English natively, then learned Spanish in school, all throughout primary, secondary, and university. I often dreamed in Spanish and could communicate fluently.
The emotional valence you’re talking about is something I never experienced, probably because I never trained it. All of my Spanish was academic, even the literature classes I was taking in college. I had very few organic Spanish conversations with Spanish speakers, and I never needed (or had the opportunity) to use Spanish to build a friendship or court anyone.
The few times I was purely socializing with Spanish speakers for (say) an hour or more, the Spanish part of my brain kicked into overdrive, and I was even more fluent than normal—like the English part of my brain was just gone, and I was meta-aware of that feeling, but meta-aware in Spanish. It was similar to a flow state. The chasm was definitely gone in those situations. Or at least it was for me—maybe my Spanish was just bad enough for the other person that I was in an uncanny valley (uncanny chasm??).
English natively, then learned Spanish in school, all throughout primary, secondary, and university. I often dreamed in Spanish and could communicate fluently.
The emotional valence you’re talking about is something I never experienced, probably because I never trained it. All of my Spanish was academic, even the literature classes I was taking in college. I had very few organic Spanish conversations with Spanish speakers, and I never needed (or had the opportunity) to use Spanish to build a friendship or court anyone.
The few times I was purely socializing with Spanish speakers for (say) an hour or more, the Spanish part of my brain kicked into overdrive, and I was even more fluent than normal—like the English part of my brain was just gone, and I was meta-aware of that feeling, but meta-aware in Spanish. It was similar to a flow state. The chasm was definitely gone in those situations. Or at least it was for me—maybe my Spanish was just bad enough for the other person that I was in an uncanny valley (uncanny chasm??).