Can and do you think in more than one language?

[Bella Fortuna]

Mmm, who wouldn't want a nice runkening?


Sometimes I feel I can barely think in one language...

[PsychoSerenity]

I've been thinking the word "frak" recently. Been watching a bit too much Battlestar Galactica.

[Bella Fortuna]

I've been thinking the word "frak" recently. Been watching a bit too much Battlestar Galactica.

I think that word sometimes too... and I've never seen Battlestar Galactica....

[Pappa]

Do computer languages count? Cos, I think in a few of those from time to time.

[Geoff]

Do computer languages count? Cos, I think in a few of those from time to time.

Of course they do, that's the language computers think in.

[Gallstones]

When I was a kid I was fluent in Cantonese and I distinctly remember 'thinking' in it. I can recall the world somehow looking different when I thought using it. As I got older I was still fluent but tended to translate from English in my own head first and then speak. Just occasionally I can think in French too when I am there, though I am not as fluent.

I wonder what 'thinking in another language' does to our consciousness. English is very subtle and flexible compared to many languages - including Cantonese which is pretty basic really.

Can you think in more than one language?

I think once. I lived in Switzerland for a year when I was 18 and spoke french most of the time. My mother said my letters home started sounding like french translated into english.

This is an interesting phenomenon.
I have experienced it too.

[Warren Dew]

I can think in mandarin, cantonese, english, and french, the first three having been learned in childhood, though my vocabulary is too limited to hold up a conversation in any but english.

I don't believe thinking in a language changes what I think. Vocabulary affects that more. The presence of so many synonyms in english allows for the expression of nuances that may be difficult in other languages - I'm thinking of french literature being more limited, here - but on the other hand it makes obfuscation and self deception easier, which is probably why the best philosophy is done in german rather than english. Chinese has a lack of gender and a mechanical structure that may be particularly suited for quantitative thinking; he/she is one word, for example, and numbers are quite regular, without any of this "eleven" irregularity and without two syllable words for single digits, which makes counting easier for two year olds.

I do find that I'm more tolerant of nonnative speakers' speech than most Americans are. I think that I'm more easily able to ignore things like errors in gender, person, or tense, either because they don't really exist much in Chinese, or possibly because my mother never "got" those things.