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by PhantomGremlin 1582 days ago
I think in English exclusively

But can you still think in your native language if you try to?

I was born in the USA, a child of immigrants. So I didn't speak English until perhaps 3 or 4 years old.

But I can still think in my native language if I really try.

1 comments

I can think in Russian, but with a 5th-grader-like vocabulary I'm missing out on ways of articulating some things. It also takes effort. And now that I'm trying it out as an experiment - it feels like I have a concept/idea, and then I'm simply trying to narrate it.

I speak Russian to parents and my brother, but it often feels like I have a concept I want to articulate and have to use a bunch of non-SAT words to vaguely gesture at what I want to say; or, I simply don't know a word like "easel" in Russian and feel like I'm playing the game "taboo" :P

I think naturally I gravitated out of thinking in Russian since it's too much effort for no payoff. One thing I miss about Russian are all the prefixes you can add to a verb, like "drive over", "drive into", etc are accomplished with short prefixes: "pere-" or "v-". It doesn't sound like much, but when you can apply the dozen-ish prefixes to the word "fuck" you realize the potential English is missing ;)