Dreaming in Chinese

[Shelley]

This morning I had a dream in Chinese for the first time that I can remember (I may have done so before but not remembered it).

 

It was very simple, i was in a cafe buying tea (earl grey, which is weird cos I much prefer a nice hong cha 红茶) as i was ordering in English some boys dressed in smart English school uniforms came and said "ah there you are" to which I said "哦 你好 你好" then they showed me the menu and asked what does this mean pointing at the numbers written in characters 1, 5 and 10,000,000 to which I replied in Chinese 一  , 五 ,  千万. They started to say thank you in Chinese and then I was woken by my alarm.

 

The point of me sharing this with all of you is: at what point in your learning did you start dreaming in Chinese (however simple) if you ever have?

 

People who are well advance in your studies do you dream in Chinese?

 

In fact does anyone here at any stage of learning dream in Chinese?

 

Do you know if you get right? or can you not tell.

 

Does any one think this has any significance ie: some sort of evidence that it really is sinking and all the learning is paying off or does it just show that my recent renewed efforts with my new improved Pleco on my new tablet and some new text books is making a difference?

 

I am inclined to think its a little of both.

 

Sweet dreams

 

[tooironic]

I've dreamt in Chinese on a number of occasions, but it only started happening after I attained fluency, after about 10 years of learning.

 

My partner tells me I also often talk in Chinese in my sleep. He has no idea what I'm saying though.

[rezaf]

I once had a dream of a ghost sitting beside my bed saying 太好了，我们可以交流。referring to me knowing Chinese. So when I die I make sure that I'm somewhere that I can speak the language.

[Nathan Mao]

Congratulations!

 

I've heard it said that dreaming is an important part of memory. If you don't get enough REM sleep, your brain has more difficulty transferring memories from short term storage to long term storage, and/or accessing memories that are stored.

 

You dream for hours every night, but probably only recall the last few minutes of dreams.  So you may have been dreaming in Chinese before without remembering it.

Still, it is confirmation that your brain is processing Chinese on multiple levels, and confirmation that the part of your brain that is not your active consciousness has recognized that your active brain has decided this is important, so it may as well help you learn it.

 

I first dreamed in Chinese at about the 4th month when I was at DLI.  Since then, I can't remember how many times I've dreamed in Chinese...

 

Another milestone, of a sort, is when someone speaks to you in English and you accidentally answer in Chinese...that indicates you have internalized Chinese as a normal conversation tool.

[Demonic_Duck]

Oddly enough, when my Chinese sucked, I dreamed a few times in Chinese. Most of my dreams were about being in an awkward situation which required using my Chinese to get out of it, yet not having adequate language skills to express myself. I think I even had one of these combined with the classic naked dream, in which I was naked in public in China, and had a perfectly good reason for being so, but I wasn't able to explain to all the nonplussed bystanders what that reason was.

 

Now my Chinese sucks less, I can't recall a recent time I've dreamed in Chinese. To be honest, it seems recently I don't dream much at all, or if I do, I don't remember it in the morning.

[gabbklein]

Although I'm just starting out in Chinese, I've been fluent in Spanish for a decade now. I use it daily, and almost never dream in it. And in some of the few dreams I can remember, the Spanish was incorrect! <shrugs>

 

But the other day while I was walking the dog and thinking of nothing in particular, I glanced at a plant and was surprised that the word 手 popped into my head -- the plant had a very similar shape!

[Melanie1989]

Sounds like i'm talking out my butt (as opposed to...?), but i genuinely had my first ever dream in Chinese last night. I woke up so happy! For the life of me i can't remember what was going on but i know i was speaking Chinese -probably reading a menu actually. Sounds about right.

 

Glad that the general opinion seems to be that it's a good sign. Recently, since a guy on these forums suggested a website to me (memrise), my Chinese has improved significantly!

[li3wei1]

Remember, if there's any Chinese at all in your dream, whether you're speaking or someone else, or it's a sign on a wall or something, it's coming from your head, so you're dreaming in Chinese.

[rezaf]

The funny thing about my Chinese dreams is that I rarely speak it there but the characters in my dreams speak it like native speakers and say lots of complicated things that I can't say. I think deep inside me I know chinese at a high level but my conscious mind just can't reach it. I hope someday they figure out how to release the full potential of our brains.

[Koxinga]

I had my first Chinese-related dream when I was still a beginner, in the Pimsleur phase of learning the language. The previous day I chatted (online) with some Chinese girl who told me she lived in Shenzhen, a city I didn't know much about of back then. Being curious, I read about it a lot that day. That night I dreamed about driving a red convertible from Guangzhou to Hong Kong with a girl next to me in the passenger seat. The officer at the border talked to me in Chinese and the conversation went something like this: 你好. - 你好. - 你去哪兒? And then I wasn't able to remember how to say Hong Kong in Chinese, something similar to what Demonic_Duck said.

 

I remember dreaming in/about Chinese quite a few times. It happens the most after something exciting happens while using Chinese. It also happens a lot when I don't hear/see any Chinese for a while and then suddenly spend the whole day interacting in Chinese.

 

This also applies to a lot of other things in my dreams. If something shocks my brain enough, I feel like it has to be processed during the night, thus dreaming about something related to that out-of-the-ordinary event. Of course, sometimes it just happens out of the blue as well.

 

Olle wrote an interesting article on the topic of dreaming and how it can help you learn Chinese, it's worth a read.

[xuexiansheng]

Every once in a while I'll dream in Chinese. Usually I'll be back in China speaking with a native Chinese and it will feel like I'm speaking perfect Chinese and I'll respond fluently on whatever subject we're talking about. When I wake up I feel 'my Chinese must be really good! I was talking to them so fluently!' but then I realize that of course the 'native speakers' in my head only speak Chinese that I can understand and respond to, since they are a creation of my brain.... then the elation quickly evaporates and I remember I need to study some more.   

[hedwards]

In my experience, dreams like this aren't necessarily a good thing. It seems to be a byproduct of the process that the brain goes through when pruning away and maintaining memory. I might very well be alone in this, but I've noticed that when I'm doing a lot of dreaming that my memory is generally garbage, but when my memory is generally good, I'm not doing a lot of dreaming.

 

REM itself is when most dreams occur, but dreaming can occur in any state of sleep. More likely, this is just a sign that you're spending a lot of time focused on Chinese during the day and likely nothing more.

[DanielW]

I am a Chinese person living in a third-world country. My first language is English and I speak very little Chinese. The Chinese we speak here has such a strong accent that it is considered a dialect of mandarin, not a variant of putonghua. I learnt Chinese in kindergarten and in Grades 1 - 3. I dreamt in Chinese very often when young. However, I would understand almost none of what I heard. Sometimes familiar characters would pop up but most of the time I could understand only snatches of conversation. I would also dream in English. The proportion of dreams in English increased quickly. Pretty soon, most of the dreams were in English.

 

Now, I'm trying to learn my own mother tongue and it is proving extremely difficult ...

[gato]

We all dream. If you can remember your dreams, it most likely means that your sleep is very light and you woke up or came near to an awake right after the point you were dreaming. If you sank into deep sleep after dreaming, then you wouldn't remember what you dreamed.

[Shelley]

Thank you for all your contributions, keep them coming

 

Interesting range of opinions. Overall I am inclined to think that dreaming in Chinese is a good thing, because I think it shows some assimilation on a deeper level .

 

I also felt happy when I woke because of a feeling of accomplishment. This was very encouraging and made me want to open my books as soon as I could and get down to some enjoyable and hard work.

 

Keep dreaming

[hedwards]

@gato, there's no clinical evidence that everybody dreams and there's some evidence that some people just don't dream. The myth got started back in times of yore when people equated REM with dreaming. Sort of like how you look at a dog that's moving its legs during sleep and assume that it's dreaming about chasing the mailman.

 

But, when you're talking about somebody like me that had a total of 5 dreams over the course of nearly 25 years, it's stretching the likelihood a bit to suggest that I simply forgot the over 9,000 nights of dreams and remember only those. It's bad science and at some point they'll firmly establish that it's bad science. Whether or not I dream these days depends mainly on whether or not I want to dream.

 

Anyways, the OP is satisfied with the experience and nobody knows the purpose of dreams anyways, so this is purely academic.

[gato]

But, when you're talking about somebody like me that had a total of 5 dreams over the course of nearly 25 years, it's stretching the likelihood a bit to suggest that I simply forgot the over 9,000 nights of dreams and remember only those.

But you are a deep sleeper, right?

[hedwards]

Not particularly, I just have ADHD and autistic tendencies. So, that particular part of my brain is one that I exercise a lot more control over than normal. I'm not sure that I ever go completely asleep. I'm one of those weird folks that's capable of falling asleep standing up or with my eyes open for quite a few hours.

 

Most people who claim not to dream are really having a recall issue, but there's a small number of folks out there that just don't dream very often. I can dream when I want to, but unless I send the message to my brain that I want to be dreaming, I usually don't.

 

Unfortunately, as far as I know nobody really knows what purpose dreams serve, so it's kind of difficult to establish what's being gained or lost by it. REM is when most dreaming occurs, and I think that's firmly established, but REM itself tends to be less important than deep sleep. Now that you mention it, the only other person I've met who had better natural memory than me was an extremely deep sleeper who would sleep about 5 hours a day, which means very little in the way of REM and probably very little in the way of dreams as well. I wish it would have occurred to me to ask how frequently he dreams.

 

Anyways, I tend to suspect that the reason the OP is dreaming in Chinese is simply a byproduct of spending a ton of time studying Chinese. In college when that sort of thing would happen, I would wind up feeling tired and cheated by the next morning. But, if Shelley feels enthusiastic about it, then that's probably a good thing. There's little evidence to support a conclusion for or against dreams.

[kikosun]

This is a very interesting thread, thanks for sharing everyone. I have never dreamed in chinese as of yet. Maybe if I put more time and stress out more it will happen. I have dreamed about studying for tests before, usually when I'm stressed about an upcoming exam and tend to think about it too much.