Tuesday, March 28, 2006

How do you think?

As I was thinking about something earlier, I realized that my thinking was in Tamil.. I was surprised at it, as my mother tongue(MT) was different, and the fact is that "people can think well and grasp well only in their mother tongue (MT)"..

When I made a conscious effort to think in my MT, I wasn't able to concentrate, and the thought of me not able to concentrate on anything in my MT, was in Tamil.. So was I always thinking in Tamil?

No...I was thinking in various languages, MT,Hindi,English and Tamil.. The thought language depends on the environment, as well as the topic I was thinking about and not always in MT.

Known Fact: "One can grasp things easily in their MT".
I really wonder in which language will a child of a surrogate Mom, think... Will it think in the native language of the "ovary donor mom" or that of the surrogate mom?

Some times one does not use any language to think.. The thoughts are in the form of pictures, mostly such thoughts arise when you dream...

Some times the thoughts are not in any form.. In the sense they cannot be categorized into any language or pictures.. One would experience it when the "waves" flow in and out...

10 comments:

Krish said...

Had some of the same thoughts and posted it...not a single comment..me thinks its the environment that defines a language..say for ex..if a baby is put in a jungle n left with no human presence, will it still understand human language...Humans are the onlyt species in the world that uses different languages based on locality.

Thinking itself is not possible without Language...n Language is not possible without thought..so try figuring this out!

Anonymous said...

What Skely, have u donated ur "things" for any surrogate mother? :)

ok, ok..on a serious note..even i used to have such thoughts...even i think in tamil most of the times...and sometimes in english...but harldy in my mother tongue...i think it depends on the environment...it changes with the ppl around us...

thoughts as pictures...man! they are very disturbing...brain forgets details like words but stupid thing remembers images for a very long time...and the way it affects the heart is just unexplainable...

Vijay Gandhi said...

just remembered to add...language plays a critical role in the development of brain...

for instance, try to remember the "youngest moment" in your life...i mean a moment in which you are youngest ever...

you would notice that most of us dont remember the first couple of years of our life...this is when we dont really know a language...from one of the research, it seems that once a child starts learning a language, the way the brain perceives things is changed...and so the memory before the learning phase is deleted...

Anonymous said...

A sign of improvement da. Hurray!! Skely, you have started to think.

gud post mate! i dont seem to use any language when i think, its all pictures for me, its like watching pogo.

Bijesh said...

looks like ur awake again... interesting thots

Unknown said...

I also think in telugu.. not my mother tongue .. sometimes tamil .. sometimes english.. it is like that ..
thoughts just keep flowing ..

ck said...

hmm.. I never gave any thought on this. I guess people think in a language they are most comfortable with need not be their MT. My cousin Sister who is born and raised in US is more comfortable with English, I am sure she thinks in English. I think we are not born with a MT. Its the language we learn first. For most of the indian kids born and raised in US, their native language is only symbolic since they converse mostly in English.

Vijay Gandhi said...

wats up skely? no post for a long time...

abc said...

mode of thinking doesn't , only the subject matters. Who were you thinking about.

Dream Sporting said...

Aha...finally we meet across the internet. So, what is your mother tongue Skely?