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There is a Hungarian proverb, which says ‘you are as many men as many languages you speak’. This proverb is usually interpreted in two different ways: the more languages you speak, the more opportunities open up for you in your life, or when using another language, you become a different person. The proverb’s first meaning is especially important for Hungarians since there are only around 15 million L1 speakers of Hungarian in the world. The second meaning of the proverb expresses that language and identity are hardly separable and when learning another language, one’s self also undergoes a change. Guiora and Acton argue for the existence of a different self in the foreign language, termed ‘language ego’, which is based on the psychological experience shared by many language learners that ‘one feels like a different person when speaking a second language and often indeed acts very differently as …