Does a New Language Change Your Personality?

Has anyone told you that since you started learning English you seem more confident and more willing to talk to people? Maybe you have noticed it yourself. A tourist stops you in the street, and suddenly you understand the question and answer it in full sentences without blushing. Words you once had to hunt for now come when you need them. It feels good, doesn't it?

Now think back to your first months with English. You probably felt lost and shy. Every time you wanted to say something, your mind went blank, and the fear of making a mistake was so strong that silence felt safer. It turns out this is more than a feeling. Research suggests that our personality really can shift depending on the language we speak.

As you master a foreign language, you also change how you behave in different situations and how you relate to other people. Some even claim that language changes personality. Let's look at what the research actually says.

Different languages, different selves?

Linguists around the world have tried to explain why people seem to change when they switch languages, and their studies have produced some striking results. The American linguist Susan Ervin-Tripp asked a group of Japanese women living in the United States to finish the sentence "When my wishes conflict with my family's…". In Japanese, their answers were gentle and modest. In English, the same women sounded confident and assertive.

Professor Michèle Koven of the University of Illinois ran a similar study. She asked French and Portuguese bilingual women to describe a painful experience in both languages. In their own language most of them stayed diplomatic, while in the other language they expressed emotions such as regret and anger far more directly. A foreign language may work like a filter that everything we know and want to say has to pass through.

“ Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things. “

Flora Lewis

A completely new perspective

Many people find it easier to swear in a foreign language, because the words carry no cultural baggage or personal memories and so feel less intense. Imagine hearing the same swear words from a foreigner speaking your language: they would not land in the same way. Language is tied to culture, memory and where we come from.

In our first language we don't build sentences by gluing single words together. We draw on memories and on ready-made phrases we have known for years. The language we speak is part of who we are and is closely bound to its culture. That is why, as you immerse yourself in the culture of the language you are learning, you start to adopt its rules and habits.

“ Learn a new language and get a new soul. “

Czech proverb

Professor Nairán Ramírez-Esparza of the University of Connecticut gave bilingual Mexican Americans the same personality test in English and in Spanish. On extraversion, agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness, every participant scored higher in English, and their neuroticism scores were lower than in Spanish. She concluded that cultures such as the American one place more weight on assertiveness and achievement, and that people speaking the language tend to take on that way of seeing themselves.

Identifying with a culture

How you use a foreign language can change how you behave. If you mostly use English for business travel and your vocabulary is largely professional, you may come across as more direct and decisive than you are in your first language. Many people who move abroad take on local habits as they learn the language, so they speak louder and faster in Italian or keep their intonation flatter in Finnish, because they want to belong.

Learning a language is one thing. Using it with awareness means bringing a piece of another culture into the way you speak. Is it any surprise that people change when they speak a foreign language?

A new personality, or simply more confidence?

Many people who have mastered a foreign language say they used to be shy and struggled to communicate. Once they pushed through the embarrassment and fear, they became more confident, and over time more open to people and to other cultures.

“ The more languages you know, the more of a person you are. “

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Learning a language and learning confidence at the same time

Knowing the culture behind a language is only part of the story. Your view of yourself changes too. You start to notice how people react to you when you speak English. Professor Bonny Norton of the University of British Columbia describes every conversation as a negotiation of identity: each time you speak, you are quietly answering the questions "Who are you?" and "How should I treat you?"

Being bilingual can feel like having two personalities

Many bilingual people say they "feel different" or "act differently" in each of their languages. They may be funnier, more goal-oriented, use a different tone of voice or different body language. We tend to link each language with the emotions of the setting in which we learned it.

Think about how you learned English at school. Most likely it felt like an obligation, and that formality crept into the way you spoke. Speaking foreign languages trains you to focus on natural communication and makes your thinking more flexible. The more freely and fluently you use English, the more you gain. Research also suggests that learning a foreign language may help protect against some age-related conditions, such as dementia.

If you would like English to become a true second language for you, you can get there at any age. Want support on the way? I'm happy to help with practical, personal coaching.

Bibliography

• •Norton, B., Language and identity. In: N. Hornberger and S. McKay (eds.), Sociolinguistics and language education. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
• •Ramírez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S. D., Benet-Martínez, V., Potter, J. P., Pennebaker, J. W., Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame switching. Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006), 99-120.
• •Tarnopolsky, O., Kozhushko, S., Kliuchnyk, R., Storozhuk, S., Secondary language personality and principled pragmatism in developing that personality in foreign language education at tertiary linguistic schools. Cogent Education, 8:1.