Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

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sporedandroid
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Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby sporedandroid » Sun May 23, 2021 7:29 am

I’ve heard from some sources that people think in Mentalese rather than a specific language. That hasn’t been entirely true in my experience. Before I went to school I mainly spoke Spanish with my family. That meant I thought in Spanish. After years of going to school and mainly speaking English, I ended up mainly thinking in English. The language my thoughts seem to be in seem to depend more on which languages I’m actually speaking than anything else. I still pretty much only think in English. Except when I’m drifting off to sleep or dreaming.

I’m starting to notice more and more Hebrew thoughts just popping up. Even though I don’t actually speak Hebrew. I notice the Hebrew thoughts start popping up when I get at least two hours of exposure in a day. I still haven’t gotten any “regular thoughts” in Hebrew. They’ve only been in English or Spanish so far.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby Cainntear » Sun May 23, 2021 8:10 am

sporedandroid wrote:I’ve heard from some sources that people think in Mentalese rather than a specific language. That hasn’t been entirely true in my experience. Before I went to school I mainly spoke Spanish with my family. That meant I thought in Spanish. After years of going to school and mainly speaking English, I ended up mainly thinking in English. The language my thoughts seem to be in seem to depend more on which languages I’m actually speaking than anything else. I still pretty much only think in English. Except when I’m drifting off to sleep or dreaming.

Mentalese is an outdated idea -- we understand now that we don't think in any language -- what you're talking about isn't raw thought, but semi-deliberate language; a so-called "internal monologue". You're not thinking in the language, but rather into it; expressing your thoughts as though you were talking to someone.

Consider this: a human looks like skin, but mostly is not skin. The only parts of thought you can observe are sensory-related thoughts (visual memories, imagined scenes, unvocalised language) because they occur in parts of the brain that you have conscious access to. This is the surface level of thought -- the interface between the brain inside and the world outside; the "skin" of the brain.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby 白田龍 » Sun May 23, 2021 10:30 am

I think thought is just an illusion, an interpretation ex ipso facto of some underlying invisible neurological process.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby Iversen » Sun May 23, 2021 2:57 pm

Cainntear and I have been through this discussion before, in fact all the way back to the longgone days of yore HTLAL, and we're not going to agree this time either. It is definitely true that any kind of mental activity like an iceberg mainly takes place under the surface, or in other words: in the unconscious, and only a minor part of the activity in our brains ever becomes conscient. We even have experiments that indicate that swift decisions are taken before we become conscient about them, and then we invent a rationalization to keep the illusion of being in charge. But these thing do not explain what it then is that occurs when a thought becomes conscious, and I can't even see any kind of experiment that could prove that a certain thought wasn't linguistic from the moment it became conscious.

Let's take an example.

If I take an elevator I go to the door and press the button. Do I have to tell myself in words to go to the door and press the button? No, I just do it - the action has become automated. On the other hand, if the button then doesn't light up I start thinking about possible causes and ways to react, and these thoughts can be in images, but when there is a riddle involved they are more likely formulated in a language - normally my native Danish, but it could also be in another language. And if the thinking is complicated, like when I try to understand a tax law or something from Wikipedia in Albanese or solving a sudoku, then I even may feel that I supervise my own thinking to eliminate errors, but mostly thinking in language is as automated as pressing an elevator button.

And I'm not speaking to anybody, not even to myself. I'm just producing thoughts clad in words like a water faucet produces water.

However thoughts don't have to be linguistic. Maybe I just imagine a button that actually lights up (as it should), but visual thoughts can be much more elaborate. For instance I have recently produced a drawing that combined elements from several paintings, and during this I thought about the consequences of moving a line here or changing a color tone there or putting a face somewhere. And if I compose music I think in melodies and accords and timbres, and I manipulate these thoughts consciously without ever formulating them in words.

If I do choose to think in words it is just like using an added sensory modus which we humans fortunately have got - and got in different flavours since I can choose to think in Portuguese or German or Danish. But not all thoughts are linguistic. I can think in pictures or sounds instead, or I can sit down and just enjoy the sounds and smells and the feeling of the chair against my bum. But anything I can identify as a conscious thought is either tied to some kind of sensory mode or it's formulated in words. Otherwise it doesn't qualify as a thought - it is either nothing or it's unconscous and then I don't even know that it is there.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 24, 2021 3:08 pm

I think Wittgenstein pretty much confirmed for me that (simplified as compared to Cainntear's fuller explanation) we think in 'images' or impressions and not language. The formulation of that idea is as old as David Hume for our modern era. When people say 'I dreamed in X-language' they really mean they recreated an image/sensory reception of the sense impressions associated with 'speaking X-language'.

I have to say I don't agree with Iverson's example above because the images/sense impressions and your reaction to them are almost instantaneous. Any verbalisations made to express them (to yourself, even audibly) are the mere conversion of those impressions into the output you most reliably have command over. So if e.g. I'm speaking German with people and I need to parse everything around me through that medium, I don't think I'm especially 'thinking' in a different way than I would in English, but processing it for output in a different way. If people want to call that: 'thinking in a particular language', so be it, but I don't think it's accurately describing what is happening.

Parsing through a different medium may affect how you express the output of a thought, but I don't think it alters the actual impression or its nature.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby Iversen » Mon May 24, 2021 4:05 pm

I don't buy that - but maybe we aren't all wired in the same way.

When I say that I dreamed or thought or spoke in X-language then that's exactly what I mean, not that I "recreated an image/sensory reception of the sense impressions associated with 'speaking X-language' ". There may indeed be images or sounds occurring while I dream/think/speak, but more often than not they are totally separate from the linguistic content. And if the visualizations do concur with the words then it's more likely to be the images that pop up seconds after I have formulated a thought in words. And which kind of internal or external scenery should I see that would provoque me to come up with precisely that thought? The point is that the voice in my mind speaks right from the start, not after it has seen some kind of internal scenery. And of course a lot of subconscient activity must have preceded it in my brain before it is clad in words, but I can't see or hear that activity - it's outside my consciousness.

The situation is simpler with vision than with audition because I do hear something when I think in words, namely the words - whereas I rarely see writing in my mind without also hearing a voice that reads it aloud. The nearest thing to this occurs when I am listening closely to speech - then I often see letters flickering through my mind. But something similar also happens when I'm listening closely to music - then it's just written notes that pass across my inner screen. But in this moment where I'm writing an answer to Le Baron it is the inner voice that dominates, and even though some written words do pass my mind (as visual impressions) it's the inner voice I try to follow while I'm tapping away on my keyboard.

I think it is important to repeat that there are others kinds of thinking than thinking in words, and sometimes different kinds of thinking are mixed. For instance I have a text TV message about covid vaccines on my TV screen right now. One moment ago I thought about my second jab, which I'm going to receive next Monday. I remember that an image of a map with a dot at the vaccination location popped up in my mind. I also remembered the word "Monday" (actually in English because I'm thinking in English right now, not Danish). Is the word "Monday" a verbal afterrationalization of the map? Of course not, the two thoughts are separate as thoughts, but connected by the fact that I have to be in a particular location on Monday. And I fail to see why I should invent an image/sense impression to think "Monday" when I don't need one to imagine a map with a red dot.

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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 24, 2021 4:43 pm

The 'voice' in your mind in a dream doesn't have any vocal or auditory apparatus though. And it is not a reaction to actual sound waves or physical interaction. Therefore it is by definition the result of an internal sense impression recreated from memory.

It's not so much actual images or 'scenery' but sensory data. When you 'feel cold' that is a feeling caused by the interface of how we react to stimuli/physical circumstances. You can verbalise about that, very quickly perhaps, but the flow of causation is clear: you don't first say 'I'm cold' then become cold and verbalising the reaction doesn't alter it. Any verbal reactions may well trigger new thoughts, but this is a feedback loop. I appreciate that you say this very thing here:

Iverson wrote:And of course a lot of subconscient activity must have preceded it in my brain before it is clad in words, but I can't see or hear that activity - it's outside my consciousness.

Writing is the expression of a thought put into words; just a version of speech codified. Same for musical notation. The composer envisages the sound long before writing a note; the note doesn't determine the sound, it's just the pen and paper version of recording.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby jimmy » Sat May 29, 2021 1:40 pm

ahaha :) :) :)

interestingly lovely ,strangely different topic. Also,intellectual and meaningful to me.

may I ask if (if it has not still been asked)

are there anyone who had seen a dream in language other than his/her native ?

also this is for polyglots (maybe like me ) :

has anyone seen a dream also in the second foreign languge?

:) :)

cheers
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby jimmy » Sat May 29, 2021 2:05 pm

Le Baron wrote:The 'voice' in your mind in a dream doesn't have any vocal or auditory apparatus though. And it is not a reaction to actual sound waves or physical interaction. Therefore it is by definition the result of an internal sense impression recreated from memory.

It's not so much actual images or 'scenery' but sensory data. When you 'feel cold' that is a feeling caused by the interface of how we react to stimuli/physical circumstances. You can verbalise about that, very quickly perhaps, but the flow of causation is clear: you don't first say 'I'm cold' then become cold and verbalising the reaction doesn't alter it. Any verbal reactions may well trigger new thoughts, but this is a feedback loop. I appreciate that you say this very thing here:



I would add one important reminding if possible and is in the conformity with these explanations:

as I know auditory and vision system are different and in fact,
when we exclude cardiac system,

auditory system is inversed version of all body neural transmisson system.

because :

(except cardiac system,also we still have something unknown for cardiac system (e.g. funny current))

every action potentials are happening by Na-K exchange. (but except cardiac system , Na enters K goes out at all parts of body (sensory system))

In auditory system this is inversed. Na goes out and K enters.
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Re: Do you think in any language or do you think it’s all just Mentalese?

Postby drp9341 » Tue Jun 08, 2021 2:58 am

I won't go into this rabbit hole, but say only that I've observed that my usage of human language in my thoughts is incomplete, I might be thinking "There's a threshold after passing which one reaches the point of diminishing returns" and I might think, "
"there's... threshold... point of diminishing returns." That's a thought and the first word can be in any language I know and using a lot, the second (threshold) is either in English or Italian, and the third is only ever in English.

Expletives - I swore in Polish, despite always feeling silly doing so when I came back here but only at the very start... I remember I cut my finger and yelled Ku*w* M*ć - but after I spent more time with English speakers I switched to the F word exclusively after 10 days.

Depending on what word has more memories or "weight" then I might actually think Pachamama because it sounded really funny when I was in Peru and liked it, and somehow that's actually always the first word to describe mother nature that comes up.

The only times I felt truly "monolingual" have been when I was in college and when living in Italy, so it probably has much more to do with the environment and the people provided you really feel fluent in the language, (note I said feel since I've met many an immigrant in limbo with no language they're fully native in.)
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