I grew up in Germany. Here, it’s normal to learn at least one, mostly two, maybe even three other languages during your schoolyears. In my time – late 90s and 00s, I started learning English in fifth grade, but I know other states sometimes started even earlier. I think nowadays, there are even kindergarten or primary schools that start teaching it. Point is – we learn it pretty early. Because, well, it’s important for us to know English, with it being the world language.

I learned it for a total of nine years before I graduated and switched to university. After that, I didn’t really speak it actively, only used my passive vocabulary to watch series, streams, played games – ah, you know the drill. It was only when I met someone in England that I started talking again. And boy did things and knowledge come back quickly!

How do thoughts change?

Now initially, my primary language I thought of was of course still German. At the beginning, talking was slow. It was more a process of having to translate the sentence in my head, before my mouth would speak the English words. Nothing came instinctively or naturally – everything was very neatly constructed.

And this, if course, made a lot of sense. I mentioned the active and passive vocabulary above. Active words and phrases are the ones you can readily use in speech or writing. Stuff that just comes naturally, without having to think about it. Passive on the other hand is everything you understand and comprehend but not yourself use. The vocabulary of the latter is obviously significant larger – both in your mother tongue as well as second, third, whichever language. You always know more words than you speak. But you can expand your active [Wortschatz]¹ by speaking a language and getting external input – like talking to people or reading books.

At the beginning, my active treasury was horrific. Which explains why my brain took so long to articulate itself. But the more I talked, the more often I said certain words, the more cemented and reliably retrievable they became. Before long, only certain bits of the sentence needed to be thought about. Months passed, and I stopped translating from German to English in my brain before talking altogether.

Now (to answer the actual question), my brain now creates a stupid mix of [Denglisch]². Did you know that only 30%-50% of all people have an inner dialogue? Meaning, they hear themselves think with an inner voice? I am one of them, so I am constantly talking to myself in my mind – speaking my thoughts to myself. For the longest time, I did this exclusively in German. But now, after a handful of years of living in the UK, I feel like it takes whichever word my brain can find first and slaps that into the sentence structure.

Sometimes, it means I am talking the shorter word. Sometimes, whichever I used last. Sometimes, whichever my active vocabulary synapsis connects first. The result is a very unique mix of both languages – but my brain isn’t tripping over itself while doing it. Because by now, as mentioned above, I don’t have to translate things for myself anymore.

Do dreams change?

Honestly, I am not too sure about this, as I usually don’t dream too vividly. But I would just blatantly assume that it is the exact same concept as thinking. Which means, it’s a mix of both and just cherry picking the best phrase or word.

After years of living in the UK and not speaking German on a daily basis, priorities have shifted and I can feel the meaning of an English word. Now this might sound a bit silly, but let’s see if I can explain it. You know when you read or hear a word and you just inherently know and understand? It’s not just a concept, it’s a feeling, an idea, a memory, a connection – your brain knows how to place it. The word is filled with life, not just a construct. Smart people probably have a word for this. English words now do this for me. And as it’s my primary, mostly only way of communicating with people around me, they need to.

Nowadays, what’s spooky, is how my German has changed. I still regularly talk German with my family, of course, but it’s like my brain needs to step on a break, going “hold on a minute, give me a moment, I need to readjust myself.”

Especially grammar – semantic, sentence structure – become difficult. It’s really interest, I should write an article about that, too, sometime.

[Picture by Randy Tarampi – thank you!]

1. “Wortschatz” /WARd-shuts/ – literally translates to word treasure, the German word for vocabulary. Isn’t this beautiful? I always loved that interpretation of all the phrases you know being your own little treasury. ↩︎
2. “Denglisch” /dANG-lish/ – A portmanteau of “Deutsch” (German) and “Englisch” (English) – basically, a muddled up combination of both. ↩︎