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I want to tell you about an experiment before wedo anything else.
Go on.
A group of researchers invited people who spoketwo languages fluently.
And they gave them a personality test.
A normal one.
A standard one. The kind that measures howoutgoing you are. How agreeable. How organized.
And?
And then they gave them the same test again.
Same people. Same questions.
The same week?
In one of their studies. The same session.
So the results were identical.
The results were not identical.
What was different?
One version of the test was in Spanish. The otherwas in English.
And that changed the answers.
That changed the answers.
In that study, the same people answered twice inone session.
Some of their answers were different.
Welcome to Your English Toolbox.
The podcast that trains your English while youlive your real life.
I am Martin.
And I am Julia.
Today we are exploring a feeling many Englishlearners recognize.
Sometimes it sounds like a complaint.
In English, I am not myself.
In my language, I am funny.
In English, I am boring.
I have a personality. And it does not fit throughmy English.
And every time somebody tells us that, the easyanswer is, keep studying, it will come.
That answer is not wrong.
It is not wrong, but it is not the whole truth.
Because what you are describing is real.
People have studied experiences like this, andthey have some interesting ideas.
Let us go back to the study, because I want ourfriends to know it is serious work.
It was published in 2006 in a journal ofpersonality research
by a team led by a researcher called NairanRamirez Esparza.
And the test?
The Big Five.
Forty-four questions.
It is one widely used personality questionnaire inpsychology.
03:02
And the participants?
Highly fluent Spanish-English bilinguals in theUnited States and in Mexico.
And the result held up?
That is the important part.
They studied three separate groups of bilingualpeople.
A similar pattern appeared in all three groups.
In two groups, the tests were at least a weekapart.
Which traits changed?
Three of their scores changed on average.
That does not mean every person changed in thesame way.
How outgoing people were.
How agreeable.
And how conscientious, which means roughly howorganized and dutiful.
And before anybody says it?
Say it.
Maybe the Spanish translation of the test was justbadly worded.
They checked.
Their analyses did not find evidence that thepattern was explained by translation
or unusual individual questions.
So what is actually happening?
This is where it gets interesting becauseresearchers have a possible explanation.
People assume you have two personalities.
And you do not.
You are one person, but different situations canbring different parts of you forward.
Explain a frame.
A frame is the whole invisible set of rules abouthow people behave in a situation.
How close you stand.
How loud you are.
Whether you interrupt.
Whether you say what you think immediately or wrapit in three polite sentences first.
And language can be one of those signals.
Yes.
Language, culture, and the situation around us canall play a part.
The mix can be different for each person.
So changing language might bring a different frameto mind.
It might, but language alone does not explaineveryone's experience.
Researchers call this possible process culturalframe switching.
We also explored a related feeling in episode 32.
Today we are returning to it with a closer look atthe research.
And here is the sentence I want you to keep.
You are not being fake in one of your languages.
You may find it easier to show different parts ofyourself in different situations.
Now I want to make this concrete, because this isstill abstract.
06:00
Let me tell you about Camila.
Invented?
Invented from several real people.
Camila is from Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and sheis an engineer in Dublin.
She has been there four years.
Her English is excellent.
Technically excellent?
Technically excellent.
She writes reports that her manager barely edits.
And how do her colleagues describe her?
This is the whole episode in one word.
Quiet.
Quiet.
In her performance review, somebody wrote that sheshould contribute more in meetings.
And how do her friends in Brazil describe her?
Her oldest friend describes her as the one whonever lets anybody else finish a sentence.
The same woman.
The same woman.
In the same month.
And the painful part is she believes the Dublinversion.
That is the painful part.
She has started to think of herself as a quietperson who used to be loud.
And she is not.
She is the same person in both places.
The language, the workplace, and the people aroundher may all affect how easily she joins in.
And this is the moment to separate two things thatget confused.
Because they are not the same problem.
Go on.
One is vocabulary.
You do not have the word.
That may be a vocabulary problem and learninguseful words can help.
And the other?
The other is timing.
Humor is timing.
Interrupting politely is timing.
Knowing when a group is about to change subjectand getting in before it does.
And that is not in a vocabulary list.
A vocabulary list alone cannot teach you everypart of a conversation.
That is why people with very high English stillfeel like a smaller version of themselves.
So even when you know the words, joining in canstill be hard.
Yes, timing, confidence, and the people around youcan all matter.
Right. Now tell them the strange part.
09:07
Because there is something here that works intheir favor.
There is, and almost nobody knows it.
A different language can sometimes change the waypeople respond to a decision.
Say that again.
In some experiments, people made different choicesin a foreign language.
Different does not automatically mean better.
Who found this?
A line of research from the laboratory of BoazKisar at the University of Chicago,
with Albert Costa in Barcelona, and others.
And what did they find?
In some experiments, people responded differentlyto risks and to the way choices were presented.
The result depends on the task.
It does not prove that every decision in a foreignlanguage is more rational.
And the strongest one?
One result is uncomfortable.
In one experiment, people imagined pushing oneperson to save five.
And?
18% said yes in their first language.
44% said yes in a foreign language.
That is one experiment, not a rule abouteverybody.
More than twice.
More than twice.
Why?
One possible explanation is psychologicaldistance.
Researchers are still debating how the effectworks.
Explain it simply.
Imagine learning your first language at home, withthe people around you.
And the second one?
Perhaps you first met it in a classroom.
So words might not carry the same weight.
They might feel different because of theexperiences you associate with them.
But people learn languages in many different ways.
And that distance makes you colder.
It may create a little distance for some people.
That does not mean it always makes a decisionclearer.
Now, I want to be careful here.
And this matters.
Please be careful.
These are laboratory studies.
The researchers themselves warn against takingthem too far into real life.
So we are not saying go and make your bigdecisions in English.
We are not saying that.
If an email feels easier to write in English, thatexperience is worth noticing.
Even if we cannot know exactly why it feelseasier.
Exactly.
Your own history and the situation may matter too.
Can we talk about love and swearing?
12:03
I was waiting for you to ask.
Because this is the part everybody recognizes.
Here it is.
For some people, strong words can feel differentin a second language.
A swear word might feel less powerful in English.
It might.
But that will not be true for everyone.
And a word in your first language.
It may carry memories and feelings that theEnglish word does not.
And the opposite is also true.
The opposite can happen too.
For some people, I love you may be easier to sayin one language than another.
Because each version may carry a differenthistory.
Exactly.
For someone else, the English words may feel justas powerful.
And is that bad?
It is both.
Sometimes the lightness is a loss.
And sometimes the lightness is exactly what letsyou say something you could never say at home.
So, practical part.
How does our listener get their personality back?
Three things.
And the first one is the most important.
Go on.
Give yourself permission to express yourpersonality in new ways.
Explain the difference.
If you are funny in your language, your jokesdepend on words,
on references, on a rhythm that only exists there.
A direct translation may not have the same effect.
So what do you do instead?
You steal.
Steal?
Find two or three people in English whose way oftalking you like.
At work, on television, anywhere.
And take their phrases.
Not their accent.
Not their accent.
Their moves.
The way they start a story.
The thing they say when they disagree.
And slowly that becomes yours.
We often learn ways of speaking from the peoplearound us.
Over time, we make those expressions our own.
Second thing?
Learn the words that buy you time, not the wordsthat sound clever.
Because a little time can help.
Yes.
A useful phrase can give you a moment to find yourwords.
And if you have a phrase to fill that second.
Then you are not searching in silence.
You are talking while you search.
Give them three.
The thing is, what I mean is, hang on, let methink about that.
And those are not impressive sentences.
They are not impressive at all.
They are the scaffolding that holds yourpersonality up while you build the sentence behind
it.
15:02
And the third thing?
The third thing is honesty.
And you may not like it.
Tell them anyway.
Finding your voice can take time.
The journey is different for everyone.
And there is no fixed deadline.
That is not very encouraging.
It is more encouraging than the alternative whichis believing you are failing.
Because if you think it closes next month.
Then every month it does not close feels like yourfault.
And it is not your fault.
It is one possible part of learning to expressyourself in a second language.
Write three sentences and these are rescuesentences.
For the exact moment you feel like somebody else.
Listen and repeat in the pause.
Sentence one, which turns the problem into a jokeyou control.
To be honest, I am much funnier in my ownlanguage.
Sentence two, for the second you need.
Hang on, I am translating a joke.
And sentence three, the most useful sentence inthis whole episode.
That came out wrong.
What I meant was.
All three again.
To be honest, I am much funnier in my ownlanguage.
Hang on, I am translating a joke.
That came out wrong.
What I meant was.
Notice what the first one does.
It tells the room that there is more of you thanthey are currently seeing.
It can also help people understand how you feel.
And the third one is the one that savesrelationships.
Because sometimes in any language things come outwrong.
And most people just let the wrong version standthere.
Do not let it stand there.
Say it came out wrong and say it again.
And our sentence of the day.
Ready?
You are not a worse person in English.
You are a younger one.
You are not a worse person in English.
You are a younger one.
One more time with us.
You are not a worse person in English.
You are a younger one.
Say why that works because it is doing somethingprecise.
Think of that as a metaphor, not a scientificmeasurement.
Camilla has lived in Dublin for four years.
That does not tell us when she started learningEnglish.
18:01
But it reminds us that expressing ourselves in anew setting can take practice.
They say give it time.
Give it time and give it conversations.
So here is what to do with this week.
One thing.
If you catch yourself calling your English self aworse person, pause.
Boring, stupid, not me.
You could replace that thought with a kinder one.
Your English voice is still growing.
And if you want a second thing.
Borrow one phrase from somebody whose way oftalking you like.
One phrase.
Use it three times this week until it stopsfeeling borrowed.
Everything from today, the transcript, thevocabulary, and the three rescue sentences
is waiting for you at yourenglishtoolbox.com.
With translations, flashcards, and downloadablePDFs completely free.
Thank you for spending this time with us.
And whoever you are in English.
Give them a few more years.
See you in the next one.
Bye.
