If English is your second language, what language do you think in?

Answer 1

Swedish is my first language. I live in the US now, and have for 9 years. I think in both swedish and english. Sometimes I dream in Spanish. And I love that I am so great at speaking spanish in my dreams, and wish that i actually spoke that much in real life.

Answer 2

English is my third language actually, but I suppose it's as good as my second one, French. I think in my first language, Dutch, but I think sometimes in French and English when I want to improve them or so and sometimes I don't notice it when I am thinking in another language, I just seem to do it from time to time

Answer 3

My first language is Italian.

I speak: Italian, English, French, Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish.

With my two main languages Italian and English I think in the language I am using. With the others I think in the language that is more closely associated with it.

For Latin based languages I think Italian. For Germanic based languages I think in English.

Answer 4

I had a very turbulent youth, in that sense that my parents moved a lot around in Europe while I started going to school. My first language I ever started to talk fluently was German, although my sister was a year older and always spoke in French. My parents were very consequent and always spoke Dutch to us. At that time I can’t remember whether I thought in German or not, but the next place we lived was Sweden, and there was no Int’l school, so we were forced to go to school in Swedish. I remember myself thinking in Swedish, although we never spoke it amongst the family. As 80% of my time was being spent with friends, I ‘became’ a Swede.
Later on, I returned back to Belgium and went to the army as an officer and thus bilingual, and I trained myself to think in the language you speak…
Even my children speak fluently English, French, Arabic and some Dutch, but when my two daughters play together and they do some mental work like counting objects, I can hear them whisper in Arabic when together and English when they aren’t. Amazing but not unusual…
I spoke with psychologists and pedagogues and a human mind can assimilate up to six languages until the age of six, and at that age the mind is flexible enough to start thinking in the language that’s being used the most at that time

Answer 5

I live in Hong Kong and my first language is Cantonese. However as English is taught from the very first day kids born, many people, including me, have acquired near-native English abilities.

Okay back to the question: it really depends. Since Chinese and English are such different languages, you can hardly mix them in thinking. So when I am processing materials in English, I think in English (just as I am doing now) ; and when I'm processing Chinese, my thoughts are purely Chinese.

Answer 6

English is my 1st language, but I think in a mixture of english, irish and french, because I study those languages and tend to forget words, so I fill them in with words from other languages.

Answer 7

Maddison R: It's spelled qui. I'm not even going to talk about the rest of your deplorable spelling.
My sister, even though she is a hearing person, only thinks of the alphabet and numbers in sign language. She can think of thhose faster than she can think of the actual letters or numbers.
When I asked my friend who's first language is Mandarin Chinese, she said she dreamt in english, unless she was dreaming about China. So I think if she was speaking in English she would think in English, same for Chinese. Or maybe when talking to her parents and Boyan and other ppl she knew in China.
I get stuck speaking and thinking like whatever book I'm reading, even if it's old English.

Answer 8

I think in both English and Spanish depending on the situation. Also, I dream in both languages ;)

Answer 9

Clearly I do think in English now instead of translating into it coz live for 6 years in the UK but my mother tongue is Polish, was extremely good in Russian, working seriously in Foreign Trade Enterprises and travelling and same about my Spanish, as I lived in Spain for 3 years and gave private lessons. Now am on my way to perfection English. What about author of the question?

Answer 10

Generally I think in Polish (my mother tongue) but sometimes I think in English just because there are some expressions which fit better in a given situation. Besides, it's a great exercise to think in a foreign language, if you want to learn it.

Answer 11

My first language is Afrikaans, but I sometimes find myself thinking in English. Sometimes I dream in German or French and am quite surprised about how much more fluent I am in my third and fourth languages when I'm dreaming.