Visualizing Your Language

[eido]

In a language you're literate in:

Do you visualize the spelling of the words as you speak, if you're able to speak the language in question? Or do you just speak the words aloud and hear the sounds with no association with any letters or characters?

Obviously this question doesn't apply to languages that don't have syllabaries or alphabets, or don't use any regularly.

[SGP]

In a language you're literate in:

Do you visualize the spelling of the words as you speak, if you're able to speak the language in question? Or do you just speak the words aloud and hear the sounds with no association with any letters or characters?

Obviously this question doesn't apply to languages that don't have syllabaries or alphabets, or don't use any regularly.

Now that is what I consider a really good question. We need more of them. "Speak for yourself, SGP!". Alright, so mi go so den: I for one really would appreciate more questions like these.

When I speak any tongue with an Alphabet or a Syllabary, I don't visualize the letters/their syllabary counterparts most of the time. However, I still do so sometimes, especially when it is about something below C2, and when it is about some single words that capture my interest in a certain way. It depends on the particular #Cerebral Language Mode that has been activated.

[SGP]

Yes, I do. You may be surprised to know that I visualize what I say even in my first language!

So for what reason do you visualize it even in your C3/C4/whatever language?

[David1917]

Not consciously of course, but I certainly do. I'm sure it's more of a personality-based thing, that is to say visual learners are more likely to do this than others. I probably do so in English as well, especially when searching for the right word. I feel like a stream of text flashes by and I need to try to pluck out the right one. I visualize basic math problems the same way.

[Iversen]

If I listen intensively it is very likely that I also see the letters flicker past me while I listen, and I also use the image of my own handwriting when I memorize words with wordlists. Actually I also se written notes flicker past me when I listen to music, so there is definitely something of a pattern there. And of course I also tend to visualize a lion if I see the word "lion" (or its equivalent in another language), just as I hear music when I see notes or automatically start to look for patterns if I see an unfinished sudoku.

At least I don't have to smell the lion, and I also don't hear it roar - that's the domain of the synesthetes, and I'm happy that my visual sense and my hearing don't interfere more than they already do because otherwise I couldn't study languages while I listen to music .

[eido]

I suppose I should answer my own question.

I just listened to "Hit The Lights" by Selena Gomez, paying attention to what my natural inclination was: to transcribe my thoughts, or to float through them illiterate.

It seems I don't try to mentally write down words as I hear them, though because I knew I was going to be answering the question here, I was tempted to spell out every word at lightning speed and with perfect accuracy. That wasn't hard, since the song contained many familiar words.

Then I tried saying a few words to myself and paying some sort of half-attention to my conversation with my mother, and I didn't try to spell anything out. I was however attuned to the "sound-shape" of the word more because the experiment was skewed, me expecting myself to visualize my native language like a freak, in my view. For some reason I thought it odd, and that's perhaps the reason I asked the question in the first place, because even when I'm thinking to myself, I usually "write out" my thoughts as I normally have an eye to writing them down. I'm often writing posts on forums like these, thereby forcing me to think in a more concrete way and literally "spell out" my ideas, so I've trained myself to twist my thoughts into more publishable, eloquent language. Most of the time, this type of language is written down and learned from books, and the fluency of which in normal conversation is often attained by writing to achieve the correct grammar and flow. Therefore, I think I've changed the way I think.

However, I think regular primary and secondary education could have fostered the need to visualize language, because hopefully no child leaves the system without an inkling as to what letters are. (Some have disabilities that may prevent them from reading or understanding text, but individual letters should be less of a problem, I'd imagine.)

I did try this experiment with Korean, a language whose alphabet I know. It's much harder because I still struggle with pronunciation and following the fast raps of my favorite k-rappers. It's hard to map the sound to letters when some sounds are similar or are morphed to conform to rhyming and more natural speech.

It'd be an interesting experiment to see who visualizes what, if at all, and have the different groups try to learn an unfamiliar alphabet and practice listening or even speaking and see the results: what does their mental map look like? I don't know how you'd obtain the data, though. Would you draw it out? Just go by informal reports like we have in this thread? Maybe it's a flawed experiment by design.

[Dragon27]

Obviously this question doesn't apply to languages that don't have syllabaries or alphabets, or don't use any regularly.

But they usually do have some kind of writing system. So you're able to associate some set of symbols to them.
Anyway, once you learn IPA (or its alternatives), you can "spell" everything

[eido]

But they usually do have some kind of writing system. So you're able to associate some set of symbols to them.
Anyway, once you learn IPA (or its alternatives), you can "spell" everything

Do all languages have a writing system attached to them? If not, do those writing-system-less languages that have some kind of basic system have all their speakers knowing that system?

And true, but not everyone learning a language knows IPA. Most of my fellow native English speakers don't know IPA. So that's why I mentioned what I did - the native writing system, if you will.

[aaleks]

In my case it's rather 'No' then 'Yes'. To me a word/a language is a sound in the first place and usually I remember words as a set of sounds not letters. Often if I need to write an English word I've never written before I'd have to look up its spelling otherwise even Google translate might not be able to guess what it is.

[Dragon27]

Do all languages have a writing system attached to them? If not, do those writing-system-less languages that have some kind of basic system have all their speakers knowing that system?

What's "basic system"? They do have phonetic (and phonemic) system, which may vary across the groups of native speakers, of course (a language without writing is unlikely to be standardized).
In terms of languages and speakers of languages with writing it is roughly like this: most languages don't have a writing system, but about 95% of people speak languages equipped with a writing system.

And true, but not everyone learning a language knows IPA. Most of my fellow native English speakers don't know IPA. So that's why I mentioned what I did - the native writing system, if you will.

Since I know IPA I can't prevent it from unconsciously interfering in the process of imagining my words (that is, if have the time to visualize them at all). Especially given the fact that a word written in IPA basically represents a sequence of phonemes of that word (it's actual spoken essence). An alphabet with its spelling rules is usually a cruder system that (historically) attempted to do just that.