The Language of Dreams

Language is the foundation of communication, allowing expression through both verbal and non-verbal communication. Language is the foundation of written communication as well. Perhaps language is also the foundation of the subconscious, and of our dreams.

A friend asked me a question the other day that made me pause and contemplate the answer. The question posed to me: “What language do you dream in?”

We write in language; we think it, we speak it, we sing it, we rap it, we shout it, we whisper it. But do we dream in language?

The friend who asked me that question was remembering a time when she met a young man in college from another country. The person was here in the United States as part of an English as a Second Language (ESL) learning language program.   

My friend remembered that, when she asked the gentleman a question, it would take him a few moments to think about his answer before he gave a reply. She said it was almost as if she could see the wheels spinning in his brain, the cogs finding their connections in his brain as he began to formulate an answer.

As she described how it would take him a moment to answer her questions to him, I understood exactly what she meant. It is a complex process when learning a new language. You must hear the question being posed to you, translate the question into your native language in your head, formulate a response to the question, and then translate it into the new language you are learning. This complex process happens before a response is given, before the person opens their mouth to give their answer.

The more exposure you have to a language, the more time you have to devote to learning the language, the faster this process becomes. If you have a gift for learning languages, this process will become an easier process, and will occur more readily. What took a few minutes to understand can evolve into mere seconds. It has been that way for me in my learning Spanish.

As my friend and I began to talk about the question, she asked me how long I have been learning Spanish. It has been seven years since I began to learn Spanish on my own.

My friend then asked me if I can think in Spanish. My answer is yes, I can think in Spanish. This came to me about six months in to learning the language.

There is a quote that comes to mind:

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English.

It means they know another language.”-H. Jackson Brown Jr.

As I began to learn Spanish, there were many opportunities for friends to laugh at my efforts in learning the language. Yet no one ever mocked me when I made mistakes. Instead they showed me what I had gotten wrong and how to do it correctly.

To return to my friend’s original question, I then tried to explain how I see my dreams in my head.

“My dreams are like movies,” I told her. “There are things happening in the movie, and there isn’t always speaking in the movie. If there is speaking in the movie, I would say that it is 95% English.”

Since the original discussion with my friend I have asked other friends this question, friends who speak more than one language. It was fascinating to hear my friends’ responses. Some saw their dreams as movies like do. However, others saw their dreams as paintings, while others saw their dreams in a series of photographs.

As the method of visualizing dreams varied with each person, the languages represented in the dreams varied as well. My favorite response to this question was this:

“I dream with the language of the heart, pure feeling and above all,

the language of love to all the people of this world.”

That brought another twist to the discussion. As the response above shows, there is more than one way to define language.

Looking back, I am grateful to my friend for asking me that question. It was a fascinating conversation that I had never contemplated before.

So now the conversation continues. For everyone reading these words, what is the language of your dreams?

"The Spirit of Flight" by Josephine Wall