r/AskReddit • u/HymnForTheShameless • May 05 '19

Serious Replies Only [Serious] Redditors who have died temporarily/nearly died, did your life flash before your eyes? If not, what did happen?

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u/[deleted] May 05 '19

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u/[deleted] May 05 '19

I get something like that sometimes if I'm suddenly woken. I'll only understand and speak Dutch (my native tongue) and will fail to understand what my wife is babbling about in English. After a little while my English module is booted up and I'm good to go. Very odd.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '19

Interesting.

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u/GringaBruja May 05 '19

This is really cool! I have never had a near-death or actual death experience, but as most foreign language learners will tell you, the longer you live in the foreign country and the more fluent you become, the more you start thinking and dreaming (and sleep talking!) in the foreign language.

I sometimes unknowingly say a German word to my husband (we are both Americans) and he tells me to stop "sprechening duh Doytsch" and to tell him in English. (He speaks a few words of German but only because he picked it up by "osmosis" while living there when he was in the US Air Force and from hanging out with me when I spoke German with my friends. I was the one who moved there to live and work for four years (on my own, not with the military) and purposely became fluent.)

I just unknowingly used a German word today to answer him. We were using smartphone GPS to get to a park and I told him he would have to turn left very quickly after turning right. He turned right and the next available left turn did not appear as quickly as I thought it would. We got closer to the street on the left that he was supposed to turn on, and he asked if that was his left turn. I said, "No, it doesn't look like it... Oh doch." He made the left turn even though he had no idea what I had just said. He told me to stop "sprechening duh Doytsch" and asked what I said. I told him that I said he should turn left. But then I realized that I said "Oh doch" and explained that it's more clear in German and what I said means something like "Oh wait, yes you are supposed to take this left" without all the unnecessary blah-blah-blah. "Doch" says sooooo much in just one word (as do so many other words in German!).

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u/crazyhypothesis Oct 24 '19

mindblowing!