Bilinguals Are Kinda Bipolar, Says Study
A new study says bilingual people alter their personalities depending on which language they’re speaking. Totally true. When we speak Spanish, we automatically shift to “nervous our abuelita is going to ask us why we don’t move back to Miami.” While this unconscious shift is probably not news to most bicultural people, the study is pretty interesting in what it suggests about the relationship between the perception of women and the language they speak:
The researchers said the women classified themselves as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English.
“In the Spanish-language sessions, informants perceived females as more self-sufficient and extroverted,” they said.
In one of the studies, a group of bilingual U.S. Hispanic women viewed advertisements that featured women in different scenarios. The participants saw the ads in one language - English or Spanish - and then, six months later, they viewed the same ads in the other language.
Their perceptions of themselves and of the women in the ads shifted depending on the language.
“One respondent, for example, saw an ad’s main character as a risk-taking, independent woman in the Spanish version of the ad, but as a hopeless, lonely, confused woman in the English version,” said the researchers.
Do you agree? We tend to jump from being more self-conscious when speaking in Spanish because, well, we’re afraid of mixing up verb tenses, and more assertive because we tend to take on a lot of Cuban entitlement bravado when speaking our mother tongue.
Of course, we’ve also been accused of actually being bipolar when speaking English, so who knows. You stupid fuck.
Switching languages can also switch personality: study [Reuters]
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Well, I agree with this one. To a point. But I guess a lot of factors are very important here, including what is one’s dominant or first language, what kind of Latin American or Caribbean brand of Spanish one speaks, whether one is an immigrant or US born, etc. I would think the results of the study would hold true for immigrants for whom English is a second language that they learned later in life, or at least not in childhood. Speaking Spanish with relatives and friends is a very different situation than speaking English at work or in other social situations. And maybe these women had negative experiences associated with English language environments. I am making a lot of assumptions here, but I would surmise that an immigrant who is mostly spanish-dominant would have stronger relationships and feel more comfortable with other Spanish-speaking people. And anyway, this is just another variant of “I speak proper Spanish/English/whatever with my friends and acquaintances but I shift to the accent of my childhood when speaking with family”. That always happens. A lot. Have a Colombian or Dominican friend whose Spanish gets peppered with their native accents and idiomatic expressions when they speak with their mom on the phone? Know a Southern transplant whose speech takes on a familiar down home twang when talking to their siblings or relatives? Same thing, sort of.
Posted by wha | June 24, 2008
Then there is the English dominant Spanish speakers who were born in the U.S. or came very young. I would guess that many of these people are mostly comfortable with kitchen spanish but would have a harder time speaking it in more formal situations.
I think your (or your families) country of origin and social level you occupied there also has a lot to do with type of personality you assume in a Spanish. A high falutin Fresa from Mexico or a porteño from Argentina can be cocky and arrogant which would be a noticeable contrast from say rural folk from Latin America.
Posted by zaperoko | June 25, 2008
True, i am much more assertive in spanish, i was born in the u.s. and am english dominant, but spanish is more fun to speak, and its not kitchen spanish, i can actually speak perfectly in all situations, i wonder what happens with trilingual people?!? i speak french as well, but only to my grand-mère in mexico. :/
Posted by lolai | June 25, 2008