Non-native people, what language do you think in?
To people who were born speaking a language then moved to somewhere with a different language. Do you find your inner monologue speaking the new language or do you think natively and translate for speech?
Both. Also some concepts may exist in one language and not the other.
Certain topics (mostly household things), I'll think in Irish.
Or sports.... it's easier for me to think "tá an cailis déanta aige" than "he fouled the player" because my sporting life has generally been through Irish.
I still live in Brazil but almost all of my social media friends are from the US, so I think both in English and Portuguese. Mostly English, though.
Depends on the context of what I’m thinking about. I think that is the case for anyone that is truly fluent in more than one language.
Yes, I can relate to this question. I'm originally from Sabah in northern Borneo, Malaysia, but I was born in Kuala Lumpur (Peninsular Malaysia) and raised in Perak.
The main language I've used growing up is Malay, which is Malaysia's official and most commonly spoken language. It's the language I speak daily and also the one I primarily think in. My inner monologue is mostly in Malay, though sometimes I switch to English, especially when reading, writing, or studying (I'm an IT student).
Although I’m ethnically Dusun and Rungus (indigenous groups from Sabah), I didn’t grow up speaking those native languages fluently. I’ve learned more English and Malay through school and life, and even earned a B in both. That said, I feel a strong connection to my roots and want to find ways to preserve and relearn my ancestral languages—maybe even through tech solutions.
So, to answer the question directly: I usually think in Malay, sometimes in English, and rarely in my ethnic/native languages—though I wish that were different.
I’m originally from Sabah in northern Borneo, Malaysia
Hey I've been there. Hello.
Hello.
I do not live in a English speaking country. And my mother tongue is not english.
I still sometimes think in English. As I use it a lot.
Same here. I also found myself trying to express things in my language using English constructs or colloquialisms that don't have a direct translation. And my English isn't even that great, but I have to use it daily for work.
Moved very young so inner monologue is in the new language. Also, all my memories from my youth have been translated to the new language. Recent memories of old country are in my native tongue, so idk why the archives got a voiceover.
Do you hear people with their own individual accents, pitch, tone and volume?
Aphant here so I’ve never experienced this.
A memory from my youth might look something like.
And by ‘looks’ I mean these facts come to me but I can’t actually hear or see anything.
I grew up speaking Spanish, still speak it every day fluently, but mostly think in English because my high school and higher education was mostly in English + I started mostly consuming English media as a child.
Usually none. I only have an inner monologue when I explicitly want to have one and in that case it works just like talking: I can use any language I want.
I dont think I have an inner monologue. I think in words only when imagining a conversation, or in this case, writing this comment. Otherwise I think in ...images maybe?
That's wild! I can't imagine having thoughts without an inner monologue. I often wonder how animals think without language and it seems so limited and alien to me. It's just unimaginable.
Maybe language is what's limiting you.
No inner monologue or images here. I just feel it usually. Like the person you’re responding to I’ll sometimes say things in my head like when going over something I’m actually going to say; but it’d be inefficient to do that for everything. I can think much faster without words.
It’s more like ‘hm yeh
<unsymbolic thought>
…and then<more unsymbolic thought>
’I'm with @anguo, while if I have to express something I will have inner monolog, but day to day it is thought in concepts. I find it especially concept spacey when doing engineering work, it will be 3D virtual world of structures and forces (for lack of a better term) along with thought process of the problems, but there is no language to it
I'm American (US) but when I lived in Germany, by the end of two years there I thought in German. I remember it, but there are two anecdotes that underscore it:
I didn't spend much time around English speakers when I lived there; I met my wife the year after I returned, and the person I was seeing when I lived in Germany had barely spoken English.
More interesting question IMHO — what language do you dream in?
Contrary to most people, most of my thoughts are in the form of a dialogue. When it's a monologue, it's still a monologue delivered to a crowd. So the language basically depends on who I'm thinking to speak to. Sometimes the mechanism is faulty so I snap out and realize I would never speak English to a certain person.
For context, I'm Italian, living in Germany with an American partner.
Things I'm used to talking about in Spanish I usually think about in Spanish, if that makes sense.
My internal monologue is always in my native language but if I need to talk to somebody my brain switches to the language I need so I need no 'translation'
depending on how tired / pissed i am. Really tired and or mad and my brain is filled with finnish. In a normal state and it's mostly in english.
I moved to Belgium from England when I was 6, by the time I left for the states at 11 I was thinking and dreaming in Flemish.
By the time I left America at 16 I’d forgotten pretty much all my Flemish.
Not moved anywhere, so born and live in Poland, due to job and entertainment I speak and think both in Polish 🇵🇱 and English 🇪🇺. But more and more I catch myself thinking in English.
My inner monologue is almost pictographic. So, first, if I think "that rabbit is big", I think "rabbit with arrow to it, highlighting its size". Then, when I want to do more complex things, it's translated into a random language, and has said operations done on it.
It actually depends. For example, I don’t know why I sometimes find myself thinking in Chinese. I never translate my inner monologue, and when I think, I try to link concepts when learning, so maybe that's why I feel like my inner monologue is kinda language-agnostic. I just materialize it to realize that I’m thinking, if that makes any sense. (I speak more than 3 languages, Spanish being my native one and English the one I actually use the most.)
Born in China but immigrated to Canada as a kid. Most of my thoughts are in English since that's the language I'm most comfortable with, but I always count in Mandarin. I learned to count in China and have always just instinctively done it in the language I learned it in. I can count in English, but I definitely find that there's more mental overhead. Also English numbers have more syllables which even when thinking them in my mind slows me down.