Visualizing Your Language

[devilyoudont]

As for me, I don't picture anything when I hear a word in any language, not my native language, and not any language I study.

In terms of native speakers of sign languages, they usually describe their "inner voice" as internally feeling themselves signing. I imagine this is similar to how my inner voice is my perception of my own voice. (And when I hear a recording of my voice, it seems very weird)

[Axon]

One hundred percent yes and always. I don't remember not knowing how to read English, so to me words have always had a visual component in terms of their written form. Furthermore, my synesthesia (I wrote about it here) means that I attach little visual pictures to each word (usually the same across languages) as well as colors to their overall sound.

I believe that my strong facility with the Latin script slightly limits my ability to read fluently in other scripts, because even though I started Russian without any Romanization, I "saw" the words in Latin script in my head for a long time. In Chinese, the most common words I use are visualized in characters, but most are in Pinyin. If I concentrate I can visualize the few hundred characters I can regularly write. If I'm trying to write a character that I don't know too well, I just scribble in the general shapes that I remember.

For languages without a script that I've learned phrases of, the representation is always in IPA. Not particularly strict, just what I think the consonants and vowels probably are.

A lot of the visualization actually comes in terms of muscle feeling. I have very good recall of physical sensations, for instance what it feels like to open a drawer on my old dresser from when I was in high school, or what it was like to press the buttons on my first camera from 2006. So on top of that color and word form association, I can also vividly imagine the feeling of making these sounds myself.

[Lianne]

ASL is the first language I think of that doesn't have a standard writing system.

Are you sure? According to Ethnologue.com one can only estimate the number of unwritten languages. About 50% of the languages listed on their site have a script. Over 600 are known to lack a script. And for a large portion of languages no data exists ...

I never said it was the only one; it certainly isn't. I just said it was the first one I thought of.

[Adrianslont]

No visualising for me - L1 or learning languages - except for maybe trying to dredge up a half learned, long multi-syllabic word in L2.

TIL (today I learned) that this is a thing. Or maybe something I had heard of but forgotten.

[Dragon27]

This is something I've always done and always assumed everyone else did, though now I think it's probably just some weird thing I do.

This reminds me of that famous article about aphantasia in which the author expresses his surprise that other people can (unlike him) visualize things in their mind. Especially this quote:

This is how it’s always been for me, and this is how I thought it was for you.

[Iversen]

I have now read that famous article about aphantasia (written by a certain Blake Ross), and it was really shocking. I have read about people with similar symptoms, but only in connection with specific sensory channels or specific skills. For instance amusia, the lack of affinity with music - like when the American general Ulysses S. Grant stated that he only knew two tunes: Yankee Doodle and everything else. The psychiatrist Oliver Sacks has written a book with more examples of amusia. Daltonisme (=colorblindness) might superficially resemble this condition, but here the reason is mostly an inherited physical defect in the eye's cones. Amusia is however rarely associated with illnesses or abnorm functioning of the ears - the reason is that something in the brain isn't wired in a suitable way (if you consider fondness of music a positive thing, that is, but most people do).

And here author of the article in Facebook states that he can't imagine things in his mind in ANY sensory mode - just think in bland and abstract words about them. And he didn't even know this because he didn't know that other people could imagine things vividly. I remember a discussion about inner speech with one of our distinguished members here, who stated that he (generally) didn't think in words - which must be the opposite of Blake Ross' situation. Some think that all thoughts must be clad in words, but apparently others think in some kind of abstract way which I can't really imagine - except that I don't think in words when I do a sudoku or make a drawing or invent a melody or try to figure out how to come from A to B in a town, but then it is my imagination in other sensory modes that saves my skin - not thinking in a zen-like nothing. Of course my thoughts germinate in some subconscious mental process somewhere in my brain, but from the moment I become aware of them they are always formulated in some kind of sensory system - and here language is just one of the possible systems, but an important one.

So basically I visualize my verbal thoughts because that's something that is exceeding easy to do for me - but apparently not for everybody. And then the question is: do those that don't visualize language visualize at all?

PS: near the end of his article Blake Ross also mentions that he doesn't remember his time at college. Could that be because most others ruminate about their past in images or sound, but he doesn't, and then he doesn't get the necessary reinforcement of memory traces?

[zjones]

Yes, when I learn, hear or speak a word, I see the way the word looks as if it was typed in a book -- but I don't do this in normal conversation, obviously, since I don't have time. I learn words better when I see them.

With certain strong words, I also tend to "taste" or "smell" them (pungent, light, flowery, acidic, etc), feel the shape of them in my mouth while I am subvocalizing, or see images in my head. This isn't necessarily visualizing, but it's all part of the same system, for me -- a mental connection to a word or set of words. I can't explain why or how this happens because it's very abstract. Occasionally I find myself associating a specific word with a color or with a pitch (high, low) on the musical scale, but this is not common.

[SGP]

In terms of native speakers of sign languages, they usually describe their "inner voice" as internally feeling themselves signing. I imagine this is similar to how my inner voice is my perception of my own voice. (And when I hear a recording of my voice, it seems very weird)

This is a Common Effect. If you'd ask a certain person who recently Started Making Too Many Videos, he woulda tell ya that he keeps being surprised by that unfamiliar sound. This wasn't the first or the second time he heard a recording of his own voice...but still... there is that unfamiliar feeling. Because when anyone hears the own voice, it is being "heard inside the head", so that's why.

Occasionally I find myself associating a specific word with a color or with a pitch (high, low) on the musical scale, but this is not common.

Any natives of any tonal language on this forum? If they exist, I'd like to ask them if they can relate. Because in their languages, the pitch (of the words) of course does matter.