I am not sure if that is unique for bilingual people or it's common. And I can't help thinking "if i'm not thinking in either language, what am I thinking with? Piyush Ranjan - You have interesting questions about being productive without language. Language is something that's taught to us after we born. It is not innate. I was wondering if there's an alternative to languages?
Could we have been more productive without words? As English is not my first language, I find difficult to put my thoughts into words, and this makes me wonder - is language really required?
We could have improved non-verbal communication technique which is more universal. Leekley - That's a good example of alternatives to using words and full sentences. The languages you refer to that make it difficult to label or judge might not have a need for that based on their social norms. This is a fascinating topic. Google on Buzan Mind Mapping for a way to take notes—to save the main ideas of a lecture, a meeting, a phone call, etc. I have heard of languages that have no to be verbs.
This makes it difficult to label and judge others. Sue Adams - I didn't know what you meant by being a very lonely existence if we don't need language to think. The way I see it, it would be very lonely if we didn't have language to communicate. Any language would do. Even sign language for the deaf provides the ability to communicate and socialize. But that's getting off the subject since my focus here was about thinking, not communicating.
I did just read your article dealing with communicating with different languages and I found it very interesting. I think we all agree that, since the thought come first, to then, if necessary, be communicated in language, we don't need language to think. But that would be a very lonely existence.
Check out my latest article, just published yesterday: Hidden Secrets of Languages. Sue Adams - These are true points you brought up. But how does that relate to using some form of language to think? You're kind of contradicting your comment you left a year ago. Sure, animals make their needs known. But do they actually use sentences in their thinking process?
Do they have fully formed thoughts and concerns? Or are they functioning on instinct? What about Koko the Gorilla who learned sign language? Birds too chatter away endlessly in the large tree beside my house at dusk. Of course animals can think. On the other hand, animals don't see time as we do. They have no concept of past and future. They always live in the present. And even after formal language began, it continues to develop and change.
Webster constantly has to add new words to the dictionary. And the same goes for any language. Fascinating article, Glenn. If you go far back in time, you learn that human beings communicated long before they developed formal languages, and they managed just fine.. Concepts comes first, then language. It is really that simple. For instance, I am one of those people who didn't start talking until I was like 3 or 4.
I communicated in the following fashion as my mothers has told me. If I wanted to say the Cat Drank Water. I would make the meow sound of a cat. This equals the concept of cat that was formed in my mind through my perception, a cat meowed, so I meowed. To say drink I actually did the lapping motion with my tongue, that is how a cat drank, so that is what I did.
Then finally and this might sound the oddest, is to say water, I did a burping a sound, as that was the sound that occurred when water came out of a hose, thus I associated that sound with water since I heard it and water came out. This process and relation of concept formation and language is actually studied quite extensively if you are interested, and are don't go in with preconceived bias, by Ayn Rand in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
Danette, I find that very interesting. But it makes sense that both you and your son have similar ways of thinking since he is from your genes. I think faster than I can type. A variation of what you said. But for the same reason. My thoughts are sometimes conceptual and I have to translate it into grammatical phrases when I type.
As humans evolve, maybe someday we'll have keyboards with concepts rather than letters. Thanks for your delightful comment. Sue Adams said, "the process of thinking is much quicker than language. My younger son and I both talk very fast.
I've managed to slow down somewhat because I've started teaching a couple years ago and had to for my students. He's planning to go into teaching too so I hope he slows down. But I commented to him one day that I think a lot faster than I can talk.
I often think in "phrases," concepts, images and he agreed he does the same thing. Very interesting topic. Language is not an easy subject to grasp because it can be so philosophical and abstract. Nicely done. I love your idea that "Words translate thought into language. In addition, words help us organize our thoughts that were already initiated in our brains.
Being that you had learned several languages, your account of that is testimony to the fact that we think, first, without words. I enjoyed reading your entire explanation. Your comment adds a whole lot of useful examples to my Hub. Thanks so much for adding your insight. I am sure it will help others understand what I had been trying to explain. Only to some extent. We have shown that damage to the language system within an adult human brain leaves most other cognitive functions intact.
However, when it comes to the language-thought link across the entire lifespan, the picture is far less clear. While available evidence is scarce, it does indicate that some of the cognitive functions discussed above are, at least to some extent, acquired through language. Perhaps the clearest case is numbers. Another way to examine the influence of language on cognition over time is by studying cases when language access is delayed.
Deaf children born into hearing families often do not get exposure to sign languages for the first few months or even years of life; such language deprivation has been shown to impair their ability to engage in social interactions and reason about the intentions of others. Thus, while the language system may not be directly involved in the process of thinking, it is crucial for acquiring enough information to properly set up various cognitive domains.
Even after her stroke, our patient Sue will have access to a wide range of cognitive abilities. Language gives us symbols we can use to fix ideas, reflect on them and hold them up for observation. It allows for a level of abstract reasoning we wouldn't have otherwise.
The philosopher Peter Carruthers has argued that there is a type of inner, explicitly linguistic thinking that allows us to bring our own thoughts into conscious awareness. We may be able to think without language, but language lets us know that we are thinking.
BY Arika Okrent. That John will eat, no doubt. But if I draw your attention to the exception that if John does not have food then John will not eat , then you might be tempted to withdraw your conclusion, and perhaps qualify it by concluding instead that if John has food, then John will eat. But suppose that I am performing a psychological experiment, and instead of stating the exception, I state that if John has food then John will eat.
Do you then conclude that I really mean that John will literally eat all the food in the house, no matter whether he is hungry or not? Or am I trying to draw your attention to the exception, without stating it explicitly? What should you do? Take me at my word or try to work out what was in my head? As far as I know, no one has carried out this experiment, but psychologists have carried out similar experiments. Here is the most famous. Suppose I tell you that if Mary has an essay to write, then she will study late in the library [And] Mary has an essay to write , what do you conclude?
That Mary will study late in the library, of course.
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