On Living and Thinking in Two Languages at Once

125 点作者 skadamou将近 8 年前

17 条评论

luckydata将近 8 年前

I speak almost exclusively my non native language (English) and over time it has become a second nature but while everyone around me congratulates me for my fluency and vocabulary, I KNOW I'm not as nimble and witty in English as in my second language. Having an intellectual argument is exhausting in the same way swimming with a tshirt on is harder than just swimming naked. Words come from a different place in my brain, I can just feel it, and connections sometimes are made that I cannot fully express. Seems like cause-effect logic is able to form itself in my mind but then gets lost as I try to translate it to English. It's very frustrating and I feel that has partly affected my ability to be convincing.

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rocqua将近 8 年前

I had one day where I was thinking in 4 languages. That's all languages I could possibly claim to speak: Dutch, english, french and german.Dutch is my native tongue, so I think in that. I also think in English, part of this is the internet. Part of it is due to understanding most of CS and math in english terms.I was alone on vacation in France, I learned some french in high-school. That combined with basically only speaking french to people there made me think in french a bit. Finally on that day, I had met a group of German scouts. I learned even less German in high-school, but it's closer to dutch.So there I was, thinking in four languages. I recall at one point thinking of some English phrase and then thinking 'comment je le dire en allemande' which is my french attempt at 'how do I say this in German'.

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ad404b8a372f2b9将近 8 年前

I relate to most of the things she talks about, except I think exclusively in English, to the point I'm losing my French even though I live in France.English is convenient and quick. And everything feels less severe, I feel like a completely different person when I use it, more confident and light-hearted.Another thing I've noticed is that I'm much more prone to swearing, the worst swears in English seem light and cute compared to French for some reason.It'd be interesting to figure out whether these differences stem from culture, context of use, or inherent properties of the languages.

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williamdclt将近 8 年前

Do anyone think in a language? Do constructed sentences travel in your head? It doesn't make any sense to me and do not correspond to my experience of thinking...If I'd try to describe my thinking, it would be about making connections, groking concepts, it'd be more graphical than verbal (but is neither). But I very much doubt I'm any special snowflake, am I wrong thinking humans do not think in a specific language?

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CodeMage将近 8 年前

The best way to find out what your brain does with languages is to try to pay attention to your dreams. It's hard to do that, but the few times I managed that (not on purpose), I realized that I would switch languages multiple times within the same sentence and it all "made sense", because my brain was picking the language that has the best fit for the concept it was trying to express.Of course, waking life is more structured than that, but I find myself struggling with the same problem there: I want to express something that's best said in one language, but unfortunately I'm speaking to someone in another language and now I have to pause to look up the best translation.Some things do seem to be subconsciously fixed, though. I find that when I have to count, I almost always do that in Serbian, my native language. Cussing, on the other hand, is something that I tend to do mostly in English, even when it's only in my head. That's probably because of my temperament, which makes me mentally cuss a lot. When I'm in need of serious cussing power, I switch to Spanish.

acangiano将近 8 年前

Something amusing happened to me the other day. I'm Italian but at this point, I think and speak in English 99.99% of the time.When I first moved to an English speaking country, I went to McDonald's and didn't know the word for "napkin", so I gestured my way out of it. (I also asked for mayo for my fries, but that's another story.)The other day it took me a few seconds to remember the Italian word "tovagliolo" which translates to, you guessed it, napkin. It had a certain "things have come full circle" feel to it. :)

Jugurtha将近 8 年前

I kind of switch between five languages. But that's nothing to brag about here because so does everyone here.I work at a small ML startup (5 Engineers). Communication on Slack is mostly in French. Everything related to code (documentation, comments, commit messages, architecture diagrams) in English.Conversations go like this: "On prendra une journée pour refactoriser le code.. take care of all code smells, hakda bach ki nebdaou l'application lokhra ykoun koullech ouadjed". That's French, English, and Algerian. Then I go home and speak Kabyle (most of my coworkers are Kabyle but we don't use it).Since I've learned English, all my notes are taken in English as is most of my reading (it was in French when I was younger; raised on classics).Job interviews are conducted in the three languages (although we test for English because it's important).I joke often that bilingualism here starts with your sixth language. I yearn for bragging rights.When it comes to thoughts, however.. mine have no language. It's just a "vvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvv", as if I were underwater or in a womb. Images through which I can jump, become part of, and play with. Becoming so small as to go inside the fuel tank, follow the fuel to the pump, pass through the dirty filter, get inside the cylinders to be compressed by pistons and stay there for the boom.

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chillacy将近 8 年前

> He feels that the words, once translated into German, have less power. They have to travel through a surface that delays true reception of their meaning. I guess it’s the same for me when I write in English. The delay between writing in English and wondering how the same would translate into French makes me able to say things I might not have dared to say in French directlyThere is an interesting effect where we tend to be more rational and less emotional in our second language: <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094842" rel="nofollow">http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....</a>> In general, we suggest that the increased psychological distance of using a foreign language induces utilitarianism. This shows that moral judgments can be heavily affected by an orthogonal property to moral principles, and importantly, one that is relevant to hundreds of millions of individuals on a daily basis.

SeoxyS将近 8 年前

Can definitely relate with the author, as I'm also a native French speaker who's mostly entirely switched to English. I find myself doing everything in English in my daily life and thinking in English.I'm starting to run into issues when expressing myself in French, losing less common vocabulary. French being my native language, the idea of losing it bothers me quite a bit. I take every opportunity I get to practice by conversing in French when I can. But already, I sound like a foreigner in my own country…I also used to speak Standard German, Swiss German, Russian, and Spanish fluently, and a bit of Japanese. Those are mostly lost; at best I can say very few transactional things, and understand the rough context of conversations around me.Forgetting languages is a real downer…

pmoriarty将近 8 年前

Anyone interested in this might enjoy reading about Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti[1] and other "hyperpolyglots" in Michael Erard's Babel No More.[2]An excerpt from the Introduction:"...Mezofanti liked to quip that he knew 'fifty languages and Bolognese.' During his lifetime, he put enough of those on display -- among them Arabic and Hebrew (biblical and Rabbinic), Chaldean, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, Albanian, Maltese, certainly Latin and Bolognese, but also Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Dutch, and English, as well as Polish, Hungarian, Chinese, Syrian, Amharic, Hindustani, Gujarati, Basque, and Romanian -- that he frequently appeared in rapturous accounts of visitors to Bologna and Rome. Some compared him to Mithradates, the ancient Persian king who could speak the language of each of the twenty-two territories he governed. The poet Lord Byron, who once lost a multilingual cursing contest with Mezzofanti, called him 'a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglott, and more, -- who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter.' ..."On one occasion, Pope Gregory XVI (1765-1846), a friend of Mezzofanti, arranged for dozens of international students to surprise him. When the signal was given, the students knelt before Mezzofanti and then rose quickly, talking to him 'each in his own tongue, with such an abundance of words and such a volubility of tone, that, in the jargon of dialects, it was almost impossible to hear, much less to understand them.' Mezzofanti didn't flinch but 'took them up singly, and replied to each in his own language.' The pope declared the cardinal to be victorious. Mezzofanti could not be bested."[1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzofanti" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzofanti</a>[2] - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Babel-No-More-Extraordinary-Language/dp/1451628250/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Babel-No-More-Extraordinary-Language/...</a>

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ahakki将近 8 年前

I have a similar experiance. German is my mother tongue, but I learned English from an early age at bilingual primary school. I «think» in both as well, but depending on the situation it might also be just one or the other. I have started to observe when I think in one over the other and found it comes down to subject matter. American politics is english only as almost all media I consume on the subject is english. Law (my field of study) is German, since I am studing in German. For other things it seems more random.Similarly I find that when writing (just for myself and can thus choose the language) I tend to use English very differently and in different situations from German. I also sometimes choose one for stylistic reasons. A manifesto for instance sounds a lot better in German (not that I have writen a manifesto). I also found that for many words the literal translation doesn't always capture the same nuances.English seems like the more "frivolous" language to german. Maybe thats because german is my second language, but I doubt it. Big words don't seem as big when spoken in English as compared to German.On my fathers side of the family there are a number of en/de bilingual speakers, so we also speak a wild mix of the two picking and choosing what fits best (or just popped into my head first).This experiance has made me very interested in learning French as well. I speak it a bit at it's mandatory to learn french in school here, but I am still far from being at the stage where I don't have to mentally translate everything in my head and just think in the language. I am moving to the french speaking part of the country soon for that reason (among others).

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iagooar将近 8 年前

I speak 5 languages and have caught myself counting in 3-4 of them at a time. E.g one-two-trzy-cztery-fünf-... I'm not even consistent, sometimes a number will be in one language, other times a different one.Right now I feel that I kind of stopped caring too much and just pick and choose whichever is easier at the moment.

scraft将近 8 年前

As a somewhat beginner in French (basically no formal education, but completed the English -> French DuoLingo course and daily reader of childrens news in French from 1jour1acu.com) one thing that intrigues me is how much easier it is to say emotional things to a stranger another language, for example, saying "tu es très séduisant" to someone (you are very seductive/attractive) feels very easy/natural, where as saying similarly the same phrase in English, to someone from England, would feel hard for me to do. I'm not sure if that is partly because there is a sort of disconnect, or whether it is because you know there is a language barrier that absorbs any potential embarassment.

futurix将近 8 年前

The subject of mental activity and thinking in languages is deeply fascinating to me.12 years ago, at the age of 24 I moved to the UK (after being born and living in Russia until I was 21, and then spending 3 years in Germany - in English-centric environment though) and my language journey to English has started. Quite consciously I have decided to try to fully integrate and not get stuck in a diaspora (the impetus for my move was to experience British culture first-hand and not anything money or family related).The mental conversion to English went in the order of: reading -> fast reading -> general speech -> fast speech -> counting in normal circumstances -> dreams -> sex -> swearing under pressure -> counting under pressure (gym reps)Nowadays I almost exclusively think in English, except for when I talk to my parents for extended periods of time or start thinking of something in my childhood back in USSR. Funny enough, I do not switch to Russian if I'm reading text in Russian, or hear shorter quips of Russian in the street.My English is fairly good, and it took on all the characteristics of my older Russian - I tend to use a lot of archaic words and somewhat obscure expressions (the type you'd find in 19th century literature). I'm rather bookish, always was ;-)Most of the things I learned after the move, I can only talk about in English. I just don't have the relevant domain knowledge in Russian (for programming, general IT, pop culture, travelling, finance, love, sex, etc). In fact some subjects like sex or love are a complete no-go in Russian, as relevant Russian terminology makes it sound extremely rude and unpleasant to me (probably because I'm gay and while in Russia I had to completely repress that part of myself).Remaining language annoyances after all these years: 1. My accent is still thick, and it would appear there's nothing I can do about it. My best attempts at disguising it make me sound somewhat Portuguese, but generally most people guess that I'm from somewhere in Eastern Europea. 2. I get to understand just how crap Russian language of villains in American movies is. Atomic Blonde, I'm looking at you! I mean, they shot that movie in the EU, which has millions of native Russian speakers - could they not get some extras from the Baltics?? 3. Living in London, I get to understand all the crap Russian tourists say about the city and its inhabitants. It is an annoyingly common occurrence to hear them commenting about all the faggots, whores, etc... lovely people they all are.

BurningFrog将近 8 年前

I sometimes think in English and sometimes in Swedish.But I think I mostly don't think in a language but more in the underlying concepts.I might be wrong about that, it's hard to observe yourself think...

garyclarke27将近 8 年前

When visiting Gibraltar, I find it fascinating listening to the locals switching effortlessly between English and Spanish mid sentance. If you ask them why they change, they can't explain why, they just do it naturally.