what language do you think in?

[luffy4]

i believe i may have made this thread on another forum or before the roll back, anyway there are many new people now who can answer so here it is again!

i speak english and think english, this is the only language i know 100% so thats rather obvious,

i have a polish friend who thinks english despite it being his second language

[Varun Highwind]

i believe i may have made this thread on another forum or before the roll back, anyway there are many new people now who can answer so here it is again!

i speak english and think english, this is the only language i know 100% so thats rather obvious,

i have a polish friend who thinks english despite it being his second language

Generally English & Hindi.
Also Punjabi when i feel like abusing someone

[Rok124]

English and english only, i get that feeling that english is the language everyone would speak if they learned it so well that it became natural, but then again I saw this thread during the rollback period and apparently people do think other languages even though they speak english

[H.N.K. DA SANIC]

I'm spanish talking and sometimes I think both spanish and english for no reason.

[Zer0-2k11]

English... Learning a bit of japanese here and there but not serious with it yet, i know a few sentences but thats it.

[Fazermint]

I'm Norwegian, live in the Netherlands, and I think in English. wat.

[treos]

for both it would be english and equestrian, its just a few alternate uses for some words mostly, (i like that mlp:fim fandom ) for me. though i think i could do deadric if i ever read it enough... you didn't specify irl or games/anime

[Warrior]

I Think in mostly english and a little japanese.
I know a few phrases and quotes , I learned them from anime and video games

[Curses]

How can you think in a language?

Surely there is no language or one universal, not spoken, in which our brain tells our body to do or say something? You'll do whatever a particular situation warrants without explicitly "telling" yourself to do so.

I.e. If you're British, and someone waves at you, you don't tell yourself, "oh, he's saying hi!" and if you are Japanese, you won't say, "oh, he's saying Konichiwa!" (sorry, my Japanese sucks) - your brain registers the action, what it looks like and the meaning of you being greeted, and you just react by waving back. I think this is something of a subconscious nature and really we all speak the same language, it is just our tongues that deliver different languages and dialects.

[Fazermint]

How can you think in a language?

Surely there is no language or one universal, not spoken, in which our brain tells our body to do or say something? You'll do whatever a particular situation warrants without explicitly "telling" yourself to do so.

I.e. If you're British, and someone waves at you, you don't tell yourself, "oh, he's saying hi!" and if you are Japanese, you won't say, "oh, he's saying Konichiwa!" (sorry, my Japanese sucks) - your brain registers the action, what it looks like and the meaning of you being greeted, and you just react by waving back. I think this is something of a subconscious nature and really we all speak the same language, it is just our tongues that deliver different languages and dialects.

Only partly correct. We often verbalize our thoughts, as it helps us reflect better. So some times we do, and other times we don't.

[luffy4]

i was just about to say what fazermint did, some people dont think in a language, but just use the brains natural signals but that is rare

[Elin]

I think in Japanese for most everyday stuff in Japanese, as I find it breaks my flow of thought and makes my speech less natural if I translate it in my head from English. I still have to fall back to English for more complicated stuff, though. And obviously it's a given that I think in English for anything in English, where it would be counterproductive to do otherwise, as well as most foreign languages besides Japanese, which I don't tend to have a high enough level in to think in yet.

A weird side note: recently I've been trying to learn Korean, and have found that due to heavy grammatical similarities and large amounts of shared vocabulary, it's much easier to think about it in terms of Japanese than English. As a random example, a fairly simple piece of Korean grammar needed three pages to explain in a textbook for English speakers, but can be summed up in a single short sentence to a Japanese speaker, as there's a functionally identical (a few rare exceptions aside) piece of grammar in Japanese. And this is not an isolated incident, either. For a long time I believed that it would always be easier to learn a foreign language reading and thinking in your native one, but I'm increasingly beginning to believe that it's actually much better to opt for whichever language you speak that's closest to the target language. The entirety of the Korean flashcard deck I've been making is Korean to Japanese instead of Korean to English, and going by my current experiences, if and when I take a serious crack at Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, I fully intend to study in French.

i get that feeling that english is the language everyone would speak if they learned it so well that it became natural, but then again I saw this thread during the rollback period and apparently people do think other languages even though they speak english

I'm an English native speaker, and I find it frightfully boring speaking in English to people. I do my best to avoid it unless I have no other common language with the person I'm speaking to, I'm having serious communication issues in the foreign language I'm using, or I know the other person is studying English and want to help them practice.

[Corey]

I was rather surprised by this thread. I was like "Whoa, that's a good thread idea." Then looked at the author and was blown away.
Proud of ya son.

Anyway, I think in English because it's the only language I can speak anymore.

When I was learning German, I would always think in German as it seemed natural to think about German things in German. German.

[Rok124]

I'm an English native speaker, and I find it frightfully boring speaking in English to people. I do my best to avoid it unless I have no other common language with the person I'm speaking to, I'm having serious communication issues in the foreign language I'm using, or I know the other person is studying English and want to help them practice.

Im assuming you're the type of person who knows like 18 different languages? You must get very annoyed talking to the most American of American people