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Logwood's passing reference to the English language's becoming his "thinking language" is absolutely fascinating. I cannot imagine what kind of mental processes I'd have to go through to be able to change my internal language. Perhaps the ability to do so is age-relatec; perhaps it has something to do with one's learning two languages together. For Logwood: How old were you when this happened? Did you learn Hebrew and English concurrently? Is it difficult to think in English and then sort of automatically translate to Hebrew while speaking. For others who might be interested in discussing this: If you sitched your thinking language from one to another, how old were you when you did so? Why did you do so? Does it hamper your communcation in any way? For instance, when holding a conversation in your "old language" do you internally translate from old to new, then formulate a response in new and translate it to old for speaking? Seems very cumbersome to me. Or do you switch your thinking language sort of automatically. I am certain this phenomenon (though of course it isn't really a phenomenon except to me because I'ver never heard of it before) would be more prevalent where people routinely speak several languages, something that isn't at all common in the US, unless you call Southern a language  . AH! Another question: Do you find yourself mixing the two languages, either in thinking or in speaking. Here I'm thinking about languages like Tagalog which as I undestand it is a mixture of several tongues.
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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Changing the language you think in, at least on some level (I don't know about deep grammatical structures, if that is relevant), isn't uncommon. I did this by choice, when I lived in Germany, as part of the exercise of acquiring the language. I think most people keep their native tongue for math. I did not, but my math skills are less than rudimentary, so this probably wasn't very different from other kinds of thinking. What seems unusual in Logwoods case is that, if I understood right, he adopted English as his "internal" language even though he was in a Hebrew-speaking environment.
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That's correct, inselpeter. Of course I can't pin an exact age when it started happening, it was more of a gradual process as you can imagine. The more I understood and practiced English, the more it took over me. At some point (by the age of 17-18, or alternatively 2-3 years ago), it surpassed my Hebrew (as I never took into Hebrew studies to answer your second question). Nowadays, in fact, I can read English books more easily than Hebraic ones! Quote:
Is it difficult to think in English and then sort of automatically translate to Hebrew while speaking.
Oftentimes yes. It's actually very inhibitive, because you can't say what is straight off your mind, and it definitely makes communication less fluent (and you might even say cumbersome). In a way I'm my own translator - imagine that!
Quote:
Do you find yourself mixing the two languages, either in thinking or in speaking.
In thinking I differentiate Hebrew and English, and, even though rarely, I still happen to think in Hebrew. But I hope to suppress this nasty old habit completely one day.
In speaking-- only if I talk to those who I know understand English, then I often mix the languages.
Edit: A lot of times I find myself translating what people say from Hebrew to English, just for fun and for practice.
Last edited by Logwood; 12/09/2005 8:01 PM.
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This all reminds me of a 1982 Clint Eastwood movie called "FireFox" where he steals a prototype Soviet jet-plane in which he can only operate certain controls by thinking in Russian.
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So he crashed where, exactly?
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this is interesting. i only know english, but i can think in knitting, (and design, and think out complex knitting patterns (sometimes in several colors) and 'knit them on the fly' (i don't need to write down what i am doing, or when or where.. i can just look at each stitch as it 'comes up' and know what color or stitch its should be--
knitting is very binary, (and helped me understand computers) I taught my son binary at a young age, and he learned to think in binary. he can add, subtract and multipy in binary (mental!) i can add and subtract (on paper, making little tic marks for the carries) and can do simple multiplication (up to 4 times table in binary (again on paper) but i slow down, (and make more mistakes) above that. I certainly don't think (fluently) in binary.
Do musicians (or just composers?) think in music? are there other ways of thinking besides linguisticly and mathmatically? (thinking knitting is some what mathmatical)
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I'm not sure that folks think in language. Maybe, maybe not. Are dreams linguistic? Or knitting or music as of troy asks? How are memories stored in the brain? As small stories? or movies? or something else entirely?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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When I lived in Mexico (between the ages of 20 and 31), completely immersed in Spanish, I thought in Spanish and even dreamed in Spanish. If I was living in a border town, I spoke Spanglish to those who were bilingual. At times, while speaking to my family by phone or on my visits home in the summers, I would sometimes search for the word I wanted in English, my first language. I could easily think of the word I wanted in Spanish, but struggled for the English equivalent. There were certain concepts that had a single word in Spanish but required a paragraph to explain in English and vice versa. That's what I loved about Spanglish. You pick and choose from whichever more completely describes what you want to say. I tend to think of myself having an internal translator. Most of the time it is running smoothly in the background but at times it becomes unstable and I am an unwilling victim of the blue screen of death in the mind!  Rebooting is the only solution, but by then, it's a little late to save me.
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Do musicians (or just composers?) think in music? Yes... well, sorta! I've done a lot of harmonic analysis in my *day(s) and because of it, as I listen to a song, I (often) catch myself thinking about what the (diatonic) function of each chord is as it is being played. It is a skill originally developed to make it easy(er) to transcribe music, but often turns what was conceived as form into a function... not that those are in any way, shape or *form mutually exclusive, but. 
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I'm a native speaker of Spanish and I live in Spain, where I teach in English. I don't think I have a "thinking language", but rather two distinct sets of linguistic paradigms to express whatever I'm thinking. For me there's no effort involved in using either of the two languages, so I don't think I'm "thinking" in one and then translating to the other, unless this is happening at some level that I can't be conscious of. I think it depends on the context. I speak English normally with my English-language friends and colleagues, but express myself in Spanish elsewhere. In the classroom with my Spanish students I can switch between the two without a break. When as a kid I was living abroad with my family, my sister and I were schooled in English and as a result we'd speak together in English or Spanish as the whim took us. One thing I rarely do, however, is code-switching. I can switch between languages, but not really in the middle of a sentence or a turn of speech. The most interesting example of this I have ever come across is people from Gibraltar, who'll speak English or Spanish, or a curious mixture of the two among themselves. A funny thing that happens, though, is that although apparently I can keep Spanish and English totally separate, this is not so with English and my third language, French, which I'm not as proficient in. For some disconcerting reason, I speak French with an English accent, which is plain weird for someone who learnt French in Spain. 
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English and Russian are possibly the best thinking languages because, I'm told, each contains more words than any other language
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Russian's probably got more one letter words than any other language.
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Quote:
Russian's probably got more one letter words than any other language.
You got some splainin' to do. It's been a lotta years since I took Russian, but I recall only one one-letter word, even though the Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, and two letters without sound - soft sign and hard sign.
TEd
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If you think that you think in words you are wrong; you don't.
Our God-given senses receive information about our surroundings and our brains then store and later retrieve this information from an electrochemical-association file of molecular symbols, and then (occasionally even when necessary) we translate this information electrochemically into language.
What, you think that dogs can't think?
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As a musician, I definitely think "in music". I can hear something, whether in my mind or from an outside instrument, and play it or write it down. Teaching piano students, I see that they learn music a number of ways. Some of the most musical ones don't read music with ease, and it seems that they do better in attempting to read, by following the notes and playing them without actually naming them. It's a direct translation from eye to hand, without translating notes as "C" or "F#". And of course many great musicians play by ear. That's definitely non-translated, as is much of improvisation.
As for other languages, living in France for a year, my English syntax often got convoluted. I do enjoy speaking Frenglish, but it is certainly frowned upon by serious speakers of French.
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Quote:
If you think that you think in words you are wrong; you don't.
Please provide citations to support this. It might also be a good idea to describe what you mean by thinking.
Here's what I meant, just so we are hopefully on the same wavelength. Say I'm out in the shop working on a project, and I have to change a dimension on a piece of wood. I say to myself (silently though at times I might mutter out loud), Let's see, this is 100 mm long, and doesn't fit by 3 mm. I need to set the saw stop to 97." The words actually form in my mind, just as they are doing right now when I am typing this sentence.
TEd
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Quote:
Quote:
Russian's probably got more one letter words than any other language.
You got some splainin' to do. It's been a lotta years since I took Russian, but I recall only one one-letter word, even though the Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, and two letters without sound - soft sign and hard sign.
Taking them alphabetically:
A: conj. but, and, or; interj. ah!
B: gram. (used with the conditional and subjunctive moods); should, would; may, might
V: prep. in
I: conj. and; but; although
K: prep. to, towards; by; for
O: prep. about, concerning, of
S: prep, with; from, since
U: prep. at, by, to; close by, close to, near
Ya: pron. I
NB: Some of these may have two or three letter variants. This does not mean that they are not one letter words. Also note that the last entry appears to be two letters only because it is the transliteration of a single Russian character. It's the famous backwards R.
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I'll be darned. I shoulda remembered "I" of course, and I did remember the backward R, but I do not remember ANY of the rest of these with any specificity. I vaguely remember the v, but if pressed I'd have said it was a letter tacked onto the front of another word to give the idea of "in".
One question: what's a "gram" as a part of speech?
TEd
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Quote:
If you think that you think in words you are wrong; you don't.
Our God-given senses receive information about our surroundings and our brains then store and later retrieve this information from an electrochemical-association file of molecular symbols, and then (occasionally even when necessary) we translate this information electrochemically into language.
What, you think that dogs can't think?
I, for one, don't think we 'think' in an "apparent" internal language, at least not as the entirety of those processes we vaguely reference when speaking of thinking. Still, as they will tell you in Lhasa, it takes a lot of discipline to silence the babble, and whatever the babble is, it shapes and colors an aspect of thought, and it can be changed.
Dogs behave.
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I know i think (and learn) more with images than with words.
I also think kineticly --i either imagine myself moving round an object, or mental rotate the object in my head.
i designed 2 kitchens by imagining them, and 'walking' round them, to make sure they would work (they did). as a child i used to love to watch the 'movement' of my mothers sewing machine, (by age 12 i was sometimes able to repair it. (i could see where it didn't move right) I still like to watch machines (I love industrial museums!) (and i like random movement too, i love my lava lamp!)
I can (and have) imagine an article of clothing and then 'study' it to see how its made, and then take out tape measure, french curve and other tools to measure and make the pattern. (or when knitting, imagined something, and then just taken up needles and knit). Knitting 'emerges' completely (and often flawlessly) from my needle.. (but no sees the hours i spend "virtually knitting" it in my head (or all the mistakes and problems i encountered there, and resolved before i ever picked up yarn!)
i can think in words, but this definately is my most laborous way to think--and i am not very good at it. (and problem words (to spell) get images as nmemotics)
as for music--well i love music, and respond to it emotionaly, but i have 'tin ear'. i don't hear the subtlies that others speak of, --i recognize that others get much more out of music, (but i total enjoy music, even if i don't 'get' half of it!) i can understand that music can be a mode for thinking (but no way, no how, can i think in music!)
I think language provides a long lasting way to convay thoughts. it provides an agreed upon set of codes to explain things..like a color.
red, not maroon, not cerise, not pink, but red--fully saturated, but not a dark shade, nor a pale tint, not so blue as red delicious apple nor so yellow as a macintosh, but red, pure red, like a rome beauty apple.
I can see a color, and with words, i can convay my visual thoughts. Yes, it takes some common background (those outside of US might not know all 3 varieties of apple, but..) they have a closer idea of the color even if they only know one variety. words provide a common frame of reference.
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**All three varieties**
That many?
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Quote:
I know i think (and learn) more with images than with words.
I also think kineticly --i either imagine myself moving round an object, or mental rotate the object in my head.
Yes, I do this, too. When I am knitting (and, like you oftroy, I can see what each stitch should be as it comes up and seldom have to use the pattern) and when I am potting or printmaking or drawing, any of those visual and manual things, I don't think in words - or at least, I don't think I do. But when I'm writing, I'm definitely thinking in words, not just when I'm doing the writing, but when I'm working out a problem. When I'm working with clay and having a problem, what is going on in my mind is not "Okay, this has to go HERE, and if I press THERE...." It's more like a sixty-cycle hum, and all the "thinking" is going on in my hands and body.
I've known for years that when I create something new, it take me a lot longer to make it because I am thinking about it in my head. Then I do use words interiorly. Once the body has learned the process, I am faster. Then, if I start to think in words, I slow down.
I noticed that when I was teaching someone to card wool, I wanted to demonstrate how to take the batt of wool neatly off the card using something a friend calls "the tennis racket move". I couldn't do it while I watched! I had to kind of detach my mind and let my hands do it, then recall it afterwards. I know this sounds really silly, but it's the only way I can describe the process.
When singing with the choir I belong to, I notice I think differently again. I don't read music, and have to rely on the patterns my ear picks up. In a way I translate these into visual curves.
We probably all think in several "languages", even if we have only one verbal one.
Occasionally, as a generation that grew up with the bilingual cornflakes box, I think in French.
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I'm actually beginning to think I'm retarded. I just cannot do any of this. Music particularly. I envy all of you!
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In relation to thinking and doing without verbalising, there's one activity where my brain has clearly switched from one way of operating to another.
As a teenager in school I learnt to touchtype. I don't know if you have ever learnt this, but basically you have a blank keyboard and your fingers have to find their place and stay in place in order to find all the keys around them. It was extremely hard and slow going at first - not to mention very repetitive - but then a breakthrough moment came when one could keep one's eyes on the copy page all the time, and every finger knew where it should go. After that, it was just a matter of picking up speed. Very useful it was, and all in Spanish, of course.
Fast forward a couple of years and I began to study English at uni. We had projects to submit to different classes, typewritten, but that didn't worry me, consummate typist that I thought I was. Hah! The first time I tried to touchtype in English, I almost fainted! I thought I'd lost it completely! You see... I was loooking at my copy page, my fingers were typing away, and there on my sheet of paper was some kind of phonetic transcription of what I was trying to write. This kept happening, and after the initial dismay I realised I must be "hearing" the words in my head as I read them, and then typing their sound. This hadn't come through in Spanish, which is written basically just as it sounds, but here was proof - in some kind of pidgin - that my typing was linguistically mediated.
However, I had no way out other than to type the dratted papers in any case, so I stuck with it and over a few weeks it seems that I was able to train my brain to recognise not sounds but graphs (pictures, in some way), which is what I do now, touchtyping in English, Spanish or French.
In fact, I don't even know whether my brain is linguistically aware of what I'm typing -- it sounds more like the "from the eye to the hand" mechanism that someone mentioned earlier on this thread.
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Pooh-Bah
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>>linguistically mediated<<
"phonetically mediated"? -- "linguistically" being much broader.
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think in language
Is the language of the mind, English, or whatever your first language is?
Are words thoughts?
Is thinking merely talking to yourself?
Is communication a way to transfer thoughts from one mind to another?
Can you speak as fast as you think?
Are sounds or colors thoughts?
Are some thoughts unspeakable or simply ineffable?
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Quote:
>>linguistically mediated<<
"phonetically mediated"? -- "linguistically" being much broader.
Yes, clearly phonetically, thank you... But I guess what I meant was that it was mediated by language in some way. After all, my brain was hearing the sounds because it knows the phonetic idiosyncrasies of English. So yes, mediated by English language phonetics.
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Is the language of the mind, English, or whatever your first language is? Not necessarah-lee, but primarily. It seems that those who know different languages can, with some *effort, switch back and forth. Are words thoughts? Yes, but they are not the only *things that are. Is thinking merely talking to yourself? I can think a melody. I can think in multiple part harmony... so the answer is: No, but it does seem to be self-oriented. Is communication a way to transfer thoughts from one mind to another? That, IMHO, depends on your intent.  Can you speak as fast as you think? For me *they are about the same speed. Are sounds or colors thoughts? The above consensus says: Yes. Are some thoughts unspeakable or simply ineffable? I say: Without a doubt!
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Are words thoughts?
I don't think so, although words, like other signs, can be associated with thoughts, but I don't think the words and thoughts are interchangeable. I can think about words, but I don't think I think in words or sentences. I think in thoughts which are, in some way, related to words.
Is thinking merely talking to yourself?
Not anymore than humming to yourself is thinking. Are thoughts tangible? How do I model a world, by humming, speaking, or thinking? I think that seeing is closer to thinking than speaking is. Whatever it is that maps thinking to speaking it is fundamentally different from what maps feeling to making music. Except, of course, that much of our thinking is abstract. How do we visualize the abstract? By making it concrete. How does a preposition mean? Is it the same kind of meaning / expressing as a noun or a verb?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Fascinating THread, TEd!
I'm late to the party, and don't have a whole lot to add. Connie and Marianna pretty much summed up the bilingual aspect of things -- I switch back and forth depending on circumstances, and also can think/speak Portuginglês and Portuñol. But I always do mental math in English, as another poster mentioned. When I think about non-word related things, then yes, like Helen and Elizabeth, I think in images and will often rehearse something as if I were running a video tape (e.g. cooking, I'm not a very arts-and-crafts kind of person) in my mind first.
TEd, how do you go about woodworking? Surely you don't totally think only in words when you're carpentering?
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Quote:
Say I'm out in the shop working on a project, and I have to change a dimension on a piece of wood. I say to myself (silently though at times I might mutter out loud), Let's see, this is 100 mm long, and doesn't fit by 3 mm. I need to set the saw stop to 97." The words actually form in my mind, just as they are doing right now when I am typing this sentence.
Oh, I see you already answered this and I missed it the first time around. But are there really no mental pictures to go along with what you're muttering?
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Mental word-pictures.
For me, it's just words. I am not at all a visual person, and I absolutely and unequivocally think in words. I recognise the difference between thinking and talking to myself, but even my most internal thinking is done in words. For a few years in my late teens, I had two thinking languges, English and German, but now it's just the one, although I did dream in Italian once.
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Betsy:
I see what you're saying. Whenever I am about to do something in the shop which involves a power tool, I have one hard and fast rule. Go through all the motions in my mind at least once and usually twice before I go through the motions with my body. The absolutely most dangerous thing I could do out there is to do something without being fully prepared.
I guess this is a combination of images and words, and I actually see myself doing the task from two perspectives, outside the body and inside the body. What this does is it makes me think about the safety issues. I would NEVER EVER push a piece of wood into a sawblade with my bare hands if doing so brought me within the red zone of the blade, which is defined by the red table insert that surrounds the blade.
So when I am planning the action I see the need for a push block or similar aid to keep my fingers away from the blade, and then I make sure I have the push block available, because many times I start a cut without the push block and then reach for it during the operation.
I guess I don't use words that much in thinking through these operations, but I guess I hadn't thought of that as thinking.
I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to see music, as has been referred to above, and I cannot wrap my mind around the concept.
Somewhere recently I saw (may have been a part of) a conversation about woodcarving. And what came across to me was that I am unable to do subtractive woodworking. My mind won't let me go from a big block of wood to a carving of a bird. Were I to start whittling I'd end up eventually with no block of wood and a big pile of shavings.
But I can look at a pile of wood and imagine a desk arising out of the pile piece by piece. Right now I'm building four bedside tables for Christmas presents for my immediate family, and though I'm about half finished with the project I've probably picked up a ruler only once or twice, and that was to verify that my height to width ration was somewhere around 1.6 (The Golden Ratio). For all the rest I merely use a story stick or hold a piece of wood up to the place it's supposed to go and use a knife to mark the cut.
In a way I guess this is along the lines of Helen's knowing what the next stitch just naturally has to be, but I'm in complete awe of her ability.
TEd
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> story stick
always loved that name.
Anna:
math is in English? I thought math was in Math.
I need to think more about this thread.....
formerly known as etaoin...
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Quote:
One question: what's a "gram" as a part of speech?
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B: gram. (used with the conditional and subjunctive moods); should, would; may, might
I know almost enough Russian to get into trouble trying to buy something in a store, but I think it's not so much a part of speech as sort of a verbal marker of some sort.
Just out of curiosity, what was the one letter word you remembered.
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
yeah, but i still can spell to save my life! and articles and tenses (not in spoken language, but most certainly in written) remain obscure concepts!
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
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i still can spell to save my life!
You can say that again!
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
The word for I (backwards capital R), pronounced ya. I cannot believe I forgot the word for and, which is ee, written with an i (I think).
I've always found it interesting that Russian has not only the sound shch (as in Khrushchev), but they have a single letter to represent it. I wonder what Cyril was smoking at the time.
TEd
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I wonder what Cyril was smoking at the time.
Incense.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Quote:
...Cyril was smoking at the time.
Incense.
Is that what makes the Orthodox cross?
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