[UA] OT: Thought and Language

[James Palmer]

>  When I
> > formulate a thought in my head I am usually fully aware that I had the
>idea
> > in image or associative form before that, but it gets real only when put
> > into words.
>
>Writing aside, thinking in words felt utterly false to me; an unneccesary
>and redundant to the near-instantaneous process of constructing and
>comprehending my thoughts.
>
>(And even when writing, I only think in words when I get to the grunt stage
>of sticking words onto paper/screen. All the plots, characters, themes and
>whatnot are developed in this non-verbal form of thinking.)
>
>Anyone else think like this?
>

I'm the complete opposite of Patrick; I think only in words, even if the 
thought refers to a picture or a place.  Even my memories get reworked into 
sentences, unless I really focus.  Normally in two or three streams of 
thought working against each other, like snakes coiling round the cadaceus, 
so that I comment on my own thoughts at the same time that I think them.

Now, the thing that unnerves me is the way that if I remember something I 
experienced as a child, all my contemporaries, whether six or eleven or 
fifteen, look like adults in my head.  I have a suspicion that most of our 
memories are in fact memories of memories of memories; reworkings within 
ourselves of our own stories.

And how the hell polyglot people think just throws me.  I have a friend who 
speaks eleven languages, three of them from birth, and she claims that she 
just switches from one to the next as easy as A-B-C.  I'm jealous.

J.

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