news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: Do you think primarily in English?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387921Rather, do you think primarily in your native language, or more in terms of abstract imagery?I've noticed that rather than forming images in my head to represent ideas, I will instead often think in English. For example, if I'm working through a logic problem, I will repeat the various elements of the problem in my head in English repeatedly until I solve it.I'm unfortunately unilingual. English is the only human language I have ever learned. I've noticed that when I speak phrases in Spanish, I'm actually speaking English in my head. It's like a lookup table. By that I mean, let's say I want to communicate "How are you?". Rather than attempting to reason through this task in Spanish (by trying to communicate the individual elements "how", 'in what way', "are", 'your state of being', and "you" 'the person I am communicating with'), I try to remember the phrase in Spanish that corresponds to the ordered set of words "How are you?". So it is rote memorization -- I'm not thinking in SpanisDec 6, 2008 6:54 AM