I did not dream at all in German until I did this mini immersion thing like spending 8 hours every single day for the next 2 months.
At the end of it, I dreamed a German sentence subconsciously during my sleep which I thought I should share with you guys. It is a kind of funny and self-explanatory though.
This happened every now and then to me at a time when my mind was completely occupied by my target language. Since then I think it has happened only once. So at least for me it seems to be connected to level of immersion. Back then I was only studied for a few months so my level was pretty low.
Funnily enough, I felt completely fluent in my dreams. I wonder how much of that was a failure to notice mistakes and how much the lack of insecurity and self doubt actually helped.
Iām working almost exclusively with input right now, but this week I had a dream where I spoke Spanish for a bit with someone. It was interesting to me because my ādream selfā was not anxious at all about speaking, and it was all grammatically correct. It makes me wonder about which parts of our brains are active in dreams and whether our ādream speechā is more closely related to what we say/think when weāre awake or based more on what we hear!
During 3 months of 1-2 hours of study a day (after some on-and-off studying before that), I have had 2 or 3 dreams where Iāve spoken my target language. I have a feeling that with continued consistency it will happen more and more! Iām sure you will have one soon enough!
The last time we were on vacation in Paris, I had a dream in French. Like wnint, I was fluent with no hesitation which also really made me think about the self-doubt/sabotage. My wife has told me, several times, that I sometimes speak French in my sleep (she has no idea what I am saying - which may be a good thing!!!
Donāt worry. I donāt think itās an indicator at all. Sure, it might mean you are getting better of course, but lack of the dreams doesnāt mean anything.
Itās happened to me a number of times, but I wouldnāt call it a lot.
Ever since I live in Poland I started to have a lot of dreams in Polish, sometimes other languages might pop up out of nowhere but Iād say that Dutch and Polish are the main ādream languagesā for me at the moment.