On Multilingualism: What Happens Inside My Brain When I Talk

Jump in with both feet and don’t stop reading this psychological, sometimes vulnerable journey into my multilingual brain until you reach the end. 

A Sample of My Brain’s Stream of Consciousness Thoughts

This was recorded on a train in Italy after having flown from France that morning. You can imagine how my brain was struggling to adjust from French to Italian:

Io stavo in Francia per un mese, et aujourd’hui je suis arrivée in Italia. Ho chiesto un billet de bus dalla femme a la finestra di SitBus per andare a Roma Termini. Ni sé en cuál(es) idioma(s) le pregunté, pero por dicha me entendió.

In questo momento, tengo una mezcla bien grande de idiomas en el cerebro. Lo único de que estoy segura es que cuando hablo español o inglés, hablo solamente un idioma… yo creo. Pero como me he enterado durante el mes pasado en Francia, francés e italiano se parecen más que español y francés o español e italiano.

Unless you read Italian, French, and Spanish, that won’t make any sense to you. The first two sentences are intermixed French and Italian, third Spanish, fourth started in Italian and switched to Spanish, and fifth Spanish.

I’ve never let myself just type in whatever language comes out, even when it changes mid sentence. That was an interesting exercise for me.

So was writing this post. Here goes nothing…

How Many Words Do We Know?

I am not average when it comes to language, since I’ve studied (and learned to speak to some degree) five languages besides my mother tongue.

They say the average, monolingual English-speaking adult knows about 20,000-30,000 words (not that they use them all daily). You can test yourself here.

That only accounts for one language. What happens when you throw another language into the mix? And even if you do, that still only accounts for two languages. In my case, and in the case of other polyglots, how does adding upwards of three or four languages into the mix affect the number of words we know and use?

Does it mean that number triples or quadruples? Or does that number stay the same, which would mean that someone like me has fewer words within each language in our everyday vocabulary? Or better yet, am I reaching into the percentage of our brains that generally go unused? (#superwoman?)

My answer without research:

I believe that the introduction of several other languages in my brain has had a negative affect on my English vocabulary and ability to recall words.

In other words (#punny? no?), to me it feels like the total number of words that I know is probably more than average, yet I have six languages floating around in there instead of one, which brings the amount of words I know in English way down.

As a writer, this makes me question myself. I believe my writing would be a whole lot better if I wasn’t multilingual. However, I also believe I am more creative with my words and the way I phrase ideas because I am a traveling multilingual. #silverlining

Example:

My answer with research:

I have read several articles about this topic on Psychology Today (#nerdalert). One specifically explains that studies done on bilingual children show that they have the same total number of words as monolingual children, but test lower than monolingual children when it comes to the amount of words they know within one language. #byelingual

Out of curiosity, I took the English vocabulary test, and after answering honestly, my result was only 19,000 words. That is below the 20,000-30,000 average of a monolingual English-speaking adult (which, in fairness, we know I am not).

This further confirms that while the total number of words in our vocabularies may be similar, my total number is made up of words from several other languages on top of English.

This explains a lot.

The Complexities of Having Multiple Languages in My Brain

You know that thing we call “communicating,” when you talk and another person talks back to you, and you understand one another? Yeah that. That’s hard sometimes.

Here are some examples of what happens in my brain as I speak (and think), and which languages these apply to:

Example 1: “On Fire”

Sometimes I listen to myself speak any language I haven’t spoken for a while, and words fly out of my mouth that my brain didn’t even know I remembered. In Spanish, native speakers are astonished to learn that I am not a native speaker, they tell me my accent is perfect, they mistake me for being a local. #iamsuperwoman

Example 2: “Please Stand By”

Other times I stop mid-sentence, and my brain flips like a rolodex through up to six languages before I catch the right word for the appropriate language that I’m trying to communicate through in the present moment. #justkeepsearching #justkeepsearching

This mostly happens in English.

Example 3: “So Much For That”

Often times, the word just doesn’t come at all. Instead, I fumble around it using the speech like that of a 3-year old to try to explain myself, because at that point my brain has exposed itself to its many language files and cannot re-focus easily. These are not difficult words, they are everyday words that just disappear on me. #shakingmyhead

This mostly happens in English.

Example 4: “Deer In Headlights”

Sometimes, if a thought or word comes to me in a language other than that which I’m speaking at the moment, my brain abruptly stops and cannot move forward. The train of thought has completely switched tracks, continuing in the other language, leaving me and whoever I’m talking to behind, with no hope of recovery. This also causes 3-year old speech and fumbling.

I lose entire conversations this way because my brain struggles to readjust to anything that makes sense, not to mention where I was heading on the original track in the first place. This is one of the reasons I love speaking with other bilingual/multilingual people, because I can use whichever language comes up. #blinkblink

This mostly happens in English when my brain switches to Spanish, or when trying to switch from one romance language to another.

Example 5: “Spanish in English”

This one is all about syntax and phrases or expressions. In case you forget sixth-grade English, syntax is the way that words are arranged to create well-formed sentences (think subject, verb, noun, etc.). Syntax varies greatly from language to language.

In syntax, it’s moving things around in a sentence and saying it in a way that isn’t correct to that language, but may be correct in another. For example, “Open me the door.” Obviously, in English, the correct way of saying this is “Open the door for me.” But in Spanish, you say “Ábreme la puerta,” or when translated literally, “Open me the door.” It doesn’t sound odd in Spanish, it’s totally normal the way it’s set up and it makes sense. It only sounds odd in English because the syntax is Picassoed. But, these things happen.

In expressions and phrases, it’s being able to express something a certain way in one language, which does not have a direct translation or is a completely different phrase in another language. For example, “con razón” literally means “with reason” in Spanish, but think about it – that doesn’t really mean much to you in English, right? It’s “no wonder” that it doesn’t, because it loosely means “no wonder” in English, or a version of “of course” or “that makes sense.” You just don’t use “with reason” in English, except that I do, and my brain breaks.

Another example: “The boy is smart, but very smart.” This just doesn’t work in English, but in Spanish, “El niño es inteligente, pero muy inteligente,” or simply, “El niño es muy pero muy inteligente” (“very but very”) – it’s a way of emphasizing something.

Phrases like, “No tengo ganas,” or, “me da miedo,” are harder to translate directly into English because they use completely different words to describe the same idea. “No tengo ganas,” means, “I don’t feel like it,” but translated literally it would say, “I don’t have the desire.” “Do you have the desire to get a kebab with me?” Yeah that doesn’t work. One uses the verb “have” and the other uses the verb “feel,” and the brain must know the difference or risk sounding like a sixteenth century princess.

“Me da miedo” means “It scares me,” but translated literally it would say, “It gives me fear,” which doesn’t work. One uses the verb “give” and the other uses the verb “scare” to say the same thing. Mixing these up (and often getting stuck in the process) is a common blunder, and I always catch these mistakes when I speak with bilingual people. It makes me feel right at home to hear someone else say something Spanish in English. Shout out to @fordquarterman.

In short, it’s inserting English words into Spanish expressions, phrases, or syntax because the brain is thinking in Spanish but trying to accomplish that “communication” thing in English. It doesn’t work. #bilingualblunders

This mostly happens with Spanish in English.

Language Files Inside My Brain

When I think about where all this lives in my brain, I see my language files organized like this (I’m very visual):

File A: English. I know English the best, it is my mother tongue. I can always recall this language, even if words sometimes fail me. The words that fail me in English, however, are words that I do know, but simply can’t recall.

I mostly think in English, unless I’m deeply immersed in a place or conversation in another language.

File B: Español. I know Spanish the best out of all the other languages I’ve learned. As my Spanish/French roommate in France put it just last week, even in the midst of immersing myself in French, “Tu español es perfecto, de puta madre.” It is rare that I get caught in other languages when I’m speaking Spanish. I find that most of the time if I get stuck in Spanish, it’s simply because I don’t know a word, not that it comes to me first in another language or that I can’t recall it. What’s very interesting is this seems more “pure” to me than the way I speak English, which is more of a crapshoot of language. Just an observation.

File C: Italian, French, Portuguese, German, aka “all the other languages I’ve studied.” These languages are ranked in order of confidence in speaking (at the moment of publishing). When trying to speak any one of these, my brain doesn’t necessarily recognize the difference in language files, and it has a tendency to pull the word I need from whatever language is jumping up and saying, “pick me!” This is super annoying, because (unless it’s German) sometimes my brain can’t differentiate which language it comes from. I think it’s because my brain clumps these all together in a “we’re still learning this” file. Or something.

Breaking Down File C

The only language from File C that I consider myself fluent in at the moment is Italian. I lived in Italy for a year when I first learned it, 13 years ago (dio mio!), and I’ve lived there 2 more times for a total of 5 more months since then. I’m here now and it’s coming back easily, even if I can’t seem to shake the damn automatic “oui” response yet. (It’s so embarrassing, I’m not even French!)

With Italian, I built a solid enough foundation that it has stuck with me, even when I don’t speak it for a while.

With both Portuguese and French, I only studied them for one month each. I consider myself at a conversational/get by level in both.

Portuguese is so incredibly similar to Spanish, that as long as I speak Spanish, I am absolutely confident that I will be able to speak Portuguese, even if it takes me a few days to get back into it.

French is my most recent study, so right now it is sticking with me and trying to come out even though I’m back in Italy. French and Italian are much more similar than I ever realized. Many words that are dissimilar between Spanish and French are similar between French and Italian. But French and Portuguese have a closer syntax. This is helpful to understand easier and learn faster, but also super difficult to differentiate between.

The key about Portuguese and French is that because I have spent time living in both languages, I am confident that at least when I do know what I’m saying, I know how to say it. I’m not afraid to have conversations, because my foundation does exist, even if I have to dig for it under layers of other languages. I’m not guessing at every single word wondering if people actually say these things. These words come from experience, so I can say them with confidence once I find them in my brain.

I am not conversational with German, because I’ve never immersed myself in it (but that’s next on my list!). With German I sort of just string words that I know together, although I am absolutely confident that I know enough German to get by when I need to.

My Other Language Phenomenons

“Random Access Vocab”

I have a superpower (read: entertaining sometimes, but mostly embarrassing “skill”) that I call my “Random Access Vocab.” This is a phenomenon that I don’t have control over. It’s when I use a random word in a sentence that has absolutely no place in that context. Usually it’s a completely random noun that takes the place of the would-be-correct noun, rendering the sentence… like… from Mars. For example, “Give me the keys to the vacuum,” or, “I have a Monday for you.” Yeah…

This only happens in English.

“Talking Sideways”

There’s also the phenomenon of “talking sideways,” as my mom calls it. It’s like a lateral movement of parts of words within a sentence. Only parts of words, not entire words themselves. Somehow, I do this perfectly every time, which fascinates me. Sometimes I even stop and say, “Hey that was a good one!” I don’t miss letters, I just move them from one part of a word to a corresponding and equally displaced part of another word somewhere else in the sentence.

A favorite recent example of this is “garidge frage,” which is, of course, garage fridge. “Put it in the garidge frage.” The most impressive instances are when multiple words come out in between the two dissected words. It truly fascinates me.

This mostly happens in English, but has also happened in Spanish.

On Dreaming in Other Languages

They say that dreaming in another language is a sign of fluency. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s just not true. At least, not for me. I have dreamt in both German and French before, more than once, and I’m not fluent in either. What say you to that?

It is not uncommon for me to dream in other languages. I do it on a regular basis, mostly with Spanish, but I also travel constantly and I’m immersed in foreign languages all the time.

When I studied abroad in France, I had a strange night during my first week where I was drifting in and out of a dream that was in French, and I could see French words floating all around me. It was a proper nightmare and left me stressed out. It wasn’t the first time I had dreamt in French, and I was still far from fluent at that time. In fact, you could even say I was drowning in French. Maybe that’s what my dream was trying to tell me. “Run away! Save yourself!” (French is hard.)

On Accents

I truly believe that mastering an accent, or at least giving it your absolute best effort, is essential to learning a foreign language and not sounding ignorant.

Seriously, if you’re going to make the effort to learn a language, make the effort to get the accent right. It matters.

This is why I work so hard on my accents, and it’s also why I busted my students’ balls all the time when I used to teach Spanish in Montana. I was like the old-fashioned teacher with the ruler, and I wasn’t afraid to “smack” you if your “Americanness” was showing too much. The more you try, the better you sound, even if it feels funny to you. Trust me.

Accents are important. In French, accent is the difference between “wind (vent),” “wine (vin),” and “twenty (vingt).” They might all look different, but they sound almost the same. Yeah, good luck. It’s also the difference between “chat” and “chatte” but we won’t get into that here.

I am a sponge when it comes to accents. When I started really speaking Spanish in 2003 in Costa Rica, my accent was puro tico. I picked up that accent like a native and was complimented as such. Throughout the years, that accent has added bits of several other native-sounding accents, which leaves Spanish speakers hopelessly puzzled about my origin, but often guessing “somewhere in Central America.” One person even said, “When you talk, I see palm trees…” (that might be my favorite!)

When I lived in Argentina, I picked up a lot of the intonation, which is ultimately derived from Italian influence. Argentinians sound like they’re speaking Spanish in an Italian accent, and I love it. I picked this up naturally and still talk like this in Spanish today (on top of palm trees and leaving out the occasional “s” like a good chilena).

I’ve just arrived back in Italy, where I also happen to speak the language. The part I am loving the most is that while I used to “speak Italian with a Spanish accent,” my “Spanish accent” has changed since then and now has these Argentinian intonations, which, come full circle, are ultimately… Italian.

MAGIC.

“Jackese”

My family and closest friends also have a superpower. They can understand me even when my linguistic complexities take over (they have lots of years of immersion practice).

My mom lovingly (I think) refers to my language as “Jackese.” Somehow, they still think I’m eloquent and a great writer, too, so I’ll take it. It’s just a good thing I get to edit my published content…

On Multilingualism

I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey into the language functions of my brain. I also hope you don’t think I’m “crazy” after having read this, but… maybe it comes with the multilingual territory. And if it does, then I choose “crazy.”

I love language. I love being multilingual, despite the complexities of the territory. I love being able to travel all over Europe and South America and not lean on anyone for interpretation. I love being able to speak to someone in their native language, because it changes everything.

I know this because I am also different when I get to speak my native tongue. I am a very expressive person, and in English I have the tools (roughly 19,000 of them) to be the most me, even though I can also be completely in my element speaking other languages as well. Speaking with others in their native language allows them to be the most them, real people, with real stories, just like me.

I also love the quizzical look I get from locals when they recognize an accent and can’t place my origin, begging the question, “Where are you from?” or simply, “You’re not Italian?” (or wherever I am).

No, in fact, I’m from the United States, a multilingual “American,” which is 100% the most surprising answer I can give. Unfortunately, very few of us exist.

I’m so glad I said yes and continue saying yes to language. Life is more fun when you’re multilingual. Life is more lived when you’re multilingual.

One last thing, if you took the vocab test I linked to above, please comment and tell me what your results are and tell me if you’re mono or multi-lingual, I’d love to know!