Maybe this is fairly rare for most people, but I find that often in dreams, lucid or otherwise, I hear foreign languages, but not in the way one might expect. Last night for example, I experienced some rather grim voice-over in German, whilst looking at an old church building with gothic (I use the term in it’s old fashioned sense) angel statues adorning various alcoves.
Being of semi-German descent, I can speak the language with a fair bit of fluidity, and so it was surprising to me that what I heard made no sense, even if I knew it to be German.
Whilst looking at the building from some high vantage point at night, I heard a deep voice intone: “Komme doctor nausse”, in a booming German accent, which I still attribute to the rather disturbing elements in that dream. Naturaly, those with any grasp of German will know that “komme” refers to arrival, a coming. The second word is in English, as the German word for doctor is Arzt. The final word, nausse (I write it as I would expect it to be written), is pure jibberish, but together with the rest of the sentence, appears to make a great deal of sense to me;
“Comes the doctor soon.”
Even if the grammar may be off, I still am able to understand the sentence clearly, because the meaning of the words, regardless of the manner in which they are expressed is in my subconscious from the first syllable.
Does anyone else find that this pre-existential understanding of nonsense langauges, known or unknown, occurs to them?
I hear some Japanese and Spanish in my dreams on occasion, neither of which I’m fluent in but can always understand in my dreams.
Taking the concept to the extreme, I once dreamt in full C#, HTML, and SQL code for a couple of days. o_O My computer science class had this project and my partner and I weren’t finished. So I kept staying up until 2-3 in the morning for an entire week, in the middle of which I had the dreams. >_< They made me get no sleep.
I just remember once, where some DC’s where talking in what I believe is russian. I had no idea what they were talking and couldn’t even reproduce a single word…
My interpretation is, you are now seeing a doctor. I heard the voice really clear in my head as I read it. I some reason can grasp what people are saying in many different languages, but I can’t communicate the same language back to them. I once had a dream I spoke in Spanish , but I don’t remember what I said.
I don’t think I ever heard anyone speak a foreign language in a dream. I did have one Dream Character who looked like he was drunk. He was mumbling something to me but I couln’t understand a word he said.
I’ve heard several different languages in my dreams before. French and Spanish being the most prominent. Spanish being the most prominent of the two. What’s weird is that, even though I am not fluent in spanish(I can read and write most of the time with slight hinderance), I could understand everything that was being said and spoke myself.
This pre-existential understanding of languages could be related back to the story of Babel found in the bible. Not that I’m trying to push religion on anybody. I’m spiritual but I just look at the bible as a rather old history book. But anywho, it’s an interesting story and definitely relatable to the topic at hand.
You see, it was believed at one time that we all spoke the same language. A “univeral” language, if you will. And we decided to build some structure to celebrate our greatness which is way not cool I think. So the greater consciousness that is The Big Man created several different languages out of nowhere. Then we couldn’t understand each other. And that’s where our many different languages came from.
I believe that when we hear these languages in dreams and are able to understand them it’s just our mind referring to that universal language set in place so long ago. And what we’re hearing and speaking may not be verbatim spanish or french or german etc. But a universal version of those languages. So “nausse” may be a word which isn’t used anymore or possibly known and you may have been hearing some of that old universal language.
I don’t think this is particularly rare, no. I spent one year overseas with a bunch of exchange students, and almost all of us reported dreaming in new languages as we got better at speaking them in real life. You say you’re “fairly” fluent, so you’re obviously not at a native speaker’s level: this would account for it being a bit garbled. The same thing happens to me a lot with Japanese (which is probably at about the same level as your German) - it’s easier to understand a foreign language than it is to speak it. Even though I can understand Japanese fairly well, I make mistakes all the time when speaking. When it’s in a dream, it’s naturally a lot worse, because I can’t think clearly enough to give myself time to think it through and construct a sentence properly. Meanwhile, the plot of the dream is moving forward, and some garbled sentence comes out that mixes in words and verbs I understand, but is grammatically bad and often contains a few nonsense words as well.
Well, that’s typical of dreams in every regard, not just language.
Next LD, try to hear MORE foriegn language. Try to remember it, ask it what language it is in, then, when you wake up, Google translate it. Or better yet, ask the noise itself in your dream what it means!
I’m into parapsychological stuff, & I found something called “Xenoglossy”, which is the putative paranormal phenomenon in which a person is able to speak a language that he or she could not have acquired by natural means. In other words, imagine your friend starts speaking Greek, or Japanese, or Icelandic, totally out of the blue. And this is IRL – no dream. This phenomenon is looked upon as evidence of reincarnation, like the individual somehow “activates” whatever language they spoke in a past life. What do you guys make of that? When I learn to astral project / LD, I’m gonna try to download all sorts of lingos! Learn Japanese…1 hour… done! Learn German…1 hour… done! That would be frikkin sweet!
