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?
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.
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 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.
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
Maybe language is what’s limiting you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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’
