How to (Not) Think in Your Target Language
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- Опубліковано 31 січ 2019
- The Language Instinct (affiliate): amzn.to/2IdQo47
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"I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards." -Albert Einstein
*Please note* : I am by no means saying that thought never contains any language, as that is clearly not the case. Often times there are words and phrases floating around in our heads; at certain times more formulated than others. What I really wanted to get across in this video is that it is not language that is most fundamental; it's Mentalese. The opener of "people ask me what language I think in....." was more to add impact than to be taken literally. Obviously you could argue that people asking that question really mean, "how much of the partially-formed language floating around in your head from moment to moment is Japanese vs English." In hindsight, it was probably a bad choice of words.
I can see the effects meditation has had on your way of thinking and ideas. It really does help you find great insights into how the mind works.
why did you stop studying chinese?
I don't believe it's possible to take your second language, as a language learner directly, into what Pinker describes as "mentalese"at the beginning. At least not with words. What I mean is, the process of translating requires you to map vocabulary onto concepts within "mentalese". I would assume this process happens by first translating the target language into your native language, then later applying it to the concepts. I would however entertain the idea it'd be easier if someone were to point an object such as a wallet, and say the word in your target language. This would be cumbersome however, as you might be thinking does it mean "wallet" or "over there" or "look" etc in the vocabulary of "mentalese".
It's very interesting to think about, but you're definitely right with your insights and keep up the meditation. I had to laugh when I saw someone question "why meditate" in response to you on reddit. Clearly that poster hasn't tried it first hand, and frankly even to intellectualise the purpose is open to be grasped without first hand experience.
When I go through my Anki reviews, i always find myself knowing the words and what they mean, but unable to translate them to English very easily. I just understand the concept even if I can't remember the exact English word for it. I guess that's a good sign after all.
I think a really important message (regarding mentalese) is being lost here in semantics. I dont think the 'it annoys me when people ask me what language I think in' is adding impact, just confusing people.
Converting mentalese into an 'actual language' and articulating words/conversations is a perfectly reasonable definition of 'think in'. Its obviously what people are asking, especially as most people arent familiar of even the concept of mentalese.
I also think the reason the question comes up is that people feel, as you rightly put it, speaking in your head is just the same as speaking out loud. Some people even flick their tongues about in their mouths when 'thinking' and having 'mental conversations'. Therefore that type of 'thinking in Japanese' really can be counted towards 'speaking practice' in some sense. Maybe not perfectly ideal, but not nothing.
A coworker once asked me "How can you translate that fast in your head?" I said "I don't translate, I just understand." and he just looked at me very confused.
lol
+josefozymandias It's like thinking in your L1, you feel it and then you say it, you hear it and then you understand it. What is so difficult for people to understand? Even a baby can do it, especially latino kids in USA.
If I try to translate the news from English to my native language I can't find words in my own language fast enough to do it even tho I understand everything in English. In order to translate to your native language you have to have talent or to put up work, because translating fast is hard, even if you understand everything.
Same 😂 I grew up with both English and Vietnamese so I just know what it means, and it’s hard to do exact translations
You're an interpreter?
When people talk about "thinking in a language", what they really mean is "subvocalizing". Subvocalizing is indeed done in a language.
I don't think so. Almost everyone subvocalizes when they read, but the idea of thinking in one's target language is certainly something that less people would claim they can do. You can subvocalize without even understanding what you're reading, after all.
I dunno, unless I am mindlessly loafing about, or reacting on instinct, I think nearly all the time in language.
I think the point of this comment is not about subvocalizing in general; the point is about people talking to themselves. (Interestingly, I often subvocalize something and then repeat it to myself outloud a few years later.) Obviously it's possible to subvocalize without understanding: You can even subvocalize this with various different phonetic interpretations:
"Bugadooboo ngewalaqm yitybpouf."
or this:
"Bar you including yellow earlier quail."
However, people do regularly talk to themselves in subvocalization and sometimes outloud, and maybe this actually helps people think. It is important to understand that this language is not the only thing you are thinking. You have to convert things into into out of language when you're subvocalizing just as much as when you as when you are talking. Also, some information is not put into language because it would be absurd to. Whenever you imagine a picture or a shape or a non-language sound or any other sensation you are using other types of infotmation to help you think in the same way as when you subvocalise.
It's also important to note that there's no reason to think "mentalese" is actually one thing. I think the process of thinking NECESSARILY entails constantly converting data from one form to another. For whatever reason, many, if not all, people apparently find it useful to keep a commentary on their internal thought processes in language, perhaps as a way of monitering the logic by defining each thought or remembering each a bit longer.
Also, I think another thing people probably mean when they ask what language a person thinks in is specifically related to when they are speaking or listening. People often convert their thoughts into their native language long before they manage to convert it into a non-native language they're speaking. Often people use the form in their native language as a guide to what they want to say in the target language, and, even when they don't do this much at all, the fact that people think of it first in their native language can lead to the impression that they're simply translating from their native language speech into the target language. (That's usually slightly inaccurate because you already know what you want to say, and you may know what target language structure to use based on the meaning even if teo would translate to what you saud in English.)
On the listening & reading side, sometimes people will, as he says, actively convert target language into their native language, especially on a word by word or phrase by phrase level. Many beginners may even be dependant on literal translation.
Most people probably can come to the (at least seemingly) reasonable conclusion that this language processing they're doing in their native language is a waste of time and energy and a distraction from the processing their trying to do in their target language. Ultimate this should slow you down when speaking the target language. Thus, they see eliminating the extraneous native language component as a goal and consider someone with a habit of doing so as being automatically more proficient.
What I think is a mistake is if people conflate the ideas of subvocalizing to help thought and of using native language to reach target language. Even when conversing in English (my narive language), I sometimes subvocalize while thinking about what to say, but then compose a different utterance when I actually speak. Likewise, just because one is subvocalizing in one language when they're thinking doesn't necessarily mean that thry are dependent on that language when speaking another language.
There is one thing that subvocalizing in a language instinctively while thinking DOES mean, though: It means that you are comfortable enough in that language with the concept you are thinking about that it isn't more convenient for you to just use another language (or no language). This kinf of subvocalization requires the words and grammar to just come off the top of your head when you think about things.
On a side note, I wouldn't be so sure that the subvocalization you do is as complete as normal speech. It's hard to tell, though, because memory of subvocalization is more fleeting than that of out-loud speech, I think.
I agree which is why I don't understand this video. I always think it words and when I don't I *feel* things instead. I'm an introvert so I think a lot, so much to the point I find myself wishing I could turn my mind off and not think for a while. Subvocalizing/thinking, whatever you want to call it is just default for a lot of people I believe. And I do think in Japanese sometimes, especially when I can't figure out how to organize my thoughts in English.
@@jonettheonly exactly! I'm also an introvert and I think a lot in language too!!! I even notice that I mix languages in my head. Sometimes it's English, sometimes Portuguese and sometimes German. Not just one or two words, but whole sentences, monologues...
A teacher I had in high school claimed we couldn't think without language. I objected but wasn't able to articulate exactly why that wasn't correct. Had I thought about it more carefully, it's obvious that we can think without language, because babies clearly can think before they can speak or understand language. Maybe a rough analogy would be language is like an OS. A computer still computes with or without an OS, and you think with or without a language. The language is just a way to organize and communicate your thoughts.
+autobotsNdecepticons Like a baby cries for mom's attention, but when he learns the word mom, it's all mom this and mom that. Maybe all babies understand each other like Rugrats.
The best proof of it is your own situation back then: look, you knew her argument was logically wrong (thought), but you hadn't got the words to express your counter argument (language); so you understood what was wrong, but your vocabulary or language expression couldn't catch up with it. 😊
If you couldn't think without language, then you would have to be born knowing a language, something that obviously isn't true.
You think in language. You just don't think in English.
@@miliniumo147 I mostly think in language, but there's also this kind of inner consciousness that transmits ideas instantly, and you know what you're thinking before you can articulate a proper sentence in your head
It just reminds me of how a lot of English learners will ask questions like, "What's the difference between 'I like cooking' and 'I like to cook'?" You could say the English is different, but it translates to the same Mentalese.
Not necessarily. “I like cooking”(as a subject of study) - this sentence doesn’t necessarily mean that the person has ever cooked… whereas “I like to cook” infers that the speaker has cooked and enjoys the action of cooking. I’m a native speaker fyi but never thought about this before.
I always think in 'Actions' and 'Objects'. I try to avoid the direct translation and connect Japanese to the 'action' or 'object'.
It's cool that my thought process is an actual thing and I'm not just crazy lol
I do this as well, it's a great technique!
idk if you’re still reading these replies, but “when” would be a good time to take English out of the picture for translations? This whole concept is kind of blowing my mind but I’m starting to grasp it now.
@@mattvsjapan I would love it if you guys could explain what precisely that means. It is very interesting because there is a difference between transliterating and translating. For example, as a beginner, I am finding it fascinating that Japanese doesn’t appear to have plurals, some tenses, nor distinguishes by sex (maybe I will find out that it does in later lessons, but for now, hat & hats are the same word, doctor is unisex, Mr. Mrs. Ms. and Ms. Tanaka = all the same (Tanaka san) with no distinction for sex. Therefore you cannot, even a basic level, transliterate Japanese into English. This is one of the most enjoyable things about Japanese, it forces the student to adopt a new way of thinking about language from the start.
For me, it did happen when studying English. (JP is still clinging tho)
It will be happen natrually after using monolingual dictionary while trying to paraphrase most of compex sentence in my head as simple english. When I read witcher, I asked Chat GPT a lot. I do search more in target language and less thinking in my own language.
This process is uncomfortable at first but I get used to it from time to time.
I think you can detach yourself from our mother language easier if you have most of the common words in your head. But don't force yourself.
I think what people mean is about the inner dialogue, the voice inside their head that (at least for me) has a language. In my case, my inner dialogue is usually in English, even though my native language is Spanish because I used to talk to myself a lot in English growing up so I could learn faster and now it’s stuck like that lmao. I am now learning korean and I’ve been doing the same thing, so maybe in a few years my inner dialogue might switch to korean. However, I’ve noticed that the more I practice korean, the more I naturally understand without the need of direct translation and perfectly sums up the fact that we don’t think in one specific language, we just understand
You know you say all this when the question really was “what language do you translate your Mentalese into in your head?” :^)
based
This makes a lot of sense.
There's been a lot of times I've felt like I understood a sentence, but then felt like I needed to check myself because I wasn't immediately sure what it would be in English.
The phrase “Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim” illustrates the importance of something as seemingly insignificant as a hyphen.
Squad, helps dog-bite victim.
Squad helps dog, bite victim. Lol.
Squad helps, dog bite victim
Yeah some people dont udnerstand that there's somrthing special about a maiden's innocence.
Oh wait i'm thinking of hymen. nevermind.
I’ve never seen “dog bite” hyphenated, I would just put “victim of dog bite”
I would certainly hyphenate "dog-bite", if I meant the bite of a dog. It would look wrong without the hyphen.
I always thought of this as "Conceptual understanding".
This is a good point. I’m very thorough when studying Japanese but there’s times when I read something and I just understand it. But then, I go back to try to break down the sentence and realize it takes longer and it takes more work to do that when I already naturally understood it.
I’m worried people might get stressed out when they realize they are shadow translating into English after they’ve read something in Japanese, I personally think it’s nothing to get upset about Or stress about its completely natural is not a bad thing, but being mindful and realizing when it happens is definitely good but please don’t wrack your brain about it. Thank you Matt
In my opinion it's nothing bad at all, I'm basically fluent in reading and listening to English, and after I hear or read something and think about it, I more often then not just switch completely one language to another without even realizing. I think in the beginning of learning it's actually good because you can relate more to the sentence and it helps you to understand better, although I still think as you get in the intermediate state, when you start to not translate but just straight up think and function in the target language it can be a big hold back!!!(principally because it's the most difficult and technical part of the learn experience imo)
Another good example is when you are trying to explain something to someone, or just having a conversation and you know what you want to say, but can't think of a word to say it.
"Uh, what was that word again? Anyways..."
Happens all the time we just don't notice.
Lol I would constantly say "what's the word I'm looking for?" Glad I'm not the only one. Had to learn to slow down because my oldest brother would say vulgar curse words after I said it just to make me stop or at least annoy me 😏 Now there's ええと, so simple and succinct 😁
I very often do think in language in my head. I'm a very verbal person and have a much easier time working out my thoughts if I verablize them, so I have an extremely active internal monologue, and sometimes even talk to myself outloud because it's just the easiest way for me to process and consider complex thoughts and ideas I'm working through. I think when it comes to relatively simple thoughts, like things you'd tend to hear people say in normal everyday conversation, yes it's very easy to just intuitively understand without needing to lay everything out verbally and go through it. But for more complex and layered ideas and topics, it can be immensely helpful, and for me, essential to use language to do so.
you find a way to perfectly explain and answer every single one of my questions, i love it
Holy crap thank you for articulating this so well for me. I was understanding JP phrases but not being able to translate to EN and I was unsure why. This is awesome. "Mentalese". I love this stuff, Matt!
Something important for everyone to note is that some people have internal monologues and some do not. I often think using a mixture of words and abstract thoughts naturally and when I read it’s like someone is reading to me. My best friend meanwhile has no internal monologue, they think entirely in the abstract and only think in words if they force themselves to. Other people think in full sentences all the time.
For me, it's internal monologue all the time. I didn't know what this guy was talking about. I can think in three languages and, yes, I can think with no language at all for short periods of time but it is very short and very rare. So it is important not to universalize your own experience and think you are the be all and end all.
This is a VERY powerful concept--I've been forcing myself to slow down when listening to Japanese and force a translation into English each time because I don't trust that I'm understanding something, but knowing now that allowing myself to understand without bringing it back to my first language is an essential part of the learning process is very encouraging. Thank you so much!
Incredible video. Amazing value. Thank you for posting.
Loving these regular videos each week!
Really great content.Looking forward for more !
"Talking to yourself" is an important mode of thinking. So "you don't think in language" is too extreme a statement.
He probably means you don't think in *spoken* language
@@ChronicalV You mean talking out loud? I don't think that's what he means, that's too obvious.
As I understand it, he's saying you don't think in language at all. However, thinking in language is common, especially when you think something through logically. I agree that the majority of thinking is not in language.
I only talk out loud to myself when I’m imagining a conversation and re-enacting it in my head
@@CaesarsSalad That's kind of why he explained mentalese. It's all about getting a grasp of the gist of things, and doing so doesn't always involve words.
That's called subvocalizing
This is super interesting! Thank you for sharing this.
It makes so much sense. Matt is extremely well versed with mental ease in English and he applies that to the languages he learns. Very insightful video!!
This explains a lot. Very eye opening, thanks Matt!
This has been enlightening ✨👏
This is a really solid video! Thanks
That video blew my mind, thank you man
You have such a great and interesting way of explaining concepts!
I'm so glad that youtube recommended your channel for me.
Your content is so valuable. I'm so appreciative that you addressed this topic. I've been guilty of having the compulsion of translating Japanese into English as a way of proving to myself that I understood it, not realising that that process is actually unnecessary and undesirable. It's a relief to know that it's inevitable at the beginning stages and I can become more familiar with mentalese through meditation.
So many classic gems on this channel. Second time watching.
Matt, I got to say your teaching style has grown on me. You are delving into subjects I don’t see other people going into. Taking it from a philosophical angle is extremely interesting. Thank you :-)
this was amazing it kind of got me excited!
Spot on. I hadn't heard it put this way, but it's so accurate.
Such a great video, I've watched this one like 3 times now.
Great content 🙏🏾
If you are able to speak multiple languages, you'll subvocalize into whatever language best matches the thoughts you have. That's where anyone who has never acquired another language gets confused because their native language has always been their only option to translate their mentalese into so it becomes synonymous with their thought process.
Theoretically, if we had the technology to directly experience someone else's thoughts, someone might could understand another's thoughts even if they didn't speak the same language. That is assuming that all humans have the same mentalese, which is very possibly not the case as well.
Just as two computer learnering algorithms create completely different systems to accomplish the game goals, our brains could be doing the same thing. Each brain has to develop skills to allow each person to survive in their environment, but how each brain accomplishes that task could be extremely different. This means that language acts as the standardized communication bridge between two different brains. The language compresses thought with the lossy algorithm that is language so it can be decoded and roughly matched to similar ideas.
I think that's why communication can be so ambiguous, finding the right words to not lose too much detail and be fully intelligible is difficult. That's why quickly formulating language has to be done in the unconscious brain, the conscious brain just can't handle that amount of information in our short term memory.
This is one of the best videos i have ever seen!
This was helpful. Gave me some perspective on where I need to go to overcome this wall. There's been something holding me back and I think this was part of it.
11:14
This point is so profound. I will definitely resist the temptation to translate from Mentalease to English.
It’s tough, but it feels so rewarding to just sit with the mentalese knowing that you understood it and can act based on it.
Thank you so much Matt...!
6:00 love him or hate him, he spitting some bars
So true!- think that this explains the effect of messages being conveyed through music- without needing to understand any included lyrics
Very interesting video with a lot of thought provoking ideas. I think this made me realize something about my own mind. You claim that we never think in language but at least in my own experience, whenever I'm still for a second and not currently doing something mentally demanding I'm almost always having a monologue in my head in full English sentences. I like to try to "talk" to myself in my own mind in order to explain my own ideas to myself as if I was trying to explain it to someone else. This is something I've always done ever since I was a child and it probably makes up 1/3 of all my thoughts. I use it for understanding and memorizing complex ideas. For instance, I might try to explain to myself in my mind a youtube video I watched earlier that day while I'm washing the dishes or making food. I also think it's improved my agility to speak clearly and explain things to people (which is something people have complemented me on my whole life). By the time I finished your video I was shocked to see that you didn't even mention this because it makes up so much of my thoughts. I guess I just assumed that this is what everybody does but obviously not if you didn''t even bother mention it and even went as far as to say that we almost never think in language.
You also say that this wouldn't be helpful in language learning but I have to disagree. I don't speak japanese but I do have a high level in French and I very often force myself to think in French and I found it's been very helpful and I can't see why it wouldn't be helpful to others. You even go as far as saying it would be detrimental to language learning which I simply disagree with. I believe that putting aside a few minutes a day for purposeful and focused thinking sessions in your target language can only be beneficial. And this doesn't take away from any of your points in the video about translating back and forth in to mentalese. Anyways, bit of a ramble. But Thanks for reading. Cheers!
A brilliant explanation!
Hola Matt, me has influenciado.
Te agradezco por compartir tu camino con nosotros y cultivar mi intelecto y motivación,
además de ayudarme a entender, reproducir y nutrir nuevos aprendizajes sin buscar absolutamente nada a cambio.
Un grano de arena tuyo me hizo crecer como persona y sé que la vida te devolverá eso.
You'll be more than capable of understanding my message. Que tengas un gran viaje por delante.
Saludos, Ulises.
P.D. I will absolutely recommend your channel to everyone here in Argentina lol
Thanks for bringing this up, during my Japanese journey I realized many times that there were words I didnt know the meaning of in Japanese, but I knew the exact moment to use it. I described it as knowing the "feeling" of the word. The way you have explained it is more clear and elegant
Not exactly sure how I will start speaking Japanese from mentalese but I guess the more I listen to japanese people speak the more I will understand :)
when people ask ‘what language do you think in’ they really just mean ‘ when you think using language (articulate thoughts) , which language do you translate mentalese into (articulate in) ?’ Its a fair question because speaking in your head can be speaking practice for all but maybe pronunciation. Which is probably why people are wondering ?
As you said, most people don’t even consider mentalese or think it’s a thing, so why would they be asking what language that is set in ? If they understood the concept they would know not to ask as it wouldn’t make sense. So it’s obviously not what they’re asking ! Lol
i would argue it can help with pronunciation as well, at least to an extent
Actually, I don't think the question necessarily implies they don't understand the concept. The same question is well known because it's commonly repeated, but it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.
I've never thought that people literally did all their thinking in language, but I still talk imprecisely about things like subvocalizing as just "thinking" and have asked people what language they "think in".
@@Mr.Nichansome people do most of their thinking in language, like myself. My inner monologue is all of my thinking when I'm left to my thoughts (not when doing someting, like speaking to someone..)
Matt just doesn't understand people think in different ways. Some people straight up can't think in images or "scenes" it's all just words or concepts.
This made a lot of sense
This concept of mentalese absolutely changed everything for me, this is so important!!
On point. I have been thinking this a lot lately. I'm on my second language, and this process is becoming apparent to me now. Questioning if I was correct or not. I'm pushing myself to get past this translation phase so I don't loose further details of a conversation.
Good work sir.
This is a thought that I've had in mentalese for a while, but haven't put into words, because I hadn't thought about it more deeply, but yea. That all makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the cool and helpful videos :D
I love your channel.
Actually something I've been thinking about for the last couple of week. 7 months into learning Japanese, and the whole concept of translating to feel comfortable is so true. I'll definitely have a look at Steven Pinker!
So, I decided today to hope back into AJATT, and I did this for about two months back in the beginning of 2018. I just started watching some science show on NHK and was blown away at how my mind was just parsing things out that I had straight up "forgotten." My brain just retrieved the meaning and I could actively try and follow along in the show.
Very, very well articulated. Made me realize how much I talk to myself in my head instead of raw thiniking
I understand the concept of understanding and thinking without words. However, I definitely DEFINITELY have an inner monologue.
Great video
Mind-blowing!
Awesome....Thanks
Yeah, I sometimes find myself translating to a language I'm fluent in to make sure I understood a sentence. What happens is sometimes the sentence is perfectly understandable in the target language, but it's a real pain to translate it to another.
It really makes you stop and think if you actually understood the sentence, but the truth is you often do, but you just need to be conscious that 1-to-1 translations between 2 radically different languages will not always be easy, or even possible.
The only translation that truly matters is indeed between the target language and "mentalese". Trying to get another language involved in the process is just needless work.
But this only applies when you've acquired a base level understanding of the target language. A "foothold", so to speak. And to get that, you need to use one or more languages you're fluent in to serve as that "foothold" for a bit.
There are times though, when I have inner dialogue with myself when I'm trying to think more complexly about something. Simply, I need to eat, doesn't need any language. However if I'm considering a variety of solutions for a more complex problem, I will be using English in my head.
AJATT rebuild: You Can (Not) Immerse
I know this video is a year old but I wanted to say that is EXACTLY my experience learning Spanish (and now Mandarin) and you really explained the concept brilliantly
This video is amazing. I need to but that book.
This is eye opening
This video really resonated with how I view thoughts. I’ve gotten to the point now with my studying where, when I review my material, especially vocab, I’m only checking if I understand the gist of the word or phrase or grammar point, either by a mental image or literal feeling, and then I see if that matches with my English version of that word. And even if it’s not 100% the same I move on. I don’t look at words as a 1:1 translation but instead what they represent. Once I did that I realized I intuitively understood a lot more than I thought I did.
As an Iraqi I was caught so off guard
wow this video is spot on, I've been using 'mentalese' for Chinese for some time now and sometimes i just don't use english at all because I don't want it as a barrier and to me it's wasted time but like Matt said sometimes I doubt whether I've understood or not so I try to sometimes consciously translate the sentence to english just to reassure my doubts. I guess now I know that I don't need to. Thanks a lot really helped man
Wow thats very interesting. Nice video! :) I realised something similar when I started realising how weird the literal translation of some sentences/words are in some languages. But you still get the meaning and there is no way to understand it in a wrong way.
This gives me a huge relief because I've been learning French but felt like nothing was picking up except for vague ideas
I have thought about this concept and I was also comparing it to how children learn a language and one of the big things is that they have pictures so they’re visualizing as their mentalease and then converting that rather than any kind of translation so as I learn vocabulary, I try to picture it if not, actually then in my mind
best video I've ever seen!
This video really hit the nail on the head, I was doing exactly this. I read the sentence, understood it, and then tried to translate it to my native tongue to prove to myself that I actually understood it. This started to become a hindrance, because even when I understood the sentence perfectly, I sometimes had trouble translating it back from "mentalese". This lead to second guessing myself.
I am so happy someone said this because I was thinking that I was weird for not having word thoughts
- I was taught not to translate foreign languages into your native language. This has helped me
translating is a skill in itself
Nice song playing in the background
You're a fucking beast. Thank you bro. This helps because I'm OCD about shit like this, but your video helped in saying that I don't need to be. Thanks again!
Hi, Matt. You are a brilliant mind. I only hope you continue to challenge yourself and find a career beyond UA-cam (or perhaps as well as): Who knows what great things you'll have accomplished by the time you are my age now, some thirty years down the road. You've got a brilliant mind, truly.
I really enjoyed this video. Thank you so much.
Agreed. Having grown up speaking several language, I've always been more familiar with "mentalese." This even helped me to get to an intermediate Spanish level during school, despite the educational system's shortcomings with regards to language teaching. I feel as though I have been able to do something similar, very early on with my Japanese studies
I've noticed that people who have learned other languages from a young age are very good at learning new languages precisely because of this. Having said that, my personal experience is that thinking only in Mentalese is not very efficient when thinking about complex topics and it's very hard to backtrack and rethink what you were just thinking. In my mind, I translate my Mentalese into English, Spanish, or a mix between these two and Japanese (I realize it's a terrible thing to do when learning new languages) depending on the topic and which one provides the most convenient words/grammar to think about it.
I think this is what people ask you about. I find that using a real language for your inner monologues is a good way to sort out thoughts that go beyond "I'm hungry", and I think a lot of people do the same, but it's really hard to explain to people that just like they look for the most convenient words or comparisons to think about something, people who are fluent in more that one language look for the most appropriate language to sort out their thoughts.
I agree. I grew up monolingual, but even then I realized that thought is merely expressed and organized in language.
I got to the idea that language wasn't involved because I could play video games that I had effectively memorized in my head; I wondered about how I expressed the mechanics, visuals, and music in my mind.
When I started programming I would think of my plan without English and then go over the details in English. Knowing that I use English to organize ideas was what caused me to push at Japanese in a similar manner.
I've personally found that forcing simple Japanese thought went a long way to causing me to be able to use it and associate the Japanese with the actual meaning, and making it much easier to drop the English double-check.
that explains a lot, people always tell me I have a knack for languages, but I never see it. But that might be because I got fluent in English by pure input from youtube.
This video is gold. This is exactly what happened to me with my Japanese. When I began to unconsciously understand japanese I was really uncomfortable with the idea I had understood what I was seeing / listening to.
I thought for a long time that maybe I didn't really understand what they said to me / whatever I was reading or listening to. So, in order to double check it, I ended up translating it into italian (that is my native language).
I mean, I am able to unconsciously understand English, so I should have realized what Matt is saying in this video by myself, but for whatever reason I couldn't. Maybe it was because I was so obsessed with the thinking that japanese is so so difficult that I had a kind of "reverence" towards it.
I'll take the advice, Matt. Thank you for this video. It's enlightening for sure
mistaking piece saying the vase is a light illustrated your point perfectly!
I think this is actually one of the most important things to grasp if one is trying to learn another language, but most people aren't aware of it.
When I was learning Japanese (currently learning French atm) I remember trying to adopt the syntax of Japanese expressions in my head and even going to far as to welcome the particles as guidestones of thought (like tagging words in a sentence to by hyper-specific) rather than complications of grammar.
That helped a little; but the biggest advancement in my language learning was when I actively rejected the temptation to translate in my head or even think in terms of grammar or structure.
Instead I looked at the language and what I was hearing as imaginative experience and concepts in my head (rather than associating it back to a word I learned in my native tongue).
example: 林檎 is a common fruit (red or green) that you've likely encountered, so envision the object and the plant that it comes from in space and time; don't think "apple". It's that thing you're accustomed to, not [ˈæp.əl]. Or to put it like Alan Watts did, a thing is not the sound you make for the word that was invented, it is simply what it is in reality.
林檎 is a pretty bad example because I usually eat apples without peeling off or chopping them, but I've seen anime characters almost always eat sliced apples instead of whole apples.
This video is legit: Return to monke, be like your ancestor million years ago, and just forget the concept of language
This is fascinating. I’ve always suspected this is true. I’ve read that children don’t have memories before a certain age because they don’t yet have the language needed to form memories. However: I have a vivid memory of something that happened when I was 9 months old (confirmed to have happened by my parents when I related it to them - and it was nothing that the ever told me about, or would have had a reason to). Also, Helen Keller wrote about things that happened in her life and the great frustration she experienced before the seminal moment when she realized that there was word for water.
Thank you for this video and I’m so happy I found and subscribed to your channel yesterday - I’m about to binge-watch your content.
Brenda Paduch Is it different for people who learn to speak very early? I have memories going back to between age two and a half and three.
I resonate with what you said. This especially becomes strange when things don’t directly translate, and I can’t translate it into English well even though I understood what the target language said.
This guy blows my mind
This is a really interesting video, I'm at a point now where sometimes I'm not sure if I understood a piece of content because I translated it, or I just understood it as I received it. I hadn't heard someone say what you just did, that you will begin to understand your target language directly, but then use translation afterwards to double-check to see if you're right. I realize now that this has definitely started to happen to me.
I might have to read that Steven Pinker book, this topic is fascinating.
This is a realization I came to very recently while teaching myself Japanese
Less ridiculous message: words are the main vehicle for thought and are a great help to it. But there is thought detached from them. And it seems like as you learn more than one language then this becomes increasingly evident. Matt want's us to cultivate our mentalese.
I've had this happen while studying a foreign language. I'll read a sentence in a foreign language, understand it completely but then I'll have to repeat back to myself in english just to convince myself that I truly did understand it.
You're right, now that I think about it. I always thought I was thinking in words in a literal sense. But I think in concepts and then I use the most appropriate language to express the concept or thought. That's why I end up feeling that I have to mix English, Arabic, and Japanese in a single sentence sometimes to express the EXACT thought I want. Because when I translate into a single language I end up altering what I wanted to say originally. Doesn't help that I use all three languages daily.
Interesting video! I had no idea "Mentalese" was a thing.
For me this this became clear when I realized that I could have a fully completed thought that I found myself explaining to myself in my head.
I literally have that thought all the time! I'll think a thought before I think all the words and as I'm voicing it in my head I'm like bro why even, I already know what in about to think
I agree. I'm also always kind of stupefied when people ask me in what language I think and they're shocked when I tell them that I don't think in language.
When you're proficient in two or more languages and read or listen to something, you usually can't even remember in what language that input was even though you can remember the content (of course, there can be clues like knowing the author writes/ speaks usually in a specific language, but that's not remembering, that's deducting). That also shows perfectly that you don't think in language and the language is only the tool to transmit the content.
There is an exception, and that is when you think about communicating with other people, then you already mentally translate from mentalese to the language you're going to use with the people. But that's not really thinking in the language, that's thinking about speaking.
Huh! This is something I seemed to have intuitively stumbled across. From my onset of studying a target language (TL) I had this idea that I didn't want to create correlations between words in my NL and words in my TL (Part of this was spurred by some resources I found which talked about unique features of a language and, in my mind, made it abundantly clear that not everything *could* be translated)
My idea was to use flash cards as a learning tool, containing only the TL along with some depiction of an idea, whether it be a noun, verb, or adjective. My goal was to mentally attach the word in my TL to the idea in my mind. What I didn't have, was a term to describe this raw understanding, or "Mentalese". Thank you for that!
I mostly agree with you and Pinker here that people think in "mentalese" for the most part but I also think there's a significant extra layer of language-based direct experience on top of that. For instance, I often hear myself say many of my own thoughts, or imagine conversations with others and hear the thoughts in English. Being a mindfulness practitioner, I often let these go and focus on the present but I do hear language in my mind pretty regularly. Whether you consider that to be part of thought or just an extra layer on top of thought is up for debate I suppose. I do think that our language gives rise to deeper internal structures that influence our "mentalese". Having a well-defined word for something lets you store it as a concept that you can then interact with without necessarily having to use the actual word. In other words, learning new words can in turn increase your mentalese vocabulary, especially when it's a concept that you wouldn't have been able to think of otherwise. Anyway, I loved the video, keep up the great work!
Excellent video, explaining the very essence of what fluency means, at least to me (not CEFR level, JLPT level, not even literacy level). Many thanks for pointing that book out: I need to add it to my "to read list". I wish I had known this kind of reference all those times people retorted to me that I could not possibly be thinking in no language.
Edited to add: I guess it's harder for monolinguals to grasp this kind of view.