I can't help but think that the speech must have been a pretty easy grab of political power and historical significance with - now - relatively low personal risk.

uMatrix?

I don’t, but anecdotally I know this to be true. I speak 4 languages pretty fluently and I can confidently say that my personality is different depending on which language I am using. I only got to experience this well after having left university and all my academic aspirations so never got deeper than experiencing it first person.

Just for fun, I theorised that it’s a rewinding to the emotional states - and consequently behaviours - I had when getting proficient in the language.

I happened to write my bachelors thesis on the effect of mother-tongues on cognitive processes in 2012 and found the literature very vague on this issue.

At the time the literature suggested that the cognitive processes are the same across populations of different mother-tongues but that language can influence the data those processes work upon, EG: exposed to the same events, what details get picked up, built into narratives and remembered.

I would move that language constitutes a very strong mnemonic anchor if nothing else.

I have ridden motorcycles for 20 years and could not agree more. Defensive riding, assume distraction and reckless drivers, perhaps even willingness to bump into you “accidentally on purpose”. I have actually experienced the latter.