and unaccountably lapsed into Klingon from three to five PM on weekdays
Hmmm. Well, I don’t speak Klingon, but I am bilingual (English/Afrikaans); my inner monologue runs in English all the time in general but, after reading this, I decided to try running it in Afrikaans for a bit. Just to see what happens. Now, my Afrikaans is substantially poorer than my English (largely, I suspect, due to lack of practice).
My inner monologue switches languages very quickly on command; however, there are some other interesting differences that happen. First of all, my inner monologue is rather drastically slowed down. I have a definite sense of having to wait for my brain to look up the right word to describe the concept I mean; that is, there is a definite sense that I know what I am thinking before I wrap it in the monologue. (This is absent when my internal monologue is in the default English; possibly because my English monologue is fast enough that I don’t notice the delay). I think that that delay is the first time that I’ve noticed anticipatory thinking in my own head without the monologue.
There’s also grammatical differences between the two languages; an English sentence translated to Afrikaans will come out with a different word order (most of the time). This has its effect on my internal monologue as well; there’s a definite sense of the meanings being delivered to my language centres (or at least to the word-looking-up part thereof) in the order that would be correct for an English sentence, and the language centre having to hold certain meanings in a temporary holding space (or something) until I get to the right part of the sentence.
I also notice that my brain slips easily back into the English monologue; that’s no doubt due mainly to force of habit, and did not come as a surprise.
Hmmm. Well, I don’t speak Klingon, but I am bilingual (English/Afrikaans); my inner monologue runs in English all the time in general but, after reading this, I decided to try running it in Afrikaans for a bit. Just to see what happens. Now, my Afrikaans is substantially poorer than my English (largely, I suspect, due to lack of practice).
My inner monologue switches languages very quickly on command; however, there are some other interesting differences that happen. First of all, my inner monologue is rather drastically slowed down. I have a definite sense of having to wait for my brain to look up the right word to describe the concept I mean; that is, there is a definite sense that I know what I am thinking before I wrap it in the monologue. (This is absent when my internal monologue is in the default English; possibly because my English monologue is fast enough that I don’t notice the delay). I think that that delay is the first time that I’ve noticed anticipatory thinking in my own head without the monologue.
There’s also grammatical differences between the two languages; an English sentence translated to Afrikaans will come out with a different word order (most of the time). This has its effect on my internal monologue as well; there’s a definite sense of the meanings being delivered to my language centres (or at least to the word-looking-up part thereof) in the order that would be correct for an English sentence, and the language centre having to hold certain meanings in a temporary holding space (or something) until I get to the right part of the sentence.
I also notice that my brain slips easily back into the English monologue; that’s no doubt due mainly to force of habit, and did not come as a surprise.