What language do you think in?

[KingKhazi]

If you're first language is not English but you speak English the majority of the time, what language do you think in? I've always wondered this!

I once shared a hostel room with a German girl whilst backpacking. She talked in her sleep and she spoke English then! She had spent months backpacking in an English speaking country though so had been speaking English a lot.

English if I'm i thinking of a situation where the people I interact with speak English. My mother tongue when it's something to do with my family and friends back home. Most of the time is English because where I live nobody speaks my mother tongue. I only realised of this recently as someone asked me that question. Same for dreams!

Great question. I had to think about this. I’m bilingual and my thoughts are in English. Probably because I speak English more fluently and so can articulate my thoughts better.

Frenglish

English. But when I visit my native country I flip between the two like I do with speaking. Dreams always English though!

You always switch to your mothertongue language when counting!

A mixture! Like I’ll even think of some words in English and some words in my other language within the same sentence/thought. And then some thoughts aren’t even in words/language.

My dreams are a mixture as well but tend more to the language I am most immersed in, ie English at the moment as I’m in the U.K., as most of my dreams seem to be processing the day’s events.

I remember my uncle saying that he knew he was properly fluent/bilingual when he started dreaming in his adopted langauge.

English. I rarely speak my native language so English is what comes naturally to me, even in my thoughts. Apparently I sleep talk in English as well and I'm pretty sure I dream in English.

A mixture, as pps have said depends on the context and sometimes the emotion attached to the thought/dream. I swear in English, I have a far superior vocabulary in English swear words.

English but count in my first language.

Depends on what the subject is. Work tends to be thinking in English whereas home life is French. Dreams again depends on what subject is! I speak 4 languages but English and French are truly bi-lingual. People laugh at us as our family conversations are in Franglais which we all speak perfectly.

Plot twist...im English and when I was a child I remember the moment the accent that I "think in" changed. I'd moved from the north west to the south west at 8 years old. At 10 years old I was reading a book and realised my internal dialogue accent had gone from a northern to a west country accent

English is DH's second la fuage but he's been here 20 years now and says he thinks and dreams in English

I was an Au Pair in Belgium after my A-levels. I only had A-Level french and I wasn’t really fluent. However after two weeks I began dreaming in French. I was well chuffed! French is my third language.

Urdu, no dreams etc ever happen in English, the voice in my head isn’t in English either.

It depends. I work in English so thinking about work is in English. Day to day stuff is in the native language mostly. If it has to do with my English husband I think in English again.
I speak a third language, too, which I don’t use that much. If I am in a country where it is used, it takes me 2-3 days and I switch to thinking in that language.

When I lived in Germany I dreamt and thought in German but now I’m in England I do everything in English. It just depends on which country you’re in and which language you use most.

Bilingual, but think in English. I do use English all the time (unless speaking to older relatives).

Mostly English but I count and maths in my mother tongue

Always in my mother tongue.
I only use English when I'm out of the house or at work, and on here obviously.

I'm always so envious of the people so skilled in languages on these threads. I can barely speak English, let alone another language!

I dreamed in French when living in France.
While living in another country where my grasp of the language was conversational but not great, I realised I was having dreams where the other characters spoke in the host country's language - almost certainly with all the mistakes I made in real life 😂