
On Living and Thinking in Two Languages at Once - skadamou
http://lithub.com/on-living-and-thinking-in-two-languages-at-once/
======
luckydata
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.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Frankly when I first moved to the UK (~7 years ago) I tried to stay way closer
to the classical archetypes of the society that are implied from the
literature/movies I had seen; than I do now (let's call them the "visible"
traits).

I then realised that while some of the stylistic mistakes I make when I try to
be more "myself" in the language are a function of my own personality and not
the lack of knowledge of the language (for example, I would be making the same
stylistic mistake in Russian just as much as I would be making the same one in
English).

Over time you also tend to note that most of the native speakers don't really
know their language beyond the context in which they were born. So you do
sound stylistically weird to them, but not due to you not knowing the
language.

Later on you find people that could have found a way better recognition in
your own country than you yourself if they were to move there.

So I would not go as far as saying that it's "more frustrating" to not speak
your own language. Culture is quite a non-linear concept imo.

BTW: I was born in Lithuania to Russian parents. So to be frank the definition
of the culture I belong to has always been quite vague for me.

~~~
gerdesj
"Over time you also tend to note that most of the native speakers don't really
know their language beyond the context in which they were born. So you do
sound stylistically weird to them, but not due to you not knowing the
language."

Fair enough but you do have to also allow for the fact that there are many
strata to any language. There is no such thing as a regular en_GB. I'm English
as in I live in England but I make use of a weird amalgam of dialects as well
as regular "English". Perhaps that is the thing - a regular bedrock, which
when deviated from marks out a non native speaker.

When I say bedrock, I mean shared knowledge about the way things are done in a
particular place. For example you should be familiar with how to deal with
weather conversations. Britons are not really fixated about the weather (OK we
are!) but it is an easy way to spark up a conversation with a stranger or
break the ice when conversation is faltering. The rules are very simple:
mention the weather eg "will this rain ever stop" or "lovely morning" and then
wait for the response and follow the formula. It is quite acceptable to
respond with something like "yes", "typical", "t" and simply move on but
friendly contact has been made. However if you have time to kill or whatever
you will follow the formula. Now the full formula is quite involved but is
known by every single Briton, without exception. It also works in Ireland
(Eire) in its entirety (tested by me).

The weather thing is quite well known about but there are quite a few other
cultural oddities around here that you might be oblivious to. Does this mean
anything to you: "fork handles"/"four candles"?

Good skills on moving a fair few 100 miles from home, taking on a foreign
language and integrating into a foreign culture.

Are you really frank? He owes me £20.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Oh yes, absolutely. "The bedrock" is what defines the culture.

But it's quite a vague predictor for whether you're going to build a good
business together; or whether your jokes about other cultures or sex would be
perceived as racist, ironic or simply a matter of pragmatism; or what is
acceptable as part of your personal life.

Honestly I find the perceived notion of having a shared culture is detrimental
to actually realising that you disagree on many deeper important issues.

For example, many of my current middle-class co-workers were quite surprised
by the results of the Brexit referendum, while it wasn't that clear to me as
I've spend a fair amount of time in Leeds hanging out with the working class
or working for a few supposedly full of middle-class media agencies. They
didn't tend to be too humble to share what they actually thought of being a
part of the EU, while they were quite humble at sharing this with their
friends (shy tories, etc.?).

Besides, I would never agree I know British culture in it's full depth. It's
funny you mentioned "fork handles"/"four candles" \- which is exactly the
thing a friend of mine said this weekend. I just Googled it. A culture
enthusiast would follow this up with a binge of the show.

But this still does not make a foreign speaker seem more genuine if he
suddenly starts speaking northern accent, uses common grammatical variations
(I was/I were) or borrows from a local vocabulary. Neither does it do any good
for someone northern to come to London and try to negotiate a contract with
someone of South African descent without any appreciation for a more common
pronunciation or cultural grounds (although well - aren't they both
practically British?).

------
rocqua
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'.

~~~
davedx
Hah! I also learned French in High School, but then much later in life I
learned Dutch. Now whenever I go to France and try to speak French, Dutch
words push out the French words in my head, sometimes too fast for me to stop
from actually saying them in the middle of an already dubious French sentence.
It's quite infuriating.

Usually I do still know the word in French, but the Dutch words are always so
much closer to the surface.

I love living in Europe :)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I get the same thing, try to recall a German word and a French word pops up.
Interestingly it also happens with BSL (a sign language), I try and recall a
word and the sign pops up; I'm not that accomplished in any language other
than English, perhaps that's related but it struck me that words with the
same/similar meanings across languages must get stored "together" (spatially,
logically, whatever) some how.

------
ad404b8a372f2b9
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.

~~~
rocqua
I shouted 'fuck' my first time in an airplane taking off. It was a surprising
G-force and the surprise made me swear.

Thing is, we were on a flight to Ireland. It was not appreciated. I think this
is basically how you were raised. My parents didn't consider it a horrible
word, so I didn't either. I kinda learned that day, but it still carries much
less weight than 'godverdomme'.

~~~
dghf
Next time you find yourself in that situation, try shouting "feck" instead,
which is regarded as a fairly mild swearword (indeed, barely a swearword at
all).

Not being Irish, I'd never heard of it until I first saw _Father Ted_ [0], and
was initially shocked at the characters uttering what I assumed was a
dialectical variant of "fuck" every five minutes.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Ted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Ted)

~~~
gerdesj
Good advice and I was going to suggest it myself.

To anyone wishing to swear in English (as a second language), "feck" is a very
good choice to try and make as your instinctive choice. It really is not
offensive - I suspect it might be based on the word feckless, rather than fuck
but then I'm English and not Irish and have no idea. Perhaps it is an
Anglicization of a Gaelic word.

~~~
jansho
Or to go even milder: _" Effing heck!"_

------
williamdclt
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?

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, you are. It seems to me that most people think in language, to the point
where it's weird if you tell them you don't think in one. I used to think in
language too (yes, I actually did have a voice narrating my thoughts inside my
head), but I grew out of it.

I realize now that the thoughts are happening anyway, and that narrating them
was just a way for my brain to be kept busy (ie the narration doesn't really
matter). I was trying to explore this the other day, and managed to think
complex thoughts related to solving a work problem entirely without language,
while listening to an audiobook. Listening to the book probably helped, as my
brain was half too busy understanding it to form its own speech.

~~~
warent
English is my only language. When I read, I definitely narrate each word in my
head. But something very interesting that your post has just brought me to
realize is that I read code very differently from plain English. In fact, I
barely have any mental narration for code at all; mostly it's this morphing
blob of mental imagery and intuition.

Maybe this explains in part why, while I'm a very slow plain-English reader, I
actually read/parse code faster than average.

~~~
Cerium
The narration might not be mental at all. Many people speak without breathing
while reading, you will notice it is your throat gets sore or tired after a
long session reading a good book.

------
CodeMage
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
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
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.

~~~
VeejayRampay
Grew up in the suburbs of Paris, surrounded by people mostly born here but
generally from parents who immigrated from Maghreb, that French / dialectal
Arabic mix is the BEST, I just love not understanding what's going on in a
sentence and suddenly "tilifoun" "pain au chocolat" pop up in there, MAGIC.

~~~
Jugurtha
That's interesting you like it. Speakers always make fun of it as a duct-tape
language (Arabic, Berber, French, Turkish, Spanish, and Italian).

Interestingly, as a student of Hebrew, Algerian is much closer to Hebrew than
to Arabic MSA. Arabic suffixes a word with one or two letters for possessive,
for example "House[letter that communicates subject]", whereas Hebrew and
Algerian create a structure that goes like "The house of mine/his".

Learning Hebrew, Arabic makes it easier for a lot of words but Algerian
structure makes me "get it".

------
chillacy
> 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
> directly

There is an interesting effect where we tend to be more rational and less
emotional in our second language:
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094842)

> 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
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
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] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzofanti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzofanti)

[2] - [https://www.amazon.com/Babel-No-More-Extraordinary-
Language/...](https://www.amazon.com/Babel-No-More-Extraordinary-
Language/dp/1451628250/)

~~~
Todd
Another great polyglot was Sir Richard Francis Burton [1]. Not only did he
speak more than 20 languages, but he led an incredible life. Edward Rice wrote
a great biography [2] (although I read the earlier edition). Burton himself
wrote a great deal as well [3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Sir-Richard-Francis-
Burton/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Sir-Richard-Francis-
Burton/dp/030681028X)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton_bibliog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton_bibliography)

------
ahakki
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).

~~~
otoburb
Do you technically know more than one flavour of German (e.g. switzerdeutsch
vs. High German)? Are they much different in terms of practical day-to-day
speaking to allow for different thought patterns?

~~~
anarazel
I used to be able to speak schweizerdeutsch, but unlearned speaking it
sometime in my youth due to disuse. I can't remember switching to it in my
head, but it might just have been my age. I definitely do a fair amount of
thinking in English (not when cooking and cleaning ;)).

------
iagooar
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
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
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
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
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.

------
ww520
The easiest way to live and think in multiple languages is swearing in them.

