Does Your Language Change You?

The other day, I was chatting to a friend when our conversation drifted onto something I’d never really stopped to think about before.

Do you become a different person depending on the language you’re speaking?

The more we talked, the more examples we came up with. My friend told me about a woman she knew who was an absolute powerhouse in English, despite it not being her native language. Confident, outspoken and full of authority. Yet the moment she switched back to Spanish, her mother tongue, she became noticeably quieter and more reserved.

We both agreed that this strange phenomenon seemed to exist.

What we couldn’t work out was why.

At first, I assumed the explanation was fairly straightforward. Perhaps we simply feel more comfortable expressing ourselves in our native language. When we’re speaking a foreign language, we’re busy translating, searching for words and worrying about making mistakes, so naturally we become a little more cautious.

But my friend’s story didn’t fit that theory at all. If anything, she seemed more confident in her second language than in her first. That conversation stayed with me long after we’d finished our talk, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

I started thinking about my own children.

My daughter was born in Italy but started school after we had moved to France. At home we spoke mostly English, but suddenly she found herself surrounded by children speaking a language she didn’t understand. She was only three years old, yet she somehow found a way to communicate without words. She pulled funny faces, acted things out and gesticulated wildly until everyone somehow understood what she meant. Unsurprisingly, the other children thought she was hilarious. Her little performances became part of her personality and how she dealt with life from then on.

My son, however, dealt with the situation rather differently. When he was the same age growing up in Italy, he had far less patience with not understanding what was going on. Whenever he felt overwhelmed or confused, he’d simply roar like a dinosaur to communicate. This strategy had the remarkable effect of convincing quite a few children to keep their distance.

Thinking about them both adapting to exactly the same situation in completely different ways made me wonder whether language does more than simply change the words we use.

Perhaps it changes the version of ourselves that the world gets to meet.

It turns out psychologists have long observed something similar. They call part of this phenomenon frame switching—the idea that multilingual people often think, feel or behave slightly differently depending on the language they’re speaking. Each language carries with it a cultural framework, subtly influencing the way we express ourselves and interact with others.

Once I started reading about it, I realised just how many people recognised themselves in this idea. Some of my aquaintances described becoming more direct in one language and more diplomatic in another. Other friends felt funnier, louder or more confident depending on the language they were speaking. Some even noticed they gestured differently, used a different tone of voice or found themselves expressing emotions they would normally keep hidden.

It’s almost as though each language unlocks a different social script.

The more I thought about it, the more I began mentally flicking through the languages in my own life.

In English, I’m definitely funnier than I am in Italian, French or German. Part of that is undoubtedly because English is my native language and my vocabulary is richer. I don’t have to search for the right word or wonder whether a joke will translate. But I don’t think that’s the whole story.

I simply feel funnier in English. My sense of humour is deeply rooted in British sarcasm, dry wit and cultural references that have been part of my life since childhood. When I speak English, those things come naturally. They’re effortless. In another language, they’re still there—but they don’t always find their way to the surface.

Italian brings out a different side of me.

Perhaps it’s because it’s the language in which I met my husband. Whatever the reason, I find it easier to express affection in Italian than I ever do in English. Whispering ti amo somehow feels more natural than saying I love you. The words mean exactly the same thing, yet for me they don’t always carry quite the same feeling.

French is different again.

It’s the language of work and navigating everyday life. When I speak French, I often notice that I’m slightly more measured and formal than I am in English. Whether that’s because of the language itself or simply because most of my French conversations happen in professional situations, I honestly don’t know.

And then there’s German.

Whenever I speak German, I can’t help feeling a little bit like my eleven-year-old self again. It’s the language of childhood adventures, first friendships and discovering what it meant to be the new girl in a foreign country. Certain words and expressions instantly transport me back to classrooms, playgrounds and memories I hadn’t thought about in years.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps we don’t simply learn new languages. We learn new ways of interacting with the world through them.

Every language introduces us to different people, different customs and different expectations. We adjust without even noticing. We learn what is considered polite, humorous, affectionate or appropriate, and little by little those behaviours become attached to the language itself.

Maybe that’s why so many multilingual people feel slightly different depending on the language they’re speaking. Not because they’re pretending to be someone else. But because each language invites a different part of their personality to step forward. And perhaps that’s one of the greatest gifts of speaking more than one language. You don’t become a different person.

You simply discover that there was always more than one side of you waiting to be expressed.

 

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