Laura Gonzalez, Spring 2009 Assistant Managing Editor
In today’s computer-dominated world, speaking another language seems to be the right way to give anybody an edge, but now experts are saying people might act different when they speak another language.
The Journal of Consumer Research says that people who speak two or more languages might shift their personalities when they switch from one language to the other.
Joyce Noguera, a pre-nursing student at Pierce College who was born in the U.S and speaks Tagalog, agrees with the study.
“Usually when I speak Tagalog, it is different because I am speaking to my parents and older people,” Noguera said. “So, it is a little bit more culture and respect than anything else.”
That is true for some students who are born in the U.S but their parents were born somewhere else and they learn their parents’ language only to communicate with them. In that case, as Noguera explained, it will not be a shift in personality, but rather be a matter of hierarchy.
Another student, Eva Schlachter, who does not speak another language but has a friend who speaks Hebrew, has a similar view on the issue.
“When my friend speaks Hebrew, it is usually when she is around older people so it is a little more formal than when she is talking to her friends,” Schlachter said.
Bilingual people often identify themselves primarily with one language, and it could be that that they show more self-assurance when they are speaking that language.
Such is the case for Pierce-student Oscar Rivera, a Spanish-speaker who learned Arabic in the military.
“I am a little bit more shy when I am speaking Arabic because I don’t master the language very well,” he said.
Individuals who speak another language to communicate with their families might associate that language with the values that they were taught at home. Therefore, when they speak the language they might shift their views according to their home standards.
On the contrary, when individuals speak another language, they have a little bit more freedom to interpret the culture as they see it and as they experience it firsthand, which might be more easy for them to accommodate their own personality into the culture.
Iran-born Mohsta Fard, who speaks Farsi, German and English, listens to the Argentinian-group Los Pinguos in the Great Hall for the Hispanic Heritage Festival Thursday. (Francisco Munoz)