Emotionalizing Your Languages
How to Make Your Target Language Alive and Intimate
In my Ambitious Quest to replicate my mother-tongue across my other languages, I often ask myself how to make a language become part of me (an Identity) without having to move to the country where it is spoken.
The general approach to language learning tends to be transactional, useful, but it usually keeps language at a surface level, functional enough to survive but not intimate enough to feel like home. This limitation becomes obvious when we listen to people who have navigated multiple languages in deeply personal ways.
A few nights ago, I was watching a Portuguese stand-up comedian, Andrés de Freitas. In one of his comedy sketches, he said that English gave him a sense of freedom because all his trauma happened in Portuguese. He even pointed out that in English he can casually say “I love you” to a stranger, or engage in humorously exaggerated dirty talk, things that would feel unbearable or even inappropriate in Portuguese because of the emotional weight that language carries from his upbringing.
Emotions are the essence of human beings and therefore should be built into language learning. For me, this is the central project. To replicate a mother-tongue is to emotionalize it. A language must be lived in as a vessel of emotion, memory, and identity.
Why Emotionalize the Language
Psychological research confirms that native languages are more than systems of grammar and vocabulary. They are deeply bound to our emotional memories. From childhood onward, every moment of love, fear, shame, and joy becomes linked with words. Miller (2018) explains that because our formative experiences happen in our first language, it becomes tightly wired into our emotional brain.
By contrast, a second language often feels emotionally neutral at first. Keysar and Hayakawa (2012) found that people using a foreign language are more willing to take risks or break taboos, not because they suddenly become more rational, but because the foreign language lacks the same emotional resonance as their native tongue. This can make a second language liberating, but also distant.
Leaving a second language at this detached stage means it remains functional but never intimate. By tying new experiences, vulnerabilities, and cultural insights to the language, it gradually transforms from a foreign tool into a personal home for thought and feeling. As Lindquist and Khan (2019) note, language and emotion shape each other reciprocally: how we speak influences how we feel, and how we feel influences the way we use language.
Methods to Emotionalize Your Language
The challenge, then, is how to emotionalize a language when one does not live in the country. Based on both research and practice, here are practical ways to do it:
Build Emotional Relationships. Find someone who speaks your target language. This can be a friend, a tutor, or an online partner. Once a week, have a conversation that goes beyond small talk. Ask about their childhood, share a fear, or talk about a dream you have. These vulnerable exchanges create strong emotional anchors for the words you use.
Immerse in Emotionally Charged Media. Choose media that reliably stirs emotions. It could be books, music, films, poetry, or stand-up comedy. Series with family dramas and soap operas are especially powerful because they are full of love, betrayal, and conflict.
Journal Your Feelings. At the end of each day, write a short entry in your target language about how you felt and why. Over time, you will notice that certain words become tied to your personal memories and emotions.
Record Your Voice. Once a week, record yourself speaking about a recent joy or frustration in the target language. Speak naturally, as if venting to a close friend. Later, listen back. Notice not only your vocabulary but also your tone and delivery. This helps you experience yourself feeling in the new language, not just speaking it.
Explore Cultural Emotion Words. Every language has unique words for emotions that your native tongue cannot easily capture. Learn one new idiom, proverb, or emotion word each week. For example, Spanish has a range of affectionate diminutives, while Japanese places emphasis on social harmony. Use each new word in a sentence about your own life. This practice stretches your ability to feel through another culture’s lens.
When a Language Becomes Home
Emotionalizing a language is what transforms it from foreign to familiar. Bringing strong emotions into language learning shifts it from something practiced into something that feels like part of who you are.
Many learners notice that a new language gives them access to different ways of expressing themselves and different roles in social situations. It allows new shades of personality to surface as the language collects emotional memories over time. A song may carry a certain mood, a phrase may recall laughter, and a conversation may remain tied to a moment of vulnerability. These memories give the language emotional depth, so it becomes more than a tool of communication and instead feels like a home for lived experience.
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References
Caldwell-Harris, C. L. (2015). Emotionality differences between a native and foreign language: Implications for everyday life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 214–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414566268
Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S. L., & An, S. (2012). The foreign-language effect: Thinking in a foreign tongue reduces decision biases. Psychological Science, 23(6), 661–668. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611432178
Lindquist, K. A., & Khan, J. (2019). Language and emotion: Introduction to the special issue. Emotion Review, 11(3), 139–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073919843862
Miller, J. (2018, December 19). Emotions are universal. But languages are not. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-12-19/emotions-universal-languages-differ