How to Find Your Foreign Language Spirit Guide

You can probably see where I’m going with this:

• Altering our speech patterns means altering our identities
• Language-learning means altering our speech patterns
• Language learning means altering our identities

Now to be clear – I’m not saying that learning a second language will completely transform the fabric of your being, but it WILL change you.  

Anyone who speaks more than one language fluently will agree that you feel slightly “different” when you’re speaking different languages.  

If you’re monolingual yourself but have friends who are multi-lingual, watch them closely and see if you notice any differences in their mannerisms when they speak the other languages. I know personally that my body language is different for each language I speak.  

The reason for this is because our personal identities are made up of fragments of other people’s identities, and as mentioned before, identity is largely transmitted linguistically.  

Our parents, older siblings, most admired friends and favorite TV personalities all say and do things that we mimic without even realizing it.  You can think of these little elements as Lego pieces.  We take little Lego pieces from their speech and personality and then add them to our own sets.

Any single personality trait, expression or twang we have, we got from somebody else.  It’s not the individual lego pieces that make us unique but rather the way we put them all together (sorry – I suck at analogies)

So the question you must ask yourself as an adult second language learner is this: whose Lego Set are you gonna poach from?

On a quick side note: I strongly disagree with the claim that children are naturally better language learners than adults.  They’re not advantaged per se, it’s just that adults have certain roadblocks which, if not circumvented, can seriously inhibit their acquisition.  

 

One of these roadblocks is an unwillingness to stray far from one’s identity, as you must do to truly mimic and master a foreign language. 

 
But this is just a question of accepting and overcoming psychology   Anyone can step out of their comfort zone if they just force themselves to, and the general consensus is that doing so can be a very liberating and rewarding experience.

 

So my advice to anyone who feels “strange” trying to mimic the sounds and accent of a foreign people it to “loosen up, Papi!” Forget about how silly you feel and really try to “get into character“, the way an actor would.

 

In fact, we’ll do a little acting exercise.  Below is an interview clip of Seu Jorge. Even if you don’t speak Portuguese, watch a few minutes of it and try your best to mimic his gestures, presence and voice inflections as closely as possible.  Be sure to really let yourself go and give your best shot.

Now back to my Portuguese man-crush on Seu Jorge.  Whenever I learn a new language, I try to identify the smoothest, most swagged-out male personalities in that language’s culture, then mimic them. 

 

If I’m gonna build a new identity from scratch, I might as well pick the sexiest Lego pieces I can find right?

 

You don’t need to know a word of Portuguese to know that Seu Jorge got swag – you can tell in the first 5 seconds of the São Gonça video by the way he walks in with that all white suit. 

 

By the time he’s through with the song, you’re practically OD’ing on the guy’s coolness.

 

After watching that video, I made a habit of watching interviews of his on Youtube and mimicking his gestures and vocal inflections. At the time, I couldn’t understand that much of what he was saying, but that wasn’t the point.

 

I would learn “meaning” later; the single goal then was to master the sounds and personality encased within those sounds.

 

I am very fluent in Portuguese now but, alas, I can’t really claim that I sound like Seu Jorge.  

 

As much as I try to emulate his swagger, his identity is too far from my own to mimic exactly. He’s simply too cool for me.

 

I mean don’t get me wrong – I can pull off “cool” when I need to. So having to put my Seu Jorge game on every time I speak Portuguese would be cumbersome.

 

During my first stay in Rio, I found some cool dudes that I could more closely identify with to interact with and mimic, and my Portuguese speech patterns and identity came to reflect more of what they did.  

 

After a while, I became so comfortable with my Brazilian identity and the language itself that I no longer had to “get into character,” I was just “being” the Brazilian version of myself.

 

And as a hopeless mimic, my identity and speech patterns in any language are always subject to change. I am currently living in Sao Paulo, where both the accent and general culture are very different from those of Rio.

 

Since being here, I’ve already found a certain character or accent that I can relate to, and now my Portuguese is taking on a new identity.

 

In general, I try to keep an open mind and ear wherever I travel.  My identity is constantly re-shaping with each new language experience I have, and I like to think that with each change I’m becoming a better person…or at least one step closer to being as cool as Seu Jorge.