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Some people say that you can learn a new language while you are sleeping. Well, yes, to some degree. You can learn a language while you sleep. You can do it by listening possibly through earphones to the language that is spoken or to any of the language tutor programs or recordings and given enough time you will learn certain things in your sleep.

However, you are very limited in what you learn when you sleep because your thoughts are not focused and you will listen to some things and imagine that you heard other things and the result will be that a great number of mistakes will enter into your thinking.

How about those who dream in their sleep, dream about other things that are said or spoken in other languages? Are they learning in their sleep?

Possibly. That is more likely. It is rare to be able to dream in anything but your mother language. There are certain things, certain basic things which you usually do in your mother language.

So for some people sleep might be a way of rehearsing. For those people who review what happens while they are sleeping, and that occurs to some people, they review the day's events while they sleep, then they can also learn a great deal. They can learn languages if they have been involved immersed in languages during the day. It will come naturally to review the language. But then again this is a natural process and it involves no technical assistance. On the other hand, for those who wake up not knowing what they are dreaming about or who have less vivid dreams, this may be less successful or advantageous.

In other words, it depends upon the person more than the technique. The same might happen with someone who walks around with an mp3 player listening to an mp3 player during his waking hours. This could be useful for some people and it should be good for review but it is not a way to do the initial study. Again, it would work much better for reviewing of things than for studying new things. For others who are simply lazy or who feel that they have no time to learn the language and want to make the most of their sleeping time, the advantages are certainly questionable. It is not a replacement, in most cases, for real study of the language. Being lazy or not having time is hardly a reason for not being studying the language in the regular, normal way, in the acceptable means.

At any rate, the bottom line of the real question which is bilingualism is certainly in doubt. It is quite doubtful that learning in sleep is going to make a person a bilingual. They may be able to learn some vocabulary. They may become familiar with the language, but becoming a bilingual takes a lot more than taking a nap.