Still You, Just With More Vocabulary: Why Language Doesn't Change Who We Are

You've all heard it before—multiple languages, multiple personalities. The vast majority of people who learn other languages as adults report some amount of personality shift when speaking their second language(s). There's even a fair amount of research on this topic.

I've simply never related to this experience at all. As I've progressed in my languages, I have only ever felt like I was approaching my normal personality, i.e. able to express my thoughts and emotions more and more like my "true self" if that makes sense. Even my humor gets more and more similar to my humor in English the more I improve in language X.

I've heard some people say it has a lot to do with the culture(s) in which the language is spoken, but I find that the people I really relate to in various cultures tend to be the people I can most be myself around, so I'm not sure to what extent this applies in my case.

For context, I grew up speaking only English and have learned Spanish to near fluency, Portuguese and German to a respectable intermediate level, and have also studied a bit of Kyrgyz and Mandarin. Also I'm somewhat neurodivergent.