Dear Bilingual people

What language do you think in?

I asked my mom because her first language is in Spanish and her answer was “I don’t even know. I don’t even know if I think”

I spoke to a neurologist about this, and he told me that bilingual people have a drastically different thought process than monolinguals. 

The way he explained it, monolinguals think in patterns that represent the words they’re thinking of, whereas bilinguals think in a completely different language (an internal ‘third’ language if you will) and then translate from that third language to either one of their native languages.

Sounds about right.

Filtering the thought language into one of your fluent languages has its own tricks and hurdles to overcome. I’ve got a good vocabulary, so the words that are closest to the concepts I’m thinking in are the less-used ones. Explaining what I’m thinking in the smaller words people are used to takes a very long time, with a lot of repetition before someone finally understands.

Dear Bilingual people

What language do you think in?

I asked my mom because her first language is in Spanish and her answer was “I don’t even know. I don’t even know if I think”

I spoke to a neurologist about this, and he told me that bilingual people have a drastically different thought process than monolinguals. 

The way he explained it, monolinguals think in patterns that represent the words they’re thinking of, whereas bilinguals think in a completely different language (an internal ‘third’ language if you will) and then translate from that third language to either one of their native languages.

that makes sense. like… i think in concepts? then i have to decide what language to put it in, depending on the situation. that’s the only way i can think to describe it.

This is the coolest thing I have read in months.