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Past lives and foreign languages (merged)

Languages... :) I have always been fascinated by the ability to communicate through words - I have always felt that words carry an inifinite amount of significance, beyond their direct meaning.


I too have always felt a strong pull towards languages other than the one I was born into. Although I feel comfortable with it (naturally!) I've always felt that portuguese words were lacking in - significance - for me. I do not feel that they have that "history" of meaning that comes from associating a word to feelings and situations.


I don't remember not being able to speak english. I remember a pretty book my mother gave me when I was 4. It had lovely illustrations of basic things like a pen, a book, a pencil, the moon, the sun... things like that. Even then, all those words felt familiar to me - it seemed natural that those things were named that way.


Later on I came across the welsh language, which thoroughly fascinated me immediately. Although most will tell you that it is a complicated language with a lot of quirks and traps, it never felt that way to me.


I do belive we never really lose our intimate knowledge of past life languages, even though some of us have easier access to it than others.

Skarphedin wrote:
t is also possible, that people who spoke English some decades/centuries ago, and they have memories from that time, are more likely to be attracted to archaic expressions and Latin words and structures.
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I agree with Skarphedin - it's an interesting point of view! Perhaps that is why I have always been so curious about finding the roots of the words and the structure within? Hmmm.... : angel
 
W.A. HEART said:
I agree with Skarphedin - it's an interesting point of view! Perhaps that is why I have always been so curious about finding the roots of the words and the structure within? Hmmm.... : angel
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Does it refer only to English words, or you try to find the roots in the Portuguise ones as well? However, etymology is fun. Even the materialistic Freud attempted to find deep cultural meaning of words, which he used to (mis)interpret dreams according to the principles of psychoanalysys.


Be honoured for your endurance to learn Welsh, it must be pretty difficult.


Skarphedinn
 
Hello Skarphedin!


Well, my interest in etymology is like a second nature :D - I simply can't accept a word, in whatever language it is, without trying to understand where it came from, why it is the way it is, etc.


And I jump in delight whenever I find unexpected connections between words in different languages - or when I'm able to trace the origin of an expression or word to some distant and forgotten root - how wonderful that the thoughts of the past endure and last in time, even if we are unaware of it!


Thank you - ;) welsh is a language that has its very own logic. For instance, there are no direct words for "yes" or "no". :D


But - if you try to learn it emotionally - it gets fairly easy!
 
W.A. Heart, I liked what you said about learning a language 'emotionally.' I think it is an interesting concept. In my own experience, my first language is English, but I was always drawn to Spanish. I am now fairly proficient in Spanish, but English remains my first language. That having been said, I find it easier to express myself emotionally in Spanish. In English, I have always been rather reserved. it is almost as if my personality changes when speaking Spanish and I am much more outgoing, much more emotionally expressive in Spanish than I ever could be in English. Here in Argentina, I live mainly in Spanish, but I have friends that speak both languages. I notice myself, switching to English almost unconsciously when I want to be very precise and analytical, and reverting to Spanish when I want to be more expressive. I don't know if that makes any sense. I hope it does.


Skarphedin, you also raise an interesting point about knowing older forms of a language. A few years ago, I was going to take a trip to Istanbul and decided to pick up a book and CD to try to learn some basic survival Turkish. While, I did not become fluent at all in the language, I did learn some basic phrases. During the process, I noticed that I found the sound of spoken Turkish to be wonderful and comfortable and indeed beautiful but found the look of the written language to be 'ugly' and somehow wrong. Only latter did I learn that in the 1920s written Turkish changed from using Ottoman Script (letters based upon the Arabic alphabet) to using a modified Roman alphabet. Since then I have looked at examples of Turkish written in the old way and emotionally I see it as matching the beauty I hear in the spoken language. This, among other things, has convinced me that at some point I lived in the Ottoman Empire.
 
Alex :)


It makes absolute sense to me. I find easy to be emotionally expressive in both languages though - especially with "extreme" emotions, like love, hate, fear, joy. It's the little things, the everyday common forms of emotional expression that get me though- all the little words you use to greet people, terms of endearment, all that. In this case, I can absolutely relate to what you said, only in my case, English is my language of the heart. And welsh ;)

Alexnovo said:
Since then I have looked at examples of Turkish written in the old way and emotionally I see it as matching the beauty I hear in the spoken language.
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That is beautiful Alex - yes, exactly what I mean!
 
My first language is Lithuanian, but I started learning English when I was seven or eight years old, so years of learning and usage certainly helped to become fluent in it. However, there's always been an emotional connection with the language. I often think in English and it comes so naturally, that it's only on rare occasions that I realize it. Recently I watched a video on YouTube where an actress does a tour of many different accents, one of which is of L.A. This particular accent is so close to the one I have "in my head" when I practise talking in English alone, though of course when having an actual conversation I immediately switch to my Eastern European one.


I've studied several other languages, though mostly sporadically, but I didn't have that strong connection with any of them. I do like to listen to people speaking Russian for some odd reason, Polish too, which is not that common for people here. I studied Russian for a very short while too and I was quite happy to be able to understand more and even learn to speak a bit myself. There are no actual memories to connect these affinities to past lives though, at least not yet.
 
I understood a foreign language....


Hello all. This may be something or nothing, but I thought it was interesting enough to make a comment about here in the forum.


I recently found a 50 minute video on the internet about an expedition to the volcano that killed Lisbet. I've already watched it once and it did actually trigger a variety of emotions and feelings...and even a very brief new memory where I saw myself being pulled along by Papi on a home made 'sled', either I was sick or injured I don't know which, but I seemed to be unable to walk. Other things I felt while watching the film were recognition of the terrain surrounding the volcano, a lot of sadness, like a longing to go 'home', and also a lot of fear for the safety of the expeditioners.


I decided to download the video and burn it onto a dvd so that I might be able to use it in the future to try and recover more feelings and emotions (and hopefully some more memories too)


The documentary is narrated in Spanish, or Portuguese, I can't speak either language so I don't know which of the two it was, and I don't know if the dialect was South American either. Anyway, getting to the point...I watched the video again last night on my tv, I was very tired and I just sat here slowly drifting off to sleep as I was watching. As I was in that half awake/asleep state, I suddenly became aware that I was beginning to get the gist of what the narrator was saying. My eyes were closed of course, so I wasn't associating anything I could hear from the picture. Remember that in my present life I can barely speak a word of Spanish, only words like "hola" and "que"......which everybody knows.... :D ....but here I was listening to whole sentences and almost 'understanding' what the narrator was saying. I couldn't understand it word for word, it still sounded like a foreign language to me, but I could kind of visualize in my mind what he was talking about as he was saying it. It was a strange kind of experience and it only lasted for several seconds before the awareness of what was happening woke me up again, then like a dream, the memory of it all faded away to nothing.


Does anyone have an opinion on this? Because I can't speak Spanish, I guess I could just as easily have been imagining that I could understand what was being said, but in the context of the film, everything I heard made sense. Either way, it was a strange experience.


Chris - :)
 
Hi ChrisR,


I wonder, since you have the ability to regress and remember that past life in South America, if you were here in the now and just momentarily also drifting into the past.


Deborah had a fascinating narrative about how lives were experienced simultaneously in another post. Maybe you were experiencing the same sort of thing. Just a thought. It's very interesting.
 
Wow Chris! Very exciting feeling!


I know what you mean - about not being sure whether the meaning is actually the one you inferred or not. It happens to me with welsh many times. Anyway, I have been able to figure out if my "hunches" were good or not - by studying the language long and patiently :D Isn't it exciting?


Why don't you start learning Spanish? That is, if it was indeed spanish (I'm not very inclined to think it may have been portuguese - as a spoken language, it sounds totally different from spanish - I would say the sound is more close to russian or romanian (sp.??)).


I hope you enjoy your linguistic adventures!
 
Chris, Understanding a foreign language in the way you described is very interesting. I remember an incident several months ago. I was standing outside a classroom with my classmates waiting to go in. Two of my classmates were having a conversation about some mundane topic (I don't remember exactly what) but one of them was asking a question and the other didn't know the answer. Speaking in Spanish, I interjected the answer. My classmates seemed surprised and one said, "I didn't know you spoke Swedish." It was only at that point that I realized that the two had been talking to each other in Swedish. I had heard and understood the conversation but it never even occurred to me that they were speaking in a language that I do not understand. I have never studied Swedish and do not even know basic phrases in the language. It was very strange.


Like with your experience I did not know what to make of it. I could have been subconsciously picking up on non verbal clues as well as cognates and therefore able to follow the conversation that way. Or perhaps there is some knowledge of the language deep in my mind from a life I have no memory of. (I will say that I have never even had a flash of a memory that I would associate with a life in Sweden).


With your experience, I assume that you watched the video at least once before and read the subtitles so it is therefore possible that you remembered the translation as you listened to the audio again. Even if that is the case though, I think that it is pretty amazing and would show a proficiency in the language far above average and that leads me to believe that there is something worth exploring here. I agree with Welsh at Heart that you should try learning Spanish. I think you may find that it will come easily as you have an obvious connection with a prior life in South America.
 
Alex - that must have been a very strange experience! :eek:


Please let us know if anything - a flash, a memory - of Sweden comes to you!
 
Foreign Languages as a trigger


For some time I have wondered about the ability to understand languages that we have spoken in a past life, but do not speak in this life. There have been a number of threads on this subject, but recently it occurred to me to try a little experiment. I sometimes use audio regressions CDs to explore my past lives. Up and to now, I have used CDs in English and Spanish (the two languages that I speak). It occurred to me that it might be interesting if I attempted to regress using one in a language that I do not speak. Perhaps, I thought, that the hearing the suggestions in such a language would trigger memories of lives I lead when I did speak the language. I had hoped to find a CD in Turkish or Arabic (as I have had flashes of a life in which I spoke those languages). I have yet to find a CD in either of those languages, but still hope to.


Anyway, a friend of mine had a CD in Portuguese. I have never had any memory of a life that I associate with Portugal, Brazil or elsewhere in the Portuguese speaking world, but I decided to try a regression using the CD. I will also note that I do not speak the language in this life, but I can understand some of what is being said when I hear it. There are similarities between it and Spanish so this is not like using a tape in a language that I have zero understanding of. That having been said, I had an interesting experience. First on the language side, I found I understood far more than I thought I would. (In other words, when I hear people speak Portuguese normally I get a basic idea of the big subject and what is going on, but miss a lot of the details. Listening to this tape, I understood a lot more than that. Maybe this is just the result of the fact that these tapes follow a fairly predictable script and secondly like all mediation tapes, the speaker was speaking in a very slow and calming manner making it easier for me to understand.


The second thing is that I did get some very vivid, if brief, memories of a time and place that I have never before recalled. The images were of a woman. Based upon her clothing and the location, I believe she was a nun or member of another religious order. She was working in the fields, tending vegetables on the grounds of what I assume to be a convent. I do not know where or when this was. And while I assume that the nun was me, I am not even 100% sure of that. I am also not sure that it was the fact that I used a Portuguese CD that I got this memory. Who knows. But I will say that as I never expereiced this person before, I wonder if perhaps it was the language that triggered the memories. Any thoughts?


I also have a question, has anyone else tried to use regression CDs in a language that they do not understand in this life? If so, any results?
 
There are some Turkish radio stations here (just click on the number and kbps). And some Arabic radio stations here. I'm curious to know how you get on with those.


I did try it with the Spanish stations, but unfortunately they did nothing for me. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind at the time, or maybe because the South American dialect is slightly different. However I've since found a radio station which broadcasts from the very area where I lived, but I haven't got round to trying that one yet.


Good luck with those :)
 
Alexnovo said:
The second thing is that I did get some very vivid, if brief, memories of a time and place that I have never before recalled. The images were of a woman. Based upon her clothing and the location, I believe she was a nun or member of another religious order. She was working in the fields, tending vegetables on the grounds of what I assume to be a convent. I do not know where or when this was. And while I assume that the nun was me, I am not even 100% sure of that. I am also not sure that it was the fact that I used a Portuguese CD that I got this memory. Who knows. But I will say that as I never expereiced this person before, I wonder if perhaps it was the language that triggered the memories. Any thoughts?
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Alex,


I think the language could be the trigger -- but, I also wonder if you are becoming so comfortable with the ability to remember, that new memories are beginning to surface because you are not blocking them. I know members say that you may sometimes remember when you are ready to know about a certain past life and maybe this is your case here. Just a thought. Sounds interesting.
 
Hi Alex!


Well, first of all - being portuguese, I have to confess that I'm more than a little excited about your post! Of course - if I can be of any assistance - let me know ;)


Languages - words - have always been a strong trigger for me. Hearing welsh was - as you probably all know by now :D - a powerful experience for me. What I felt was that I knew what some of the words meant, even though the sound was completely unrelated to words with identical meaning in other languages that I'm familiar with.


The radio station idea is a good one - even though I feel that the way people speak in their everyday lives changes a LOT through time. I'm pretty sure that listening to a portuguese radio station today would freak out anyone that had lived here in the 16th century, for instance. The vocabulary, the pronounciation of some words even - it has changed.


I find music a good option - traditional music. Language is used in a more standard and, well, traditional way - naturally.


I'm curious - very curious - about your memory. Please - share more if you can!


Thanks!
 
W.A. HEART said:
I find music a good option - traditional music. Language is used in a more standard and, well, traditional way - naturally.
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What about this traditional music you mention? I am interested in that because I find the old music shows that were on the radio (some before I was born) give me some kind of good feeling inside - hard to describe.


The National Public Radio will sometimes rebroadcast old country music shows that, by all rights, I shouldn't like at all - its not really my kind of music but the old style of country music feels just right to me. Maybe I'm just weird. (I am after all the only listener that a small all-polka station had and they had the plug pulled on them after the first day).


The only reason that I can think of for having this traditional music resonate with me, is that it was all we had to entertain ourselves with when I was small - before we had television. I thought that I liked it because of a past life but my wife pointed out to me that exposure as a small child, even in the womb, is just as good an explanation and I can't argue with that reasoning.


Also, for a short time we lived over a tavern where the patrons closed the place down with several rousing choruses of "Good Night, Irene". My sister and I have always had a fondness for that song.


Having said all that, I really think that I have a fondness for the music because I enjoyed it in my most previous life. I have ordered some pl audio cd's and will see if they can help me determine that - it will be interesting.
 
Thanks Heart for the offer of help. Since I originally posted this, I have used the same CD once more and had a few more flashes of the nun’s life. Even with that I am not sure that I have enough to go on as of yet to really say very much. I am not even positive it was Portugal although what I remember of the terrain seems more in keeping with Portugal than it does Brazil. (I also know that Portugal had many other colonies in Africa and Asia so I cannot rule those out either). Let me tell you what I do remember and see what you, and others think. The Convent seems to be in a rural area (I say this because in my memories I am working tending vegetables and herbs in a field that is some distance, maybe 200 meters or so, from the buildings). The site of the convent seems to be hilly and in the distance I can see mountains. I do not see, nor do I get the sense of being close to the ocean. The climate seems to be on the dry side (not a desert but the plants I am tending do look as if they could use irrigation). The convent itself is rather plain (I went online and looked at some convents from Portugal that are very grand and ornate and those do not match my memories). The buildings are rather typical of what I associate with Spanish religious architecture with plastered walls and tile roofs. My habit is rough (I guess wool but could be wrong) thick, itchy and dark brown. I have no idea of the year or even century. Not much to go on, huh.


As to what you say about the language changing over the years, I completely agree. As to music I think that is a great idea. I wonder if you know of any modern recording artists that sing traditional Portuguese folk music that I might listen to.


Once again thanks for you help.
 
I'm very sure that I spoke Finnish in a past life, and Old Norse in another. I've got memories of being a ''Viking'' woman in the past life that I suspect to have taken place just before the life I led as a young girl in the 1300's in Wales. But as to Finnish...Well, I really have to say that I just have a serious feeling that I must have known Finnish in a past life. I must have been a Finn. I'm sure I was. Why else would I have been so drawn to Finland all throughout this life, and eventually moved here, having planned to move since I was about twelve, rather than any other place on the planet?
 
Thanks for finding this thread, Raakel. This is a really interesting topic.


I wish I could spontaneously start speaking a language I've never learned, but that has not been my experience. My past life memories have been mostly visual. I hear very little being said. I've had memories that English was not being spoken. In that case, I can't translate word-for-word what is being said, but I just "know" what's going on.


I've always seemed to have a knack for German. Even before I took any German, if a saw written German I could kind of get the gist of what it meant. I took a couple German classes in college. I remember my teacher complimented me on my pronounciation. I haven't used it since then, so I'm getting rusty.


I've never looked into learning French, but I've always felt that it would come easily to me. What's weird is whenever I hear French being spoken, part of me wants to jump in on the conversation. I don't know any French other than the obvious stuff like "Oui" and "Merci" but I remember two French past lives.


This is a great topic! Does anyone have anything they want to add?
 
ooof. I had this dream and i was me in this life, talking to someone, and my boyfriend in this life was there and I was speaking the language from his country so fluently and I knew what I was saying. But in real awake life, I cannot speak that language and find it frustrating when I try. I woke up and felt so free too..


also, particularly polish I love. The accent everything. I can pick it out even though I do not know how.. and so many eastern european languages sound similar. I have been considering rosetta stone just to learn it for myself.. and french, when I see the words they seem so familiar and common sense to me, although they really don't have anything in common with english so much. But its very easy for me to remember french words. But, I have had 0 dreams of these. only italian.
 
I guess my russian PL's are catching up on me. Just this weekend I had a peculiar experience. I was talking with a russian woman and she got a phone call while we were at it. She spoke in russian - it was her daughter calling. I knew everything she was saying, even though I could not really understand the words. She was a little awed when I blurted out that she should tell her daughter not to leave the cake baking for too long. :rolleyes: It just came out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop myself. :tongue:


When I swore upon my life that I could not really speak russian, she winked at me and said that I must have been russian before, in some other life. ;) :D


It was - a fun experience!
 
WA, that was really crazy!!


I have actually had kind of the same experience with Dutch. When I watch Dutch television or someone speaks Dutch on tv I feel I understand every single word even though my conscious mind knows that I can't. I know a few words in Dutch and it's not too far from Danish linguistically, but it's still quite different. I'm probably also one of the few people in Europe (outside the Netherlands) that finds Dutch to be a beautiful language (No offense to dutch speakers:D). That has always puzzled me quite a bit :)
 
:D yeah it was kinda weird!


I'm probably also one of the few people in Europe (outside the Netherlands) that finds Dutch to be a beautiful language (No offense to dutch speakers).


Tehehee it has a peculiar sound yes... funny you should mention that - my oldest son likes it a lot too. He has this Playstation game that can be played in several languages and likes to try them all, but has now been sticking to Dutch for a while! :tongue:


Oh and I understand you believe me. Most people think welsh sounds like someone with a very sore throat :D and I looooooooove it!
 
In a past life memory, I was speaking with a middle-aged or elderly woman who was working. I felt a language barrier of some sort. I was unsure if this was caused by me, in this life, not knowing the language spoken (because I don't remember what we were talking about) or the woman and I (in the past life) did not speak the same language.
 
I dreamed that I fell into a well. It was shallow though and without water. There I saw an old couple who spoke russian or ukrainian and asked their grandson to hand them the bucket. I also played with another child in the well with the gravel from the bottom. But what intrigued me after waking up, was that I spoke in another language and remember that I used the word "vontakan" in a very joyfull mode H001 as if it was a word that I forgot a very long time ago. After waking up, I immediately searched for it's meaning, turns out it could belong to an austronesian language family. coffee


Appart from that, I've always been drawn to exotic cultures and languages in this lifetime, in particular, to ukrainian. (I'm croatian, but lived many years in germany.) The gravitation towards the ukr. language and culture is very mysical and unexplainable for me. I even ended up studying ukrainian in university when I was 19 (very randomly, without my actual intention, it's too comlicated to explain it right now). One of the strangest things I experienced happened when I was around 12. I was hanging out with friends in a park, and my eye catched a blonde guy with blue eyes. LOL I don't know why, but I knew that he wasn't german, but just ukrainian. I even said to my best friend " I could bet that he is ukrainian." She later found out that he actually IS ukrainian. I really liked him and it turned out, that he was also drawn to me, considering that he sent long eye contacts. (sorry for my english)
 
Martina M said:
One of the strangest things I experienced happened when I was around 12. I was hanging out with friends in a park, and my eye catched a blonde guy with blue eyes. LOL I don't know why, but I knew that he wasn't german, but just ukrainian. I even said to my best friend " I could bet that he is ukrainian." She later found out that he actually IS ukrainian. I really liked him and it turned out, that he was also drawn to me, considering that he sent long eye contacts. (sorry for my english)
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Welcome to the group. :) Your English is fine. It sounds like you knew that boy in a past life.
 
Languages have always been sort of weird for me. In this life I was born in and grew up in the United States but my mother spoke to me most of the time in Thai, so English isn't really a "motherly" language, I guess. I've never been fond of English; even though I'm a writer I find it harsh, confusing, and without strict rules or logic.


I picked up German and Spanish very easily (Spanish especially) because my most recent lives were in places where I spoke those languages and I find them both melodic and comforting (seriously, no one appreciates German enough), and even though I never got the opportunity to learn them in school Dutch and Russian always sounded comforting to me as well. I attribute those to past lives as well.


I wasn't actually supposed to learn Spanish. My parents were very opposed to it, but I was put into the class by accident and when I started learning it it was like a part of me woke up. Now years later I sometimes think in Spanish, respond to people in Spanish if it's something short and I don't think about it, and oddly when I get really tired I sometimes slip into some sort of a weird Argentine-ish accent. Maybe I speak too many languages and growing up speaking both Thai and English had an effect on how my mouth felt most comfortable moving during speech, but still, it doesn't seem normal and I wonder if anyone else here has ever started talking in an accent that matches a language they spoke in another life when they were tired or just "out of it". . .
 
English and Dutch are both Germanic languages. English has a lot of German words that have been borrowed. German almost became the official language of the United States. Right after the Revolutionary War it was debated English vs German.
 
niamh said:
I have a question for those of you who can remember lifetimes in which you spoke another language. Do you actually, literally remember speaking in that other language? What I mean is, do you have a memory where you and another person are talking in what you can identify as a language you don’t speak today? And if so, how can you understand what you were saying?
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It's interesting to see this topic brought up.


My significant other Mark, passed away recently, however before he died he commonly said he would hear me speaking a fluent Native American language in my sleep. I never believed it totally, but he was 100% sure. He said it truly sounded fluent and completely lucid, very eyrie to hear. Full paragraphs of things.


Although I do have past life dreams, and many of them from two particular lives I can recall, I have no memories of a life as a Native American.... Unless he confused it with something else. I have had 100's of dreams as a young girl in the rainforest, this would have probably been a very indigenous Indian sounding language.


Strange.. not sure what to think of it.
 
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