A friend who was visiting from the United States listened to me speaking Turkish with merchants in the Grand Bazaar and then translating our negotiations in Turkish into English for his benefit. “How do you talk in one language and then translate into another one so quickly?” he asked. “What language do you think in while you're talking?” |
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Until he asked me this, I had not given much thought to which language I function in while speaking. I explained that when conversing in Turkish, I think in Turkish, and when using English, I think in English. Because my friend is monolingual, he found it intriguing that people who speak two or more languages are able to think in a language that is not their native tongue. My son and I both were raised speaking two languages at home, so for both of us, as bilinguals from the start, it is normal to think in the language we are using. There is no conscious switching over to another language, but rather, it is an automatic action. Even though I am still far from fluent in Turkish, I often have internal dialogues in Turkish instead of English. I have noticed my son does the same thing, sometimes talking to himself in English, sometimes in Turkish. Both of us also dream in different languages -- my son in Turkish and English, while I dream in English, Spanish, Turkish and sometimes even Arabic. I spoke about this phenomenon with a friend who is a linguist and he explained that this is completely normal and in fact, the desired goal when studying a new language. There is not set amount of time or fluency level that needs to be reached before a student begins to think in another language. It varies from person to person and depends on how much time and effort students put into immersing themselves into the language. For instance, within a few months some students may begin thinking in a new language instead of translating in their head into their native tongue. Other students will take longer. There is no set timeframe, but depends on each individual. When I speak English to the Turkish students in my son's fifth grade class, I can tell that some of them are beginning to think in English, while others are still listening to the English and translating it into Turkish before responding. The students are also now learning German and Mandarin. If they continue with their studies, eventually all the students should be able to switch between all four languages as they become more confident and fluent. It is interesting to watch my son as he begins learning the two new languages. As he grasps new words and phrases in German and Mandarin, he is starting to see objects in different ways. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before he begins to think in another language. Learning a new language is not just about learning the words. Instead, one is required to think with a new set of labels for everything around them. Recognizing this, many language courses use pictures and symbols to illustrate the meanings of new words instead of handing out vocabulary lists with translations into one's native language. Using pictures or symbols to teach words helps students to gradually change the labels they have for the world around them. For instance, when I began learning Turkish, I put notes on items throughout the house with the Turkish name written on it. By seeing the notes every day, I began to think of different objects by the Turkish name without translating it first from English. A table automatically became “masa,” the cupboard became “dolap.” This was my first step in not only learning the vocabulary in Turkish, but also the beginning of thinking in Turkish. Learning to think in a different language is a process that cannot be rushed. It takes time for the mind to adjust to a new language. However, with effort and perseverance, it will happen. Over the many years that I have studied foreign languages, I have felt a sense of accomplishment when I suddenly realized that I was communicating without translating back and forth between my native tongue and the new language. I had found that eventually I not only think in another language, but I begin unconsciously employing the facial expressions and body motions used by native speakers as well. My monolingual friend found it hard to grasp the idea that people can think as well as speak in different languages, but it is a natural occurrence. While I still struggle daily with Turkish, I know that slowly I understand more of what goes on around me. Learning to think in Turkish was a major step in communication. |
Showing posts with label Spanish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanish. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2013
Thinking in different languages
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Thursday, January 31, 2013
How to think in a foreign language (it does NOT “just happen”)
This is a guest post by the author of Life by Experimentation,
Zane, who quantifies the path to self-improvement. He creates
real-life experiments to assess everything from sleeping less to
traveling cheaply in order to live a more productive and skillful life.
He speaks Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French and Arabic with varying
degrees of fluency.
Recently a friend asked me how long it would take before she started
thinking in French. My response was “a week or so.” She was shocked
(and understandably so). We worked on it together and within a week we
were both thinking in the language despite it still being quite new to
us.
Thinking in a foreign language is an important goal that brings you
one giant step closer to becoming fluent. There is also the fact that language and culture are intertwined,
and thinking in your target language is an essential part of being able
to connect with the people you are trying to get to know.
It is not necessarily easy to think in a new language (especially if you’ve never done it before) but it is still simple
– there is no magic here. First time language learners often believe
that if they study long enough and hard enough they will eventually just
start thinking in the target language, as if a switch had been
flipped. This is how I approached it the first time around and it did
work… eventually… kind of.
Now I know better. There are two essential parts of thinking in a language: context and conditioning. If you’re learning your first foreign language you may want to consider learning Esperanto first,
as Benny suggests, in order to become accustomed to thinking in a
foreign language. Once you decide to take the plunge, here are some
things to keep in mind:
Context
Where you are mentally
makes an enormous difference. Just a few hours ago I was having a
conversation in French and the famous surrealist painter Salvador Dalí
came up. I began to talk about the Dalí museum in northern Spain and
before I even realized it I was halfway though a sentence in Spanish.
The act of thinking about that place even for a moment, with all the
signs and people communicating in Spanish, was enough to shift my mental
context.
There are countless examples like this, and not just in foreign languages. In this video in the Economist
a man reverts to the accent of his youth when thinking about his
childhood without even realizing it. Our brains are pattern-matching
machines and one of the major cues they draw upon is that of context.
If you interrupt me while I am doing my Mandarin flashcards, no matter
what language you speak to me in my brain’s first reaction will be to
reach for Chinese – at least until it shifts contexts.
This is exactly why polyglots associate gestures and other cultural
emblems with their language learning. The more context that is
associated with the knowledge the stronger your recollection will be.
One of my hobbies is following the field of neuroscience, but instead of
boring you with all the data let me simply refer to the Wikipedia page on context-based learning and cite two important bits.
1) Context-based memory is the reason retracing your steps is useful when you lose something.
2) From the scientific literature it is concluded, “when a person is
studying, he/she should match the context as best as possible to the
testing context.”
The first and foremost way we can leverage context is to create a language bubble
(even if you’re learning from home where nobody speaks your language).
The goal is to be surrounded by the language as much as possible so it
actually becomes inconvenient to think in your native language. Reading
news and listening to music in this way allows you to begin to develop a
contextual world to live in where everything is tied to your target
language. A language is much more than words, after all.
Conditioning
Thinking in a new language is a decision you can make. If you know even a few dozen key grammar words you can begin to think in your target language thanks largely to the 80/20 rule in language learning. It is easier than speaking in the language because you will not be embarrassed (unless you have a malicious alter-ego). It requires less confidence but more motivation than speaking.
During the early stages you may be using more of your native language
than your target language, and that is fine. You will also probably be
translating at first rather than “thinking fluently,” and that is fine,
too. What is important is that you make a conscious effort to use the target language in your thoughts, not just in your conversations.
To keep up motivation, I highly suggest a journal (digital or analog)
that you keep with you at all times. When you don’t know how to say
(ahem, think) a key word just write it down. At the end of the
day look up the words, or even better, ask a native. You now have a
list of practical vocabulary to learn (instead of studying “shoelaces”
and “aardvark” from a book)! For extra credit, date each entry – you’ll
begin to notice how much smaller your daily lists get (and how much
more esoteric). That’s progress you can see!
If you are ready to put aside your shame (and have understanding
roommates or family members) it is also quite useful to talk to
yourself. Aside from being quite liberating and useful in organizing
your thoughts, it also allows you to practice pronunciation. Sometimes I
even have conversations with myself, acting out different personas
which each speak a different language, in order to practice switching
between languages. I may get strange looks in the street, but this
habit has also been the start of some interesting conversations.
I can promise one thing: if you make a conscious and continuous
effort to think everything you can in your target language, you will
begin to surprise yourself. One day you will hear yourself think “a mi
me encanta” instead of “I like,” and you will not even know where it
came from. The context of thinking in the language will also mean that
you pick up new words that you are exposed to without even realizing it.
A couple times a week now I use a word in a sentence that I don’t
remember studying, yet I am sure I have heard other people say.
Thinking Fluently
The biggest challenge with thinking in the language is the
frustration that comes with not being able to fully express yourself
inside your own head. As I’ve said, it is fine to substitute your
native language where needed at first – but the key to thinking fluently
is your frame of mind. You can choose to become frustrated, succumbing
to perfection paralysis,
or you can choose to see each unknown word as one more key piece in the
fluency puzzle. One day you will wake up from a dream and not even
register that it was not in your native language.
Visualization
Thinking in a foreign language is essentially a form of visualization
or rehearsal that prepares you for the real deal (an actual
conversation). With visualization we can go through the steps of making
an attempt, to identifying a mistake, to correcting it in a very short
period of time. In other words, the feedback loop is very tight. As
researcher Kathryn Schulz points out in this TED video,
being wrong is quite normal and perhaps even good – as long as you
become aware of your mistakes and correct them when possible.
I love discussing all the benefits of visualization. The most astonishing thing is that the brain cannot fundamentally tell the difference between real and imagined action.
One study has shown that the brain sends identical impulses to the
legs when imagining running. In another study, participants who
imagined playing the piano showed nearly identical development in the
motor cortex of the brain as those who actually played the piano. In
short, the brain treats visualization like the real deal.
What does all this mean for us? Well, for one, it means that
thinking in a language is much more relevant than we may have previously
believed. Every thought that passes though your brain has the
potential to act as a mini-exercise in your target language, not just as
passive rehearsal but also as an active exercise. When you add up all
the thoughts you have in a day, the potential for change is quite
impressive.
Have you managed to think in a foreign language? Was your process similar? Let us know below.
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Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational
To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language.
A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and
Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated,
misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are
perceived.
“Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would
in your native tongue?” asked psychologists led by Boaz Keysar of the
University of Chicago in an April 18 Psychological Science study.
“It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices
regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of
using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We
discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language
reduces decision-making biases,” wrote Keysar’s team.
Psychologists say human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that’s systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that’s fast, unconscious and emotionally charged.
'Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language?'
In light of this, it’s plausible that the cognitive demands
of thinking in a non-native, non-automatic language would leave people
with little leftover mental horsepower, ultimately increasing their
reliance on quick-and-dirty cogitation.
Equally plausible, however, is that communicating in a learned language forces people to be deliberate,
reducing the role of potentially unreliable instinct. Research also
shows that immediate emotional reactions to emotively charged words are muted in non-native languages, further hinting at deliberation.
To investigate these possibilities, Keysar’s team developed several
tests based on scenarios originally proposed by psychologist Daniel
Kahneman, who in 2002 won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on prospect theory, which describes how people intuitively perceive risk.
In one famous example, Kahneman showed that, given the hypothetical
option of saving 200 out of 600 lives, or taking a chance that would
either save all 600 lives or none at all, people prefer to save the 200 —
yet when the problem is framed in terms of losing lives, many more people prefer the all-or-nothing chance rather than accept a guaranteed loss of 400 lives.
People are, in a nutshell, instinctively risk-averse when considering gain and risk-taking when faced with loss,
even when the essential decision is the same. It’s a gut-level human
predisposition, and if second-language thinking made people think less
systematically, Keysar’s team supposed the tendency would be magnified.
Conversely, if second-language thinking promoted deliberation, the
tendency would be diminished.
The first experiment involved 121 American students who learned
Japanese as a second language. Some were presented in English with a
hypothetical choice: To fight a disease that would kill 600,000 people,
doctors could either develop a medicine that saved 200,000 lives, or a
medicine with a 33.3 percent chance of saving 600,000 lives and a 66.6
percent chance of saving no lives at all.
Nearly 80 percent of the students chose the safe option. When the
problem was framed in terms of losing rather than saving lives, the
safe-option number dropped to 47 percent. When considering the same
situation in Japanese, however, the safe-option number hovered around 40
percent, regardless of how choices were framed. The role of instinct
appeared reduced.
Two subsequent experiments in which the hypothetical situation
involved job loss rather than death, administered to 144 native Korean
speakers from Korea’s Chung Nam National University and 103 English
speakers studying abroad in Paris, found the same pattern of enhanced
deliberation. “Using a foreign language diminishes the framing effect,”
wrote Keysar’s team.
The researchers next tested how language affected decisions on
matters of direct personal import. According to prospect theory, the
possibility of small losses outweigh the promise of larger gains, a
phenomenon called myopic risk aversion and rooted in emotional reactions to the idea of loss.
The same group of Korean students was presented with a series of
hypothetical low-loss, high-gain bets. When offered bets in Korean, just
57 percent took them. When offered in English, that number rose to 67
percent, again suggesting heightened deliberation in a second language.
To see if the effect held up in real-world betting, Keysar’s team
recruited 54 University of Chicago students who spoke Spanish as a
second language. Each received $15 in $1 bills, each of which could be
kept or bet on a coin toss. If they lost a toss, they’d lose the dollar,
but winning returned the dollar and another $1.50 — a proposition that,
over multiple bets, would likely be profitable.
When the proceedings were conducted in English, just 54 percent of
students took the bets, a number that rose to 71 percent when betting in
Spanish. “They take more bets in a foreign language because they expect
to gain in the long run, and are less affected by the typically
exaggerated aversion to losses,” wrote Keysar and colleagues.
The researchers believe a second language provides a useful cognitive
distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and
reducing unthinking, emotional reaction.
“Given that more and more people use a foreign language on a daily
basis, our discovery could have far-reaching implications,” they wrote,
suggesting that people who speak a second language might use it when
considering financial decisions. “Over a long time horizon, this might
very well be beneficial.”
Citation: “The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue
Reduces Decision Biases.” By Boaz Keysar, Sayuri L. Hayakawa and Sun
Gyu An. Psychological Science, published online 18 April 2012.
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Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Ricky Martin - Fuego de Noche, Nieve de Día
"Fuego De Noche, Nieve De Dia"
Antes de que empiece a amanecer
Y vuelvas a tu vida habitual
Debes comprender que entre los dos
Todo ha sido puro y natural
Tu loca mania Has sido mia
Solo una vez Dulce ironia
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Luego te levantas y te vas
El te esta esperando como siempre
Luces tu sonrisa mas normal
Blanca, pero fria como nieve
Tu loca mania Has sido mia
Solo una vez Dulce ironia
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Y mientras yo me quiedo sin ti
Como un huracan rabioso y febril
Tanta pasion, tanta osadia oh, tu
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Noche a noche en blanco sin dormir
Ardo entre los pliegues de mi cama
Se que estas a punto de venir
Pero solo viene la manana
Tu loca mania Has sido mia
Solo una vez Dulce ironia
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Y mientras yo me quiedo sin ti
Como un huracan rabioso y febril
Tanta pasion, tanta osadia oh, tu
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Antes de que empiece a amanecer
Y vuelvas a tu vida habitual
Debes comprender que entre los dos
Todo ha sido puro y natural
Tu loca mania Has sido mia
Solo una vez Dulce ironia
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Luego te levantas y te vas
El te esta esperando como siempre
Luces tu sonrisa mas normal
Blanca, pero fria como nieve
Tu loca mania Has sido mia
Solo una vez Dulce ironia
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Y mientras yo me quiedo sin ti
Como un huracan rabioso y febril
Tanta pasion, tanta osadia oh, tu
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Noche a noche en blanco sin dormir
Ardo entre los pliegues de mi cama
Se que estas a punto de venir
Pero solo viene la manana
Tu loca mania Has sido mia
Solo una vez Dulce ironia
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
Y mientras yo me quiedo sin ti
Como un huracan rabioso y febril
Tanta pasion, tanta osadia oh, tu
Fuego de noche, nieve de dia
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