did you know that there are approximately 3.3 billion bilingual people worldwide making up almost 43% of the entire human population that's nearly half of us speaking more than one language but here's the twist have you ever noticed that many of us as language Learners often times feel like a completely different person when speaking a language that isn't our mother tongue why is that why do we often times feel like our personality changes when learning another language let's find out my personality has to change in other languages I'm a complete loser in American I remember the
first time I ever experienced this phenomenon I was in one of my high school Spanish classes and we were listening to music in Spanish and I was singing along and dancing and I felt more Carefree I felt more romantic and it's weird because to this day I still feel more romantic when speaking in Spanish rather than speaking in English so while I was singing along to this music in Spanish in my class my teacher Maestra Lans said to me you're like a mariachi and to this day she still calls me Mariachi can we just Spam
in the comments Maestra Lance she is literally the greatest even living here in Mexico I go by the name Andres because for whatever reason when I go to the Starbucks they cannot get Nathan right just a little context my middle name is Andrew so I figured Andres would be a good substitute while I'm here in Mexico it's weird because maybe Andres is a little bit more sociable and maybe he eats a little bit more tortillas than Nathan does and when he greets women he gives them a hug and a kiss on the cheek something that
Nathan might not necessarily do obviously when you first learn a language it's a lot of brain power and not a lot of like full understanding like from the heart I feel like especially with things that would normally be awkward or anything like that or even bad words there it's a lot lighter the craziest thing about all of this is that the people who join my fluent Spanish speaker Academy experien this all the time which is why you need to go join right now Link in the description so what is really going on here do our
personalities really change when speaking another language so there was this really smart guy his name was Frederick Wilhelm Christian Carl Ferdinand humbled and I'm sorry I know I butchered that and he stated that our worldview reflects our language and our culture so essentially speaking a foreign language gives you a new worldview which can sometimes change the way that you behave it can change your personality now a really interesting idea is that maybe some languages are more extroverted than others and maybe some are more introverted for example English and Japanese may be more introverted language whereas
Spanish and Portuguese are more extrovert I'm an introvert and so this language I'm learning definitely forces me to be more extroverted I gradually enjoy speaking to people more I gradually enjoy being in social situations more so it kind of tones down that introverted nature in me truthfully I don't know if this has anything to do with the language itself but rather with the culture that comes with those particular languages so maybe if the language that you're learning comes with a very bright and vibrant culture then maybe your personality will become more bright and vibrant as
opposed to learning a more serious language that comes more serious country well maybe you're going to be more serious a little bit more reserved and I think this is something important to note is that when we are learning a foreign language often times we want to fit into the culture that comes along with the language that we're learning so for example me living here in Mexico and wanting to fit in with the culture that comes along with the language that I have learned maybe I will be more willing to eat really spicy foods because that's
just kind of what you do or maybe I will be more affectionate and more sociable I remember when I first got to Mexico City I absolutely loved how people would say to other people eating meals around them proo to pretty much anyone you go to a taco stand you're eating you walk up people are eating their talk say Pro I love that so then I started doing that I start to be a little bit more extroverted than Maybe I normally would be so we could also argue that your personality isn't necessarily changing because of the
language itself but rather that the environment you happen to find yourself in just like we speak differently in our mother tongue in different environments for example speaking with a parent or a girlfriend or a friend the same happens when speaking in a different language so maybe our personality isn't changing just because of the language it's changing because of the environment that we're in the same people that that are instilling things in you with your mother language growing up those are not the same that are you know helping you with your with your new target language
for example I found online that someone said when talking English French or German to my sister my personality does not change however depending on where we are both our behaviors May adapt to certain situations we find ourselves in so let's take a look at the big reasons why we feel like our person it changes when speaking another language the first is cultural influence you may be more influenced by the culture that comes along with the language rather than the language itself so when I'm trying to speak Mandarin Chinese with someone I might be a little
bit more serious and respectful whereas in Spanish I might be a little bit more carefree and [Music] romantic the second point is the changes in linguistic nuances for for example Chinese being a tonal language many times people say that it almost sounds a bit angry and kind of all over the place it sounds like people are arguing and another point I want to add here is that sometimes when we're speaking a foreign language many times the things that we're saying don't have as much emotional impact for us I remember one time I was in AAS
Calientes Mexico with my good friend Louis and I we were sitting around with his family and they said to me Nate what do you want to do to tomorrow and I just wanted to say well it doesn't really matter to me I don't care so I said Meal which sounds extremely rude and at the time I didn't realize this and sometimes we might speak or have a different personality when speaking another language because many times certain phrases don't have as much emotional impact for us now the third point is different communication Styles and I think
this kind of ties into the first point of cultural differences in Spanish we can use to to refer to you but we can also use Olstead to formally refer to someone so this might be a little bit more formal than we might have in English where we can speak formally we might say Sir or ma'am but in Spanish it's literally built into the language so maybe when you're speaking Spanish your personality becomes a bit more formal the fourth point is how proficient you are in that language I think that can really really affect your personality
when speaking a foreign language for example when I was first learning Spanish I was definitely more shy um not because of the language itself but because I was still a beginner and I didn't feel confident having conversations with random people the fifth point is social context which I briefly mentioned earlier so many times your personality might change in speaking a foreign language not because of the language itself but because of the environment you're in so if you're at work speaking in a foreign language you might act a certain way whereas if you're speaking with your
girlfriend at home in a foreign language you're going to act a different way and the final point is the idea of cognitive load now what does that mean essentially it just means your brain has to do a lot of work when trying to speak in a foreign language and because of this just like we talked about the Proficiency in your language you might have to take some more time to process thoughts or understand what people are saying to you and this can often times change the way that you behave with people I feel like I've
been able to be more extroverted I'm less shy when I speak Spanish than in English you tend to grab personalities from the people that you've been learning from you're mimicking other people The Sounds they make the gestures they make even think of when you're in a big group speaking in your mother tongue often times you there's so many things going on that you can't your brain can't process all that information and so you have to focus in on just one conversation now if we put that in the context of speaking a completely different language often
times your brain gets completely fried and you're saying oh my gosh it's already hard for me to talk just oneon-one with someone so now that there's 15 people here it's very hard for me to to communicate and be part of the group now this in turn can make you more shy and less socialable or maybe it makes you more sociable and it makes you want to kind of make people laugh so how does your personality change when speaking another language let us know in the comments if you want to become conversationally fluent in Spanish as
fast as possible check out the fluent Spanish speaker Academy here's what some of our current members have to say one of my students jod who's learning spash to better communicate with her Mexican husband says why not attempt learning with Nate surely he could give me some good advice since he was in my position at one point before I look back to where I was and where I am now and we've made great progress and if you're reading this let go of the doubts and join his course we stand behind our program with a 30-day full
refund policy if you're not happy within 30 days will give you your money back no questions asked to find out if the academy is right for you click the link on the screen or in the description below
