First off i only speak English and am learning German and my teacher told me that in her dreams she doesnt remember what language her dreams are in. Does anybody that is multi-lingual experience this? and does anybody have an explanation for it?
Did she indicate whether she occasionally dreams in another language or whether she regularly does? There is many schools of thought on dream interpretation. But when an unknown language is involved there is always a spiritual component. If possible you should have her post what she can remember on the forum. Also if she is wanting to know, she should be available to answer questions.
Yes it happens, but I think the scientific explanation for dreams is at best speculative. Carl Sagan believed that the prevalence of people that report dreaming of flying, floating or falling could be explained as an evolutionary stage in primates, as a signal to prevent them from falling asleep in trees, where they could fall to their death. Since it's anybody's guess why we dream or what, if anything, correlates to the content of dreams, I would would just offer that the semi-conscious mind that sometimes recalls dreams as we awaken is free-running, without the normal control we have over out thoughts. So just about anything could be going on, even a random patch panel of internal brain connections.
Since only a portion of our brain is available during dreaming, dreams give us a perspective on what we have learned most thoroughly and what's important to us. If you dream in a foreign language, it means that you are thinking in that language. Your brain doesn't have the ability to perform real-time translation when it's not awake. So that means either that you speak it fluently, or that you're learning it by immersion. Jungians say that the earth represents our mother. In English we even call the planet "Mother Earth." So when we dream of flying, we're trying to get away from our mother. They have quite a catalog of archetypal images that they use in dream interpretation.
I took French in school, half a century ago and since then, my encounters with it have been infrequent and superficial. When traveling in Quebec a few years ago, i was able to recall enough to read roadsigns and menus, but not enough to follow normal speech (could understand the considerate people who s-l-o-w-e-d down for the poor dim Anglo), and my pronunciation is absolute rubbish. Yet, once every few months, i have a dream wherein i speak French with someone - rudimentary conversation, but the words and grammar are real; i did learn them. I attribute this to opening, in unguarded REM state, a long-term memory storage unit that is inaccessible in waking mode. I could probably speak not-very-good French under hypnosis. I never dream in my native tongue, which i spoke fluently and for much longer. Guessing that`s because i don`t dream about childhood.
With it being an language unknown to her, it is a spiritual matter, not scientific in nature. In her does she know it (even though she doesn't on a conscience level)? Or is it a source of confusion within each dream?
Well, that sounds new to me. Being in a dream but then the language is different from the usual language you know, although I think there is an explanation for everything but scientific reason for it is something I don't believe when it comes to dreams. I would like to keep my eye on this thread to know more information about it.
Does she remember what was being said in the dream? Or just that it was a foreign language? It's not remarkable to make the sounds of a foreign language in a dream, without forming real words, if you've heard them in real life. That's a lot easier than trying to make your vocal organs produce them, if they haven't been trained to move like that. Most people begin to lose their ability to retrain the vocal organs for the sounds of a new language in adolescence. This is why it's so important to teach foreign languages in the early grades. Wait till you're 19 and you'll probably never master the phonetics of Spanish, much less Russian or Chinese. It could be like the "Mock Swedish" that the Swedish Chef speaks on the Muppet Show. It sounds like Swedish to someone who doesn't understand Swedish but has heard it spoken.
The OP doesn't say that she dreams in a language unknown to her. It says that she doesn't recall what language she was dreaming in. I don't see why this would be surprising if she is fluent in multiple languages.
When I'm awake, I can recognize languages that I can't speak. I can tell the difference between Spanish and Italian, even though I only know a handful of words of each. I can recognize a language as Slavic but I have no idea which Slavic language it is. I suppose I'm subconsciously associating with something I've heard in movies, etc. so dreaming of languages could be a similar subconscious association.
I'm sure what you're noticing unconsciously is the phonetics rather than the vocabulary. In Spanish, D, T and N are interdental consonants, pronounced with the tongue between the teeth. In fact Spanish D between two vowels is pronounced exactly like the TH in English "bathe." In European Spanish, Z and soft C are pronounced interdentally too, sounding like the TH in "bath." Italian does not have those sounds. They pronounce D, T and N the way we do. You probably haven't heard them spoken enough to recognize the differences between them, and then to identify them with countries. Furthermore the Slavic languages don't differ from one another as greatly as the Romance languages or the Germanic languages. No one would mistake Italian, French and Brazilian Portuguese for each other. It's the same with us: German, Danish and English don't sound remotely similar. But Russian, Czech and Polish? They sound alike to us because they aren't too different from each other. The people find each other's languages fairly easy to learn.
I think (1) is true but (2) is false. Because most likely most dreams are not in any public language, but in the "language of thought" i.e. your understanding of relationships and meanings. If you are fluent in more than one language you can watch TV program and if power goes off not be sure what public language was being spoken on the TV show - i.e. as it was spoken you were unconsciously converting it to your "language of thought" understanding of relationships and meanings. Likewise, even when awake, if someone says (but reads is better as it is a record of what was said) several paragraphs of a story to you (Enough to "over flow" your short term memory capacity) you usually can recall well the details of the story but when you tell the story back often you will chose other words of the public language to do so. You will rarely be completely sure exactly what words were spoken to you as the ideas got immediately translated into your "deep language" so they could be understood, and the words of public language you heard were mostly discarded - not remembered. Everyone has this deeper "language of thought" - understanding of relationships and meanings, even feral children do when they have no public language.* It is the language your thoughts originate in and then are nearly automatically (and effortlessly) translated into one of the public languages you speak to communicate your ideas to others. “Nearly automatically” as is often my case when out in public in Brazil, I consciously know I must use Portuguese, not English. The words that come out of my mouth are not even translations of English but my poor version of Portuguese, which I never formally studied. I have no fore-knowledge of what these Portuguese words will be until I hear them, unless I consciously plan to say something in advance of saying it. If I had learned my Portuguese in a class room, my speech in a bar etc. probably would be first formulated in English and translated into the Portuguese I needed / wanted to say, but I learned my Portuguese the way a child does but many years too old to do that well. Thus, I am nearly 100% sure your dreams are never even silently “verbalized” into a public language, as there is no need to do that, but that when you wake and recall them in part, they will be expressed in a public language you know, so you have the unchallenged illusion (full confidence) that your dream was in that public language. If (1) is true, then this is certain as you have no ability while sleeping to translate from your "language of thought" - understanding of relationships and meanings into any public language. * I am also certain also that all the higher primates have this deeper "language of thought" - understanding of relationships and meanings but rarely (only after much training with some set of symbols) have any ability to translate their thoughts into the “public” language they and their trainers have developed. I.e. they can think and plan ahead but normally lack "public language" except for a few "words" they share. Monkeys can tell each other that the danger approaching is on the ground (snake or tiger etc) or it is from the air (hawk that could steal a baby etc.). They can even lie in their limited public language. An old ape did so: he gave the warning of "ground danger" approaching so others eating the berries scampered away and up a somewhat distant tree, while he was "lame" and could only slowly approach it (eating berries along the way, of course.)
Id just like to make a few points to the Org.post. Theres a general concensious between psycologists that the dream you remeber, is not the actual dream you had. (Thoug not often mentioned. if u wanna read about it i'd start with just taking the basic psyc book of erricsons work, or some based on it.) Basicly your concious mind, can't comprehendt the unstructured and somewhat caotic process of the subconcious minds "dreams" It's speculated that dreams are chaotic images and after images of feelings, experiences, sensations of the senses ect. some claim it to be the minds way of "de-fraggin the hard drive." others claim it to be left overs from our more primal ways. So what happens is: 1. Your subconsious mind experinces what we call dreams. A process in wich the brain have changes in some chemical components and bio-elctrical patteren changes with in. 2. The concious mind cant comprehend this, in the chaotic form its created, and as such translates this to something your woken self understands. 3. The "woken" dream is created, wich is what u remember wen u wake up. Above is not "FACT" but is a generally accepted theory of how we THINK dreams work. I learnd it from a socialstudies school in denmark, as the most accepted theory but thats 8 years ago, so might have changed. So basicly someone speaking a diffrent kind of speech in a dream, is just how your "Self" translated the dream from your sub-concious. So remebering hearing someone speak Italian, is just what your woken mind translated the subconcious experince in to. The funne thing about this is, that no one actually rember their dreams, they remember the translation.
