| Thinking in a language other than your first, native language? Don't try to fool yourself. Thinking in a second language is possible as long as you don't run into a dead end in your thought process, e.g. if you lack a particular word. That happens to me all the time. I try to think in English as often and as much as I can, but whenever I run into a dead end I have to re-phrase my thoughts in German and then re-translate the German sentence into English. That works b'cos German-English translation can be done quickly and easily. Whenever I think in Chinese and run into a dead end, there's no way escaping from it b'cos Chinese-English or Chinese-German translation doesn't work mechanically. Therefore it's really hard for me to imagine a mainland Chinese to really be able to THINK in English unless he grew up in a bilingual environment. Even some Chinese returnees from top U.S. universities are unable to think in English. They are very proficient, or in some cases even fluent in English, but that doesn't mean they think in English. |
Thinking in English or Chinese