Especially to those of you raised bilingual.
I realised, my thoughts are very flexible in the used language. The biggest input seems to determine not only the voice in my head, but also the structure of sentences. That hasn't been my mother tongue, since I read more englisch than I talk to actual people.
Why This Thread Is Important and Should Be Read by People Interested in Better Communication We should all be aware that what we're saying in any language will be heard in a unique way by the listener. What we say might be translated in the listeners' minds to another language. They might formulate their response in another language, translate it in their minds, and then speak it. All this goes on invisible to the other person. Of course, even if all parties speak the same language, they hear words differently -- each word attached to a personal association or connotation. So please, if you are explaining safety procedures to workers handling volatile gases, make sure they paraphrase their understanding back to you.
This sounds like a good storySo please, if you are explaining safety procedures to workers handling volatile gases, make sure they paraphrase their understanding back to you.
Yes, it is a story from life. I once taught a workshop at a national research institute for fuel cell innovation. The health and safety inspectors had put the institute on notice for bad and dangerous communication. They had to correct the problem or be closed down. The institute employed scientists from all around the world. I taught workshops on listening and miraculously they found me. My workshop was called: Chicken Soup for the Inner Ear: Effective Listening in a Diverse Community. It appeared that due to language and cultural differences, safety rules were not being heard and understood. I suggested this in the workshop: 1. An expert is explaining a procedure, and 2. You are not 100% sure that you understand, then 3. It would be a good idea to say, "Please explain that again." or "What do you mean?" One person said, "I could not do that. It is considered rude in my culture." So we had to do some roleplaying and discover a workaround that would prevent them from being BLOWN UP. There were about 25 scientists and engineers in the workshop. We also did this exercise. I asked them to explain their job to the person next to them. The next person would have to repeat back in their own words what the first person's job was. As we began this exercise, it quickly became obvious that rather than hearing what the person was saying, the listener interpreted it in his mind and said it back very inaccurately. So arguewithatree -- thanks for asking.
It is known that swearing in the non-native language is much easier because it doesn't carry the same emotional weight. I can say "Fuckety fucking fuck" aloud without much internal trouble, but still can't bring myself to speak a swearword in Russian without feeling shame.
This is fascinating. One of my favorite classes in college was on cross cultural communication and I've always been super interested in linguistic relativism. Thank you for sharing!!
My mother tongue is Russian, and I can't remember the last time I've been thinking in it for prolonged periods of time. It's a beautiful language, but I have only been able to hold a few meaningful conversations using it throughout my life, most of which were between me and a Russian-Australian friend who spoke Russian and English as good as I did. Added is the fact that I haven't seen much meaningful content in Russian for a very long time - in fact, I can't remember any by now. That being said, I use Russian when I write drafts of my stories, because it is still difficult to write directly in English: I had no practice in it until later. I knew enough English to speak it since I was... somewhere around ten to thirteen years (my memories of the time are fuzzy at best). I don't remember how it started, but from late teen years to now I've been mostly speaking English in my head. As I learn new languages - German, Norwegian - I notice myself slowly incorporating the constructions and the language itself into the thought process, for it allows for easier information translation and expression. Every language has their own simpler methods of expressing a certain idea - for example, where in Russian you have to repeat the verb to say "I do", English makes it so much simpler by using auxilary verbs in its stead - and incorporating those allow for a more meaningful conversations (aspects of a word matter). By now, I believe it also has to do with the fact that I seek content mainly in English; I prefer the English Wikipedia for most topics, and I can recall only one Russian TV series that I enjoyed. It's both that English is everywhere and that I've chosen English over Russian that make the choice of internal dialogue language more ingrained. When I speak Russian aloud, I sound alien to the norm because I copy the style and the syntax from English without thinking about it.
My thoughts have been bilingual since I was 12, I think. I started reading English books when I was seven or eight. Dutch and English are very similar languages so I picked it up relatively fast. English became a subject in what Americans call 4th grade. As you can imagine, I was ahead of the class, and I remained so until graduating high school. I've also had to learn several other languages - at one point I had Latin, Greek, German, French, English and Dutch at the same time. Right now, I'm almost native at English and I can make small conversations in German. The rest was simply too useless to keep up after high school. I studied abroad in Canada for half a year, which was an interesting experience for the English part of my brain. Up until then, I only had to speak English sporadically to foreigners, but all of the sudden I'm the foreigner. After a week or so I noticed I flipped a switch, so to speak. All my life, whenever someone says something to me, I expect it to be Dutch until proven otherwise. Living abroad and having to get around in a second language changed that. I expected people to answer me in English, and had to put more effort into talking Dutch again. My train of thought was in English and not in Dutch. The weekly Skype call home became more challenging. I didn't expect that to happen so quickly. The first week back home was really difficult because I tried to talk Dutch using English sentence structures. That was very strange.
I was raised semi-bilingual. English is my strength and a totally obscure language was my second. For the first 16 years of my life I didn't realise my 2nd language was different from English. I lived in New Zealand and utilising Maori words in an English world was passable. I now dream and think in French as a consequence of 1 and half years spent in France. I find all my dreams are in French and all my thoughts before sleeping are in French. Honestly, I find it quite unsettling. I think it is because I learnt French later on in life and the intrusiveness of the 'other' language is more apparent to me. My English has also suffered suffered since I became proficient in French. So currently I have three languages, one (Maori) which I must translate to English then to French, and English which is not as abstract to translate into French. My biggest struggle is translating concepts, that don't exist in one culture, to another.
Yes I tend to think in two languages but not at the same time. If I interact with someone in my native tongue, then I'm stuck in that "mode" until I read/listen/speak to someone in English. Then I start thinking in English. For the record, I'm more fluent in English even though I didn't speak a lick of it until age 10 or 11. Which language I speak in my dreams also tends to vary. If I'm speaking to someone (in a particular dream) who I believe speaks English, then I speak English. Vice versa.
This is really interesting to me because my dreams are all in French, regardless of who I am speaking with. I totally agree about being stuck in a 'mode,' I refer to it as my French brain, or my English brain (I have guarded in my mind Maori and English as the same language. I can't seem to break this). I am at the point where if someone that I normally speak English with, speaks French to me I find it incredibly difficult to engage my 'french brain' and speak French to them. It's so frustrating!
Yes, very similar. It's as though my mind sees the (normally) English speaker, and says "Right! Access all English words and semantics!" And everytime I go to retrieve French I have to actively think, make exact translations, double check my phrases. It's gets tiring, fast. Then, there will be someone right next to them, that I always speak in French with (and sometimes they are native English speakers, but we haven't spoken English together) and there isn't a split second where I think (actively) about what I say. It just flows out. And its so lovely and enjoyable.
Very similar for me. My native tongue is Spanish, but I learned English at age nine. If I'm listening to Spanish music, speaking Spanish with someone, etc. my thoughts happen in Spanish. Otherwise, I default to English in most settings. I can only pray in Spanish, though...seriously. It's super weird.
Can confirm: praying is definitely in Spanish. Also, for me, anything with numbers is in Spanish, even though I was taught mathematics in English. Weird.
I think in sign language sometimes, ASL.; as well as mathematics (which I consider to be a language). The other two languages I've taken classes in, Latin and Spanish: I don't think in them at all. Except for "Cuidado: Piso Mojado." That phrase is quite handy. "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" is another one. Oh, "je suis, un criminel" (sp?) as well. You can thank Anne Rice for that last one.
The math thing is very interesting. All my advanced math classes have been in English, but I learned the basics in German. To this day I prefer thinking about math in German (also german is much more concise!)
I went to a bilingual emersion elementary school, and I switch between English and Spanish a ton when I'm thinking. Especially during school, I'll have Spanish earlier in the day, and then have to make it through English class while ocassionally thinking in Spanish. I'll also take notes in Spanish to help stay focused, since I can study from it either way, just have to translate as I take them. I think it is an advantage, because you aren't limited by vocabulary in one language or another, and you can adapt to use the language, mix of languages that's fastest and easiest for you.
Mostly actively translating. It is pretty much the same trick as repeating stuff in your head to help pay attention, but I find it a bit more mentally challenging as concepts often do not translate very well. However, at other times, Spanish words will slip into my English notes without me noticing.
Yes I think both in my first language and English depends on occasion.
I think primarily in English, but also a fair portion of it is in Mandarin depending on the activity. Family related matters it's often in Chinese, but personal things (like writing, reacting to something negative like a prank/surprise will be in English).
I wasn't raised bilingual but we used to watch a lot of television and luckily us dutch don't dub but subtitle everything. So I spoke fairly good english and german before I started learning it at school. My english is still a bit of a mish-mash between english and american english. Later I added french and spanish to my vocabulary, but I noticed that the older you get the harder it is to learn a new language. When I was working in Berlin for a while I started to dream in german. And the use of english is now a very large part of my life that I do that in english too. And sometimes a specific language has the best way of communicating a certain meaning that others don't.
My first language is not English, but English is now my dominant language from so much use. I usually think in English, but when I talk to other people in a different language my thoughts "switch" to the other language. There is no need for conversion, I can just think in two different languages.
I'm Canadian and my first language is English, but I went to school in French for the first six years. The program is aptly named "French Immersion". I used to think in French during school hours and when I spoke French with my brothers, and in English at other times. I can still switch my internal monologue into Frnch if I want, but I talk like a child. Sometimes I accidentally use French grammar, 25 years later: Many words that are capitalized in English, like "Friday", i'll spell lower-case by accident. High School French was my easiest subject, of course.
I was not raised bilingual. My mind uses Swedish (native), English and Korean, but English the most. I have a lot of trouble with my native language because I can't always think of the Swedish equivalents of English words and I don't know how to express myself well. I intend to start reading more Swedish books in an attempt to improve it, but I grew up with an aversion to reading in Swedish so it's hard to get to it. Something that bothers me lately is my occasionally very clumsy English grammar, which I don't really know how to fix.
I moved from Romania to England when I was 11. At around the age of 12 I really started thinking in English for most of my thoughts. The only times I did and still do think in Romanian is when I either tell myself to, or when I am thinking about family or any other thing related to Romania. You simply cannot think of a person who only speaks a language to you in another language, mostly because you do not know how they would speak that language, not only the accent but also the sentence structure they would use and their vocabulary. Since thinking bilingually I have also noticed that sometimes I do not even think in any language, I just have thoughts floating around. This is a very weird thing sometimes as I know what I am thinking about, but if I try to explain it I have a hard time putting my thoughts into actual words.
Yes. I've been learning Spanish for years (native American-English speaker) and since I started doing it everyday (around 13 or so, so somewhere between 5-7 years ago) I've noticed I think in both English and Spanish. Especially when I'm thinking about something (read someone) negatively and they're in the room with or somewhere near me. I'm not sure why that's when it starts most often but hey I'm not a psychologist
Definitely. Technically three languages - French, English, and thought-idea language which is pretty much wordless, and more of a context thing.
I wan't raised bilingual, but I started studying Japanese when I was 18, and have lived here for over 4 years, and work at a large Japanese company. Most of my life is conducted in Japanese nowadays. Yeah, my brain definitely thinks in Japanese. Of course it's MY Japanese, which is to say its probably not perfect. Even my nonvoluntary expressions have turned Japanese. Except "Oops," for some reason that is still English. Of course, if I am in English mode, ie not speaking, reading, or listening to Japanese, like in my free time, it's still primarily English. Like when I'm shopping, my surroundings are all Japanese, so I think in Japanese. When I am browsing the internet, I will think in English. I guess it's all context dependent, but the tl;dr is "yes"
I agree with your point. English isn't my mother tongue (Farsi is) , but I find myself thinking and structuring my sentences in English more and more. Sometimes when I speak in Farsi, my friends/family make fun of me because I tend to translate the English sentence that I had in my head into Farsi, which sometimes results in funny words and/or weird structure.
I have japanese and tagalog and bisayan words sprinkled throughout my thought process. I wasn't raised bilingual, but I lived in other countries for a while and thats what happened. I especially find some of the curses come to my mind quickly before the english ones.
When I was actively studying French I found that many of my random, undirected thoughts wound up with little bits of French in them. I even dreamt in French on occasion. The first time I dreamt in French was quite a surreal experience, mainly because I couldn't understand everything being said, but my mind was still synthesizing French dialogue. Very strange, but overall an enjoyable experience.
What is your mother tongue? I wasn't raised bilingual but I've done significant immersion for Arabic and have studied 3 other languages in addition to English, so I totally understand the rewriting things in your head in the "wrong" order. The worst is words or terms or phrases that don't quite translate and when you try and explain it, it's still not quite right.
Totally get that. I have a very close friend who is a native German speaker and I've noticed the same thing. I think it's definitely not as important in speech because people will get what you're saying even if it's not 100% correct. That's been my frustration with coming back to formal, academic language training. When I lived abroad and spoke to locals, I didn't have to be 100% correct 100% of the time to communicate.