If you grew up speaking different language (and still speak it) do you think in that language?

Question

my mom grew up speaking tagalog (a dialect of the filipino language--she can still speak it), but speaks english now (fluently and almost without an accent). i asked her one day if she thought in tagalog, and she realized that she did. i'm wondering if this is the same for the majority of people who grow up speaking a language other than english.

Answer 1

I grew up speaking english but sometimes I catch myself thinking in portuguese (because my wife's from brazil and we speak it at home). I dream in portuguese a lot too.

Answer 2

Well, there are really weird cases of this kind of thing happening. When I was young I knew my Parents native language(Malayalam) which is similar to Tamil. I used to speak in that all the time. School eventually replaced this with English. Now I think in English. I can still speak the other language, but not as well. The weird thing is, I started taking Spanish in school. We were learning the numbers in Spanish, and on the quiz I began counting in Malayalam.I guess the number system from Malayalam was the one thing in that language that I didn't have some difficulty with, so it stayed.

Answer 3

It is true, I was born in Colombia and there i learn Spanish and a little English and then me and my family moved to the Philippines and there i learned Tagalog and i perfected my English and now i live in Japan where i am learning japanese. At present my English is better than my Spanish since i have not spoken it for so long, but i still think in my native language, Spanish.

Also my parents used to tell me that no matter how many languages you know, you should always count money and pray in your own language, because it the only way to feel it.

also, try saying bad words in your non native language and you wont feel them, but when you say the same bad word in your own language, you feel it.
good luck.

Answer 4

I was born in the US speaking english, and then learned spanish when i moved to argentine. At first i did think all in english, and sorta just translated my thoughts to be able to speak but once I developped better fluency it was a lot more efficient and a lot easier just to think in spanish. However it is one of those things where, i will think in the language that i am speaking. I currently am learning brazilian portuguese, and without even knowing a lot of the words i can almost start thinking in portuguese just because i have learned the art of thinking in multiple languages. I would recommend that all people learning foreign languages learn to think in the foreign language because your speaking will be much more fluent (it will flow together better) and a lot of times if you are translating everything in your mind so that you can speak it...you will either speak slower or you will wear yourself out faster

Answer 5

Well, I grew up speaking English only, and learned Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Spanish, some Arabic and some Italian later. I realized that when speaking in any other language, I think in English first. I personally think that thinking in any other language than your native language is impossible.

Answer 6

The majority of people will think in their native language even if they have learned and/or speak fluently in another language. Sometimes they can make themselves think in the second language, but they will most likely think in their primary language due to the fact that they know and understand it better, plus it is a direct correlation of the person to the language because it is one of the first things the person learns.

Answer 7

Most of the time I don't really notice in which language I think or dream. It happens that I forget in which language I have seen a movie or read an article.
I grew up speaking only German and now 90% of my conversations are in American.

Answer 8

I think in my birth language, (English) but i've learned many languages over the years. I think english most of the but, i will sometimes think of something in Spanish while i am thinking in english at the same time. If that makes any sense. I would believe thou that many people refer back to their original language when thinking.

Answer 9

I actually grew up mostly on English, but as I started to learn Spanish early on, I learned to think in that language too, so actually I think in both, but English a little more.

Answer 10

Hard to say, mainly in English but sometimes in my home language, Russian. If someone asks me a question in Russian I'll think in Russian and then reply.
It often depends on the mood.