter coincidence.

[Antea]

I dreamt that I was working in a new company and that I had to translate some documents. They told me they were written in Hebrew and I thought that it was going to be hard (because of my basic level). When I was trying to read them, I was very worried because I could not find any sense nor understand any word. Then I realised that actually the documents were not written in Hebrew, but in Coptic. And I felt better because I understood why I couldn’t understand anything. And then I told the company that it was very difficult for me to translate them, because they were written in an ancient language that very few people know.

[linguoboy]

I don't know if I'm having more language dreams because I've been sick and sleeping more or what, but the other night it was Dutch. I was trying to read a book where some of the words were represented visually and I kept reverting to German and having to correct myself. Then I remember looking at some Dutch coins which had funny shapes on the reverse with enigmatic captions. It took me a while to twig to the fact that this was a special series commemorating various islands and the captions were their names.

[vijayjohn]

Why are so many people dreaming in other languages all of a sudden?

[OldBoring]

Because they dream of speaking so many languages.

[vijayjohn]

Last night, I had a dream, too. Eskandar and I were trying to use a Google Doc to make sense of a Persian text, and the last comment he sent me ended with "goodbye." I panicked and thought, "'Goodbye'? What do you mean 'goodbye'?!? I'll never see you again??? " Then I woke up halfway and reassured myself: Oh, he couldn't have really meant "goodbye forever" or whatever. He must have meant that he was going on a trip or something.

[Antea]

I also had a dream with Unilang people. I dreamt that some of them came to Barcelona and met with my husband. And I didn’t meet them because I was working, so I didn’t know they were coming. So my husband told me that they were very nice, and then I was kind of upset because I couldn’t understand why everybody met with my husband and not with me

[Linguaphile]

I dreamed that I was asked to interpret for an Estonian speaker at some sort of meeting and I didn't understand what they were talking about at all (not even in English). I mean, I literally didn't even know what the topic of the meeting was, even after listening to them, and that was in English. I knew that even if I were to manage to understand the English part eventually, I would still have no clue how to say it in Estonian, so the Estonian-speaker and I just carried on a conversation about other things, ignoring the meeting. I was clearly not proficient enough to serve as the interpreter so instead I used the opportunity to improve my own language skills by asking really basic questions. I was asking questions about the pronunciation of certain words and things like that (bizarre because I was saying things like "how do you pronounce the word X" and the Estonian-speaker would repeat back exactly what I had said, and somehow this was helpful). But we somehow managed to make everyone else think that I was interpreting the meeting, so no one else caught on to what we were doing.
I saw a video yesterday about Thamsanqa Jantjie, who used fake sign language to provide sign language interpretation in South Africa for several years (most famously at Nelson Mandela's funeral), so that's probably where the "fake interpretation" idea came from.