Last night I dreamt that we had to take an exam, but we, the students, had access to the answers.
My classmates and I discuss that, by preparing based on the questions available to us, the exam will be easy.
The lecturer, overhearing this conversation, asks if we would be willing to share the available questions, which would help future students in their preparation process.
I understand that the lecturer thinks we know the answers, so I try to rephrase what I said. However, before I start my sentence, the English words “by that…” pop into my head. At that moment, I stop myself and say aloud:
“Just a moment, I need to switch language contexts!”
And then I continue in Latvian:
“Ar to es domāju, ka jautājumi domāti kā pieejamās tēmas.” (“By that I mean that the questions are meant as available topics.”)
The conversation ends, and I wake up with the thought — what did my mind just do?
It was a moment that illustrates how the mind works with language. Usually, when a person knows several languages, they don’t think about which one is “switched on.” They all work simultaneously, in parallel. The thought arises not in one language, but in a neutral form, and only then does the mind clothe it in words.
When the process of linking thoughts with words happens too quickly, they tend to “overlap.” Then the first word is the one that is more readily available or more frequently used. If you have been thinking more in English, the word “by” may be used more quickly than “ar” (which means “by” in Latvian). This is internal language competition — not a mistake, but the result of several languages being active at the same time.
This process is controlled by an internal “filter” — a mechanism that helps to keep one language dominant, while the others are filtered out. In dreams, this filter becomes less active. The consciousness no longer strictly monitors which languages are used, and the boundaries between them become more fluid. Therefore, words from other languages can be used at the moment of thought formation. These are the same signals that would be suppressed or filtered out while awake, even before the thought is expressed in speech.
The most interesting thing about this dream is that I noticed the moment of switching. This means that my mind was working not only automatically, but also with conscious control. When I said “switch language context,” I didn’t just change the language, I switched my thinking system — from English structured thoughts to Latvian structure. Language affects how a thought is formed, not just how it is expressed.
Each language forms its own structure, that is, defines meaning. Therefore, when you change languages, your thinking mode also changes. In a dream, this mechanism worked without a filter, and so it was possible to see how thoughts traveled from one language system to another, searching for the most appropriate form — language participates in the thinking process.
From a more scientific point of view, we can talk about language interference, which is more often mentioned in the context of a bilingual environment — that is, a person uses two languages from childhood, and they tend to “interfere” with each other when a clear thought needs to be expressed in only one language. When I am not dreaming, switching between languages is easy for me — I do not use words from other languages, but rather my thought process stops because I cannot find the right words in the chosen language.
Yes — dreams make you think!