For anyone who's learnt another language to a decent degree...

Do you find you have a different personality in one language than you do in another?

If so, how much of this was a conscious effort, or just by accident?

Or does your personality somehow end up naturally translating itself into the new language?

Yep.

These days, I bow after I say thank you or sorry, though I try to avoid 45 or 90 degree bows, I slip sometimes. I always buy a gift before going to a friend's house. I don't say "thank you" after a compliment anymore, and go modest on the compliment-er. Before I didn't study much outside of school asides from maybe 20-30 minutes + homework, but now I could study for hours like a dedicated Japanese 高校生

EDIT: Oh, and fashion! Before, I wasn't exactly interested, I always dressed the best amongst my friends, but that happened naturally. Now I'm downright obsessed with fashion, I follow a couple of J-fashion sites, and I want to dye my hair red x_x

IceCream Wrote:For anyone who's learnt another language to a decent degree...

Do you find you have a different personality in one language than you do in another?

If so, how much of this was a conscious effort, or just by accident?

Or does your personality somehow end up naturally translating itself into the new language?

This is very common, and my language teachers talked about it quite a bit. My teacher said that she was much more straightforward and honest about her own feelings when speaking English.

My personality somewhat translates into Japanese, but I come off as less abrasive or arrogant than when I speak English. I tend to make fewer jokes.

Squintox Wrote:I follow a couple of J-fashion sites, and I want to dye my hair red x_x

Care to provide some links?

blackmacros Wrote:

Squintox Wrote:I follow a couple of J-fashion sites, and I want to dye my hair red x_x

Care to provide some links?

+1! お願いします。

It depends how you learn. If you just focus on grammar and vocab and don't do any kind of immersion or study of real contextful Japanese, you don't know from a cultural perspective when and what to say. Further more, without a lot of input, you won't be speaking the words that pop into your head in Japanese. More likely you will be thinking in your L1 and just translating it into Japanese. So in this case there would be no change.

However, the way most of us are studying inevitably we will be different people in Japanese. This is because we are essentially learning to copy what we hear and read and we say it in the same situations that we hear or read it in. For example I used to get annoyed when people would say 頑張ってね to me. I thought why do they care if I do my best at work or Japanese or whatever. If something is important to me I will do my best, not if someone tells me to.

Eventually though I found AJATT and did a butload of immersion and to my surprise started naturally saying it myself. In this fashion, you learn what should be said in pretty much any situation. You don't realise it, but there isn't a whole lot of variety in what we can say in any given conversation. Unless it is particularly deep conversation, they are more or less on rails and basically a social ritual. From massive exposure you learn all the different responses and you express your feelings and thoughts without thinking (in terms of what you choose to say).

But it's not like you consciously decide, like L1 you just feel the situation and say something which you have no doubt heard (or read) said many times in the same situation.

You still have the same core, but how direct, polite, humble etc. will all be different from L1. I also notice that the way I speak to myself when in Japanese mode is different from English, although maybe this is because I enjoy rattling on in Japanese.

thermal Wrote:It depends how you learn. If you just focus on grammar and vocab and don't do any kind of immersion or study of real contextful Japanese, you don't know from a cultural perspective when and what to say. Further more, without a lot of input, you won't be speaking the words that pop into your head in Japanese. More likely you will be thinking in your L1 and just translating it into Japanese. So in this case there would be no change.

However, the way most of us are studying inevitably we will be different people in Japanese. This is because we are essentially learning to copy what we hear and read and we say it in the same situations that we hear or read it in. For example I used to get annoyed when people would say 頑張ってね to me. I thought why do they care if I do my best at work or Japanese or whatever. If something is important to me I will do my best, not if someone tells me to.

Eventually though I found AJATT and did a butload of immersion and to my surprise started naturally saying it myself. In this fashion, you learn what should be said in pretty much any situation. You don't realise it, but there isn't a whole lot of variety in what we can say in any given conversation. Unless it is particularly deep conversation, they are more or less on rails and basically a social ritual. From massive exposure you learn all the different responses and you express your feelings and thoughts without thinking (in terms of what you choose to say).

But it's not like you consciously decide, like L1 you just feel the situation and say something which you have no doubt heard (or read) said many times in the same situation.

You still have the same core, but how direct, polite, humble etc. will all be different from L1. I also notice that the way I speak to myself when in Japanese mode is different from English, although maybe this is because I enjoy rattling on in Japanese.

Of course you consciously decide! as long as it's appropriate in the language and conv. you can decide to say w/e you want. You went too overboard on the unconscious part of it, the whole point of immersion is to get to the point where we notice that we can consciously express ourselves, yes sentence pattern are the same, and like the things we say have been said many times by others in similar situations, but fact is we consciously pick what to say in L2 same as in L1. Just how you said sounded stupid to me, but I think I know what you were trying to get at.

The answer is, of course, 'It depends.' I expect that many people will change, but if you're very sure of who you are, you probably won't change a lot. Learning -anything- can and does change people, though. It's central to what human beings are.

kerosan41 Wrote:

blackmacros Wrote:

Squintox Wrote:I follow a couple of J-fashion sites, and I want to dye my hair red x_x

Care to provide some links?

+1! お願いします。

http://www.ple-fashion.com/index.html links to a bajillion other fashion sites

+Go to Online Japanese stores, they give good ideas what to wear. The rankings also show what other people are wearing.

But there are so many other Japanese sites I follow XD I should start posting them on my Twitter. ^^

Yonosa, perhaps a poor choice of wording. What I mean is that we don't go "hmm, well I am speaking politely and the subject is a hamburger and the action is to eat. sooo ah!" and then say "I want to eat a hamburger." We just say it. As another example I just said "purple snake hamburger" out loud as something random. Yet I didn't go "hmm I want to say something random to make a point, how many things, 3 yeah that sounds good. Ok what's number 1..". I just felt the situation and my purpose and said it.

We do choose what we say in the sense that our personality, mood etc. do dictate our responses. For example if called a douchebag there are a number of ways you could respond. Be aggressive, be polite, make a joke and so on. We choose how to respond, but we don't consciously choose the nitty gritty of what to say. In my case, I choose to inquire as to why they think so. I made my choice as to how to respond and my brain blurted out "Why do you say that?".

Of course your personality changes. Say you skateboarded for 20 years and then suddenly started learning how to ride a unicycle-- your style on one is not going to transfer over immediately or at all. And learning to skateboard or unicycle is nothing compared to becoming fluent in another language.

I personally find that the way I communicate ideas across isn't much different in Japanese (when I can communicate those ideas, that is), but the way I handle context is far different. In English, I have a rich cultural tapestry to draw ideas, inspiration and references from, 20 years of television, movies, books, everything you can think of. Whereas in Japanese I have 3 strong years of targeted language study and 2 years of everyday life to talk about. Thus, when I talk about things in English, I compare and contrast, explore metaphor and simile and can connect non-related ideas and concepts far more easily than I can in Japanese, even though I probably possess a large enough vocabulary to do so otherwise. My humor is also quite different as well. Jokes and witticisms that depend on sarcasm, cultural background and high-level humor don't work at all in Japanese, but I've gotten really good at turns of phrase and phonetic puns, which I use to great effect in conversation here.

Unfortunately for me, my interest in Japanese is, at this point, almost purely academic, as I'm not a huge fan of any single cultural product of the nation I currently live and work in. Therefore, I imagine I come across as slightly aloof, even though I'm really, really down to earth when you actually end up talking to me in person.

FutureBlues Wrote:....My humor is also quite different as well. Jokes and witticisms that depend on sarcasm, cultural background and high-level humor don't work at all in Japanese, but I've gotten really good at turns of phrase and phonetic puns, which I use to great effect in conversation here......

I'm not sure if it's because I'm learning Japanese or not, but I've found this happening to me as well. A lot of turns of phrases and phonetic puns come out of my mouth these days, often times responded with friendly disappointed shakes of the head. Yes, they're often cheesy, but I think they're funny.

well, in English I sound a little less retarded than when I am using Japanese... and probably more manly too

I think my personality is pretty similar in Japanese, my Japanese friends always say I have a 毒舌.

When I speak english in real life I'm a douche-bag who cannot stop swearing. Believe it or not, but before I press submit I remove some curse-words that happen to creep in while Im writing. You should see my IMs, holy it's mother disgusting.

In japanese i act like a player because my favorite actors are cool mf:ers like kimura takuya and yamaP.

In another language I'm like some sort of intellectual using big words and so on (because most of my education occurred in this language, I suppose) and in my native language I'm probably a balanced person with a little bit of all the extremes in the other languages.

I agree that we act like the people we learn the language from, and thats why I'm reading/gonna read yakuza/chinpira manga like Crows, Worst, Vagabond and Holyland. WTF IS KEIGO こんちくしょう!

p.s. LOLWTF cracky-chan! d.s.