[mike_ivanov]

"Speakin' in a different language changes the way you think—it's a well attested phenomenon."

This is wrong. I speak two languages, so I can tell. Learning the second one didn't change the way I think.

[vitno]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

what were the languages? they may be very similar.

[mike_ivanov]

Russian and English. They are quite different, although definitely more similar than say Spanish/Vietnamese.

[noahburney]

Which two? I'm near-fluent in Korean and I definitely think differently when in "Korean mode" than when I'm speaking English. But when I've studied e.g. Norwegian, it's so similar to English that there's not much of a change.

[mike_ivanov]

Russian and English. They are apparently quite different. Nevertheless, I don't even have separate "modes" for the two.

Edit: clarity.

[ihnorton]

It's worth noting that they are from the same linguistic family. Having studied Latin, to me Russian seemed pretty familiar conceptually once I got past the whole cyrillic thing. I am admittedly nowhere near fluent, and I realize the experience would be different for someone without previous 2nd-language exposure.

About the modes, did you by chance have Russian exposure during childhood (guessing based on your id)... that might account for some degree of integration even if you only became fluent later.

[mike_ivanov]

Russian is my native language. I picked up English when I was about 30. Also I learned some German in school, but I can't speak it.