Dreaming in Foreign Languages

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What dreams have you had in foreign languages? Dreams as in sleep-snore-dream; not your goals

[AlexTG]

I generally have trouble remembering what language I did things in. Like if I read an article, then the next day I can remember the content but not which language it was in. So the only dreams I really know were in a foreign language are the ones that involved language swapping. I've had dreams where I was in a Tommorow When The War Began situation (Australia being invaded) and had to use foreign languages to talk to the invading forces. It's also been a regular occurrence that I'll be having a regular dream and then one of the characters will suddenly say something like "no te comprendo" and I'll have to change languages (often they could understand me perfectly fine before but suddenly the dream has decided they speak a different language now, caz hey why not, dream logic)

[Ramazzati Tenchú]

I recently dreamt about a row of old people in a field pointing at their heads and saying 頭がいい (intelligent). I took this to be a sign of progress.

[NoManches]

I've had one or two dreams in Spanish. Each dream consisted of me talking to my old Spanish professor (in Spanish) and saying to him : do you remember me? I took your Spanish class a few years ago and have been practicing ever since!

He was a very influential professor for me and was the reason I stuck with the language instead of dropping it.

I really with i could dream more often in Spanish. Even after reading a lot before sleep I don't recall having dreams in Spanish. I know it's not a sign of fluency but it would be cool!

[MCK74]

I rarely remember my dreams, but I think a few of my dreams involved languages I was studying.

I vaguely remember a dream where I was in a Spanish-speaking country and had simple conversations with people there.

Earlier this year when I was studying French I had a dream I was back in my high school French class and going over basic French conversations.

[Hank]

I have the occasional dream in Spanish. Usually if I have read a lot right before bed or if I fall asleep thinking about Spanish or having an inner dialogue.

The trouble is that I'm not sure it's always Spanish. I think that sometimes it's gibberish, even though I can understand it. It's Spanish in the dream though, so it counts. Right?

[reineke]

Never, that I can remember but once I dreamed that I could fly. I don't believe it's a sign you've "made it" in a foreign language.

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Dreaming in a Language You Don't Know

"I occasionally dream in French, but the people I know that speak French only speak French if they show up in my dreams. Or if they are bilingual, I usually dream in the language in which I speak to them most often. However, in the dream I had where Dutch was being spoken, I didn't recognize any of the people.

But how about a language I have heard, but have never used?

In an article titled "In Your Dreams" by Stephen Dutch PhD (oddly enough), Dutch states that you don't necessarily need to be very fluent to dream in another language. He also writes that the subconcious is really good at recording information. In addition, your brain can know another language and still have difficulty retrieving it during your dreams. According to Dutch, dreams seem to be no more than "random memory dumps" (Dutch, 2010).

Which leads to the conclusion that dreaming in Dutch could have been either my brain making up something that sounded to me like Dutch, or it was using phrases stored way back in my memory. Or both. It's difficult to tell. "

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201403/dreaming-in-language-you-dont-know

[sillygoose1]

What's really weird to me is that for some reason as soon as I'm ready to enter sleep mode, the stage right before it, I start having full on conversations with myself in French or Italian.

As far as actual dreams go, I remember having a dream that I was vacationing in France and got lost as well as speaking Italian with some of my family members. I don't remember the others.

Come to think of it, the only languages I really dream in or talk to myself in are French and Italian. I had a few Spanish ones but I don't remember them neither.

[Elenia]

I had a dream which included a Spanish poem. It was quite a good poem, even though it definitely wasn't real and even more definitely wasn't real Spanish.

[IronMike]

About half-way through my year-long Russian basic course at DLI I had a dream that I went home on leave to hang out with my mom and sisters...and our entire conversation was in Russian. My mom's Russian was so good! I woke up thinking how great it was that I am now dreaming in Russian.

I still have dreams in foreign languages or more likely of me in a foreign language class, which is my dream life. Oh, to be independently wealthy...