Switching Languages AND Personalities?

As I was doing my daily Instagram scrolling the other day, an interesting picture by @factonfeed  came up on my feed.


Now, Instagram is not exactly known for its source reliability, so I decided to more research. Just starting from my personal experience, I do think that I kind of switch personalities from Italian to English. I believe in Italian I might sound more knowledgable, as I know more words, and I become more extrovert than I already am (in English). The article "Switching languages can also switch personality: study" states that
People who are bicultural and speak two languages may unconsciously change in their personality when they switch languages, according to a U.S. study.
Another article that I found on Psychology Today  also mentioned a really interesting quote by a Bilingual person, who says that in English their speech is very polite, and they always say "please" and "excuse me". I do have to admit that I feel a very similar way. In my native language, I rarely say please or excuse me, but I clearly remember that when I was learning English in elementary school, the teachers could not stress enough the importance of saying these two words, as they said that "English speakers always say please, thank you, and excuse me".  This sparked my interest because it made me think that maybe my "English personality" does not come from me, but it comes from the learning experiences I have had with the language. As I learned English, I learned a different type of professionalism, attitude, and humor that were completely new for me, and yet I use them on a daily basis.
Can the learning of a second language really unconsciously change your personality? Maybe not completely, but I would definitely advise you to test it out yourself.

Linguistically yours,
Gaia
 
 

Comments

  1. AM. DadakMarch 1, 2019 at 9:23 AM

    How would you describe your English personality versus other language personalities?

    ReplyDelete

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