Dreaming and languages

[nohorn]

I am not bilingual (I was raised in a German speaking family). We were told to be American, plus it was in the middle of WWII. Anyway, do people dream in their first language? If you know several langues do they intermingle in the mind, and have dreams in any one specific language? Just wondering.

[Rodge2]

Years ago I did Camp America - working at a camp in the wilds of Nevada - it was fantastic BTW and I would recommend it to anyone. Anyway, I shared a large platform tent with the sailing instructors (I was the windsurfing instructor). One of them was German, although her English was excellent. She used to suffer from extremely loud nightmares in which someone appeared to be chasing her and she would be screaming - loud enough that people in buildings nearby could hear her. She would wake me up with it every night. It was so bad that the lifeguard moved out because she was so scared. The other sailing instructor needless to say slept through it every night. Anyway I digress, at the time I found it interesting that she would always be screaming in English. So she obviously didn't dream in her 1st language.

[20SilkCut]

Was just talking to a friend about this recently and he (half french/half german) reports that he dreams mostly in English but does have a lot of dreams in french too...just depends on the dream i guess

[nohorn]

That was interesting about the person whose first language was German but was shouting out in English. Thanks for both answers, very interesting.

[MarkRae]

Depends what / whom I'm dreaming about. Mainly in English, sometimes in French, occasionally in Gaelic.