Dreaming and Language

Elenita — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:37:05 +0000

It’s three o’clock in the morning–at least it is in my time zone–and I’m posting here at Chipanglish after a bad dream.

Actually, since we’re all about language here, that’s not very accurate. To be more precise, there was nothing bad about the dream per se. It’s more that I dreamt in German, and that is considerably disconcerting to me once I wake up.

(Because this is the Internet, let’s get something out of the way here. I am not saying that German is a bad language, that I dislike German, that people who dream in German are bad and/or disconcerting, or some combination thereof. I like German a lot, and wouldn’t have voluntarily studied it–after I’d already fulfilled my foreign language requirement–if I didn’t. Okay?)

As you might have guessed, I don’t dream in German particularly often. For that matter, I don’t use my German particularly often, either. Out of the four languages I claim some degree of competence in, it is the one I feel the least comfortable with. I’ll occasionally write an email in it, or listen to a podcast in it; every once in a while, I’ll read an untranslated article in Der Spiegel. But a completely German conversation, without some code switching into English? I can maybe recall five or six, in as many years since learning the language.

That’s not to say my German is bad, or that I couldn’t manage if I were mysteriously transported to Berlin one day. But it’s the language I personally find most stressful: unlike Spanish, I never got to the point where I could think in German when I’m using it. There’s a lot of mental translating going on, and it feels like I can’t keep up.

Thus, it’s always a little freaky to me when my subconscious does this. Possibly I know more of the language than I give myself credit for. But I don’t think I’ll ever get used to fluent, fully formulated German emerging from my brain.

Especially not at three in the morning.

Chipanglish » German

Dreaming and Language

Similar Posts: