The languages of our dreams

[Vlürch]

I also had a language-related dream last night for the first time in months! Well, the only part I remember about it was from just before I woke up.

In it, I was arguing with my mum about the pronunciation of nurse, as in whether it was [nəːs] or [nɐːs] or whatever. I insisted it was the former while my mum insisted it was the latter, which I thought sounded way too posh. When I woke up, my first thought was "isn't it [nɜːs]?" and looking it up just to make sure, it is. So, in the dream, we were both wrong and it was exactly between the mispronunciations.

Obviously, the dream was the result of me once again pronouncing Ryan Gosling as [ry̠ɑŋ go̞sliŋ] or something like that, you know pronouncing it according to Finnish rules (word-final /n/ becomes [ŋ] when the next word starts with /k/ or /g/ at least for me (and at least when speaking fast)). My mum always finds it mildly annoying and funny that I pronounce English names (of actors, films, etc.) in an insanely tankero way (not sure if there's an equivalent term in English) because she knows I can pronounce them like they should be pronounced... but my brain can't go from Finnish wiring to English wiring in a split second like my mum's (or most people's AFAICT), so sometimes the results are weird. I also think it's funny so I don't really care.

Meanwhile, my mum always intuitively goes for the poshest pronunciation of English possible (because in her youth that was what was taught at school and any kind of "lower-classisms", "Americanisms", etc. were considered incorrect) and I find that hilarious. So it kind of makes sense that in the dream she overdid it, because she does sometimes when saying the names of films or whatever. But sometimes, she's even more tankero than me. I think it depends on how familiar she is with the words.

[linguoboy]

Another one! And Dutch again.

For some reason, I was trying to work out how to say "Who are we?" and getting tripped up by my German. After a couple tries, I managed to remember that it's wie, not wer and wij not wir, but I couldn't get the verb right. Bizarrely, I started out with the idée-fixe that the verb should be bont. Eventually, I got around to thinking it was seid but I never made it to zijn.

Talen zijn makkelijk!

[Yasna]

makkelijk

I never would have guessed that word's German cognate (gemächlich) without looking it up.

[vijayjohn]

I didn't know either of those words and couldn't tell what the Dutch one might mean even after looking up the German one.

[Vlürch]

Not exactly a dream about languages, but there were different languages in it and also about this forum, so I'm posting about it.

Yesterday, I had a dream where Unilang was hacked and shut down by someone. A bunch of users got on some chatroom and Linguoboy somehow traced the hacker's IP to an island country in the Bohai Sea halfway between China and Korea and discovered that he was plotting to assassinate the island's king. A task force of Unilangers was assembled to stop him from going through with it (I only remember Vijay and me were part of it, don't remember who else) and we got on a helicopter and flew there.

As soon as we stepped on the island, our clothes suddenly transformed into something resembling yukatas (but tighter). There was a touristy gift shop that we went to first, and there was a huge ass English-Chinese-Korean-Japanese dictionary that cost like 1000€ so I got sad I couldn't afford it; the shopkeeper tried to get me to buy it by speaking a mix of Korean and Chinese, but obviously I didn't understand anything and I just kept saying (in English and presumably incorrect Japanese) that I can't afford it. Then we split up; someone went to hack satellites so they wouldn't fly over the island (because for some reason the would-be-assassin needed satellites in his plan), someone went to warn the king, someone went to evacuate the city, someone went to kill the hacker/would-be-assassin and I went with him to stop the assassin from escaping.

When me and whoever the other person was got to the hacker's house, we saw it was a life-size replica of the Forbidden City. We went inside and tried to find the hacker but there were a bunch of robots that tried to kill us, so we had to fight them with swords. The robots shot lasers, which the swords could deflect. They also kept repeating warning phrases in broken Japanese (as in, even in the dream I knew it wasn't correct). Then we went to the hacker's lair (it was a huge hall full of computers and also bookshelves, and banners with Latin text on them (I don't remember any of what the text said or if I understood it even in the dream, though)) and whoever it was that was going to kill him was like "wait a second, this is an anime character" and I realised he was right. The hacker was literally two-dimensional. So instead of killing him, we folded him up and put him inside one of the books on the shelves. We checked whether Unilang was back up, and it was; I saw I had a notification but woke up before I could open the post.

...so yeah, a pretty weird dream. Obviously the "Unilang gets shut down" part came from all the errors, the island nation in the Bohai Sea came from considering making one of my conlangs conically spoken on an island in the Bohai Sea, and the huge dictionary came from me thinking that I'd want a Korean dictionary. Everything else, though... also, unfortunately I forgot a lot of the details that made it even weirder.

[vijayjohn]

A task force of Unilangers was assembled to stop him from going through with it (I only remember Vijay and me were part of it, don't remember who else)

Oh Jesus

[Vlürch]

A task force of Unilangers was assembled to stop him from going through with it (I only remember Vijay and me were part of it, don't remember who else)

Oh Jesus

If you think that's funny, you also looked something like this (sparkling eyes because it's the only way I could make the "star look" clear) with some make-up (or at least it looked like that), I don't remember any clear details anymore but you looked kind of like some actor or model, handsome in a somewhat cheesy way, you know like "I'm sexy and I know it" but also kind of like an Indian version of George Starostin at the same time? Your eyebrows were definitely stylished and trimmed or whatever. No idea if that's at all accurate, and hopfully it's not offensive, but... well, in the dream you were pretty hot tbh. Also, no idea where that came from since it's not even how I actually imagine you looking like...

[vijayjohn]

EDIT: If you didn't know, I already posted pictures of myself here and here.

[Ciarán12]

Just woke up from one! This one has a lot of elements easily traceable to their causes in my actual life.
I was staying in some kind of hostel for foreigners in Brazil aimed specifically at people moving to.the country (as opposed to holidaymakers). This is basically a physical version of the facebook groups I ws looking for last night. I met a bunch of people and we were all talking in a mix of English and Portuguese. I was speaking in Portuguese on account of the fact we were in Brazil and it was the only language I could presume others there shared (especially since they were all living there), some of the others had no qualms presuming everyone spoke English, which annoyed me and I made of point of ploughing on in Portuguese anyway.
One of them had exchanged a few words with another in English enough for me to catch an Irish accent, but I didn't immediately call him out, but continued talking to him some more to weedle it out of him that he was Irish. Eventually I did, he said he was from Navan (switching to English as he had somehow copped that I was Irish too) and, quite unbidden, switched into Irish (Navan is not in or particularly near any Irish-speaking area (well, there's a tiny Gaeltacht near it but I'm not sure that counts). I started talking back in Irish, I can recall only trying to ask him about the bureaucracy an Irishman needs to go through to get set up for paying tax as a self-employed person in Brazil and using the Irish "ráiméis" as an attempt at a translation in Irish of the Portuguese "trâmites", which it isn't at all ("ráiméis" means "nonsense, bullshit" and "trâmites" means "steps, processes, bureaucracy") but maybe my brain was trying to make a wry joke unbeknownst to me...

[Vlürch]

Last night, I had a dream where I checked the Wikipedia article about Burushaski and saw that it had been edited to say that it was Sino-Tibetan and the page was protected so nobody could edit it; it cited seemingly reliable sources and everything, some brand new research showing that it was confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Burushaski was indeed Sino-Tibetan. I was like "wait what?" and read through the papers they cited, after which I still wasn't entirely convinced so I was going to post here about it but woke up.

...obviously this dream came about because I watched a bunch of I Love Languages! videos on Youtube yesterday, the last one being Old Chinese, and bookmarked a bunch more to watch later (the last of which was Burushaski). It could also have been amplified because I later watched the film Haider with my mum, which, set in Kashmir, is kind of in the same general area where Burushaski and a bunch of Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken. Oh, and just before going to bed, I checked the Wikipedia articles about the actors in it and one of the actresses' page is protected due to some people insisting that she's younger than she actually is. So yeah, that clearly influenced the dream as well.

[Brzeczyszczykiewicz]

Oh, and just before going to bed, I checked the Wikipedia articles about the actors in it and one of the actresses' page is protected due to some people insisting that she's younger than she actually is. So yeah, that clearly influenced the dream as well.

Shraddha Kapoor? But she's 33 years old already! I mean, sure, she doesn't look like a grandma, but it's not like one could really mistake her for a junior high schooler or something like that. ...

I loved that dream of yours, by the way, I've never dreamed of the old wiki myself, but considering the number of times I've been looking up stuff in different languages in it, it may be just a matter of time.

[Gormur]

I never have dreams about existential stuff, but I've had dreams where I hear words. Then later look them up and find them even though I'd never heard them before

[Brzeczyszczykiewicz]

I never have dreams about existential stuff, but I've had dreams where I hear words. Then later look them up and find them even though I'd never heard them before

In my case, that happens rarely enough , but on the other hand, I very often wake up with a word (sometimes more than one) buzzing around in my head, so insistently that I can almost hear it (and sometimes I'll actually start saying it out loud, over and over) and I can't help but look it up right away, literally.

It seems to be mostly random, though: sometimes it may be something rather relevant or related to something important for me at that moment, but more often than not it's more like my brain hiccuping those words for no reason other than the fact it really likes them, I guess.

It can be very pleasant, but also annoying when I remember the word without remembering the actual meaning of it. I'll be like "yes, that's a very cool word, I won't deny it, I mean, how could I?...but what the hell did it mean?!"
Last time it happened was last week, and the word was none other than Russian "возвращаться", and I had to get up right away to look it up in my Kovalev because, surprise!, I couldn't remember its goddamn meaning.

[linguoboy]

I dreamt that I had to read a dialogue in Welsh on some kind of broadcast. One of the participants was a USAmerican who had learned the language using Rosetta Stone (an anachronism, because he was supposed to be a serviceman stationed in the UK during WWII) and I had the idea of getting my brother, who knows no Welsh, to read the lines. I just wanted to give him the most basic introduction to some of the digraphs and then have him read it with the kind of 100% American English intonation you often hear when USAmericans try to speak Spanish.

(I also had to say some lines in English as my Welsh-speaking character and I said them just as unconvincingly as when I attempt a Welsh accent in waking life.)

[Gormur]

I had a light dream before waking up this morning. There was this old hag talking to me and when it echoed back to me, it was Magyar

I realized it when I woke up. I was like what the hell? I don't think I've heard this language in real life except on TV

[linguoboy]

Used quite a bit of German in my dream last night. Dreamt I was at a restaurant in Germany while various vendors were coming in. One of them had fresh vegetables and bread and my mom was trying to buy a loaf from her, but she only had whole grain and my mom wanted plain white sandwich bread. Seeing her attempts to explain we're going nowhere, I stepped in and started translating her request, commiserating with the vendor that it wasn't my preferred kind of bread either. She ended up opening her pack and giving me a bar of chocolate-covered marzipan that was the best I've ever tasted.

The night before, I was at a Vietnamese food stand with my husband trying to buy a snack. The vendor asked me a question which made he realise he thought I was ordering a completely different menu item than I was, which was exactly the same mistake he'd made the last time I was there. I pointed to the menu board and said, somewhat annoyed, "Then you tell me how to say this." He pronounced it and I realised that the way the items were written, the first two syllables of the name were on a different line and I'd been leaving them out when I ordered, which made it sound close to the name of the other item. (The syllables corresponded to the Chinese characters 水晶, which means "crystal" and shows up in the name of certain types of dim sum.)

[Dormouse559]

The other night, I had a dream that involved the evil queen from "Snow White". I referred to her as a "queenion", which I guess was supposed to mean "powerful queen". But even in the dream, I was skeptical of that, so I looked it up. Dream-Wiktionary said "queenion" is in fact a verb meaning "to stay awake until a monarch has fallen asleep or, if they have died, until their body is cold*". It also gave the Latin word for the concept as rēgīnō, and I imagined the Anglicized form, "reginate". Of course, none of those words actually exists. No idea where waiting for the monarch to fall asleep came from, but it sounds kind of neat.

* This second bit was phrased as something like "until the gut is chilled"

[Vlürch]

The other night, I had a dream that involved the evil queen from "Snow White". I referred to her as a "queenion", which I guess was supposed to mean "powerful queen". But even in the dream, I was skeptical of that, so I looked it up. Dream-Wiktionary said "queenion" is in fact a verb meaning "to stay awake until a monarch has fallen asleep or, if they have died, until their body is cold*". It also gave the Latin word for the concept as rēgīnō, and I imagined the Anglicized form, "reginate". Of course, none of those words actually exists. No idea where waiting for the monarch to fall asleep came from, but it sounds kind of neat.

* This second bit was phrased as something like "until the gut is chilled"

That's really cool!

The word *reginate sounds to me like it'd mean "to make someone a monarch" as a verb and "having been made a monarch" as an adjective, which would actually be pretty useful in some contexts...🤔 There has to be a word for that in English that's actually established and commonly used, right? Like, I guess enmonarched or bekinged and bequeened would be the most obvious, but they're not really used either. There probably is a common word and I'm just not remembering it?

[Linguaphile]

There has to be a word for that in English that's actually established and commonly used, right? Like, I guess enmonarched or bekinged and bequeened would be the most obvious, but they're not really used either. There probably is a common word and I'm just not remembering it?

Or enthroned. (In Ghanaian English they say enstooled.)

[Vlürch]

Or enthroned.

True, but that can also be used to refer to non-monarchs and figuratively pretty much anything. Of course any word that explicitly refers to enmonarchment could be, too, but at least it'd literally refer to... uh... enmonarchment. I swear the only word I can think of is *enmonarched, and it is immediately understandable so it would probably be better than something more obscure... but I'm still pretty sure there has to be a word with that explicit specific meaning, even if it'd only be found in some obscure 16th-century dictionary.

(In Ghanaian English they say enstooled.)

Interesting!