This question is for anyone learning a second language.

I've always only been able to speak one language. :\ So I have no experience in this field. My question is for those who speak a second language.

Now, do you THINK in the second language or is your brain constantly translating second to first, first to second? Is there ever a point where the second language feels as natural as the first does?

I'm very new to language learning and so far I'm very much in the translation stage, where my brain is constantly doing this translation thing. I recognize the sounds (謝謝 - for example) and then my brain says; Ah! Thank you!

I read on a language learning blog once that you have to think in the second language but right now that's just not happening for me, my brain just default translates. HAHA. Is it really possible to think in a second language?

What do you think?

I've basically abandoned my native language for everything besides conversations with my relatives, so in my thoughts I use either English or 中文.

Thanks to Skritter, and in fact on of my main motivations behind using this website, is that I am now also able to visualize Chinese thoughts as characters (up to that only pinyin), great as some kind of subconscious revision. The more characters, words etc. I know, the more interesting this visualization becomes, especially when it comes to the parallel imagination of simplified and traditional variants, 真过瘾了！

I noticed that it didn't take me very long at all with Chinese before most of the things that I would hear and say frequently didn't go through an intermediate translation step in my head. It was all very basic stuff, of course, but I was surprised. A couple months, maybe.

I'm not sure what the trick was--lots of creative Chinese conversation drills in class, perhaps. Many of my classmates clearly didn't have the same experience.

That sounds awesome, K書中心. I want to think in characters, too! Not enough tea, maybe.

I think/dream/cuss/mutter in it. It takes a while to get there. You really need to abandon your native tongue at some point. If you don't, you will never be able to speak as quickly as they do. For that matter, you won't be able to process speech at the rate in which they speak.

The secret for me was controlling my thoughts. When I was going about my day, I would force myself to translate every thought into the other language. From there, the reaction speed for the translation would increase. Slowly but surely, I would get to where I could "catch" the thought as it was only half formed in English and change it. From there it is a minor jump to the second tongue.

What really gets fun is when your second tongue is so far into your sub-conscious that it starts effecting your first one.

I think that thinking in your second language is the aim for everyone, but you can only get there if you immerse yourself in it.
I learnt Welsh as a second language when I was growing up in Wales and became fluent thanks to my youth. Even now, when the mood takes me, I can sit back and think in Welsh easily, but it took a relatively long time to get there.
Now I am closer to 40, it is harder work learning and after one year a classes and as much practice as I can get, I am still a long way away from thinking in Chinese. With time and effort it does come and you may have to work at thinking in Chinese as West316 did or you may find that you it suddenly starts and you didn't even realise you were doing it!

Yes I'm thinking in my second language which is English. Because we have to learn English at school and I started when I was 9 years old I have never really thought about it. And I don't remember when I started thinking in English too. But of course it's possible. When I write or speak in English, I also think in English.

Chinese is my third language and sometimes I manage to think a little bit in Chinese too. When talking with my boyfriend about an easy topic I don't have to translate in my head first. I can reply straight in Chinese to him. And sometimes in a metro or a bus I think what would I say if someone would start a conversation with me. Even once I spoke Chinese in a dream. But it's still a long way to get my Chinese to the same level with my English. But that's the plan.

By the way, my first language is Finnish.

I think a lot depends on how deep your thoughts are. I can quickly and easily have 2-minute conversations in a couple of languages but I’m not really “thinking” while I am doing it: I am simply muttering memorized utterances. Nothing is being done in real-time; it's sort of like I am running an if-then loop.

Very few people – myself included – consciously think before they speak or write but instead rely on mental shortcuts – cliché lines, platitudes, recycled phrases – or fall back on old habits. When I was in school I could, and would, write pages and pages a day without even thinking: instead I relied on pre-made templates that were instead my brain and I would go on autopilot for a couple of hours. It’s strange to read something that you have no recollection writing. The same thing happens in most of my conversations and notes I write on a day-to-day basis (except for Skritter comments of course :)

*edit
inside not instead

I learned Spanish a couple of years ago and remember the first couple of times I was able to speak at normal conversational speeds; it was a strange feeling, like an out-of-body experience.

I don't think there's anything in particular you do to make it happen. You just learn the language to a certain level and then it starts to happen.

The guy who wrote SuperMemo says that the memory of a word or phrase has two dimensions: how strong the memory is (which controls how long it will take for you to forget it) and how quickly you can retrieve the memory. To get to fluency, you need to have words coming up as quickly as you need them (maybe with some language-appropriate "uhs" and "wells" mixed in to buy you time). If you're still translating from your native language, you'll be too slow, so eventually you'll just switch over to thinking in the second language.

James

Good topic :) I'm fascinated by this too. I always found it fascinating how some people fluent in English are clearly still translating on the basis of word order and communication strategy. This tends not to work very well at all from English to Chinese...

I would say only in the last few months have I begun to make the transition. It's sort of a short cut, it's easier to try think in Chinese first rather than do a translation and then try fix the word order.

It would have been very helpful to have begun this process easier but I think you need a lot of exposure.

I started to really think in Chinese during a 6 week bicycle trip with my girlfriend through the heart of China, I had been studying by myself for 9 months and Skrittering for 3. All I spoke and heard was Mandarin and Tibetan (and the occasional English in the upper-intermediate ChinesePods) and was thinking Chinese in a week or less.

When I started I probably knew less than 1,000 words. When I got back to Hangzhou I remember how awkward it was trying to talk about my trip in English to my coworkers and students.

Wow, thanks for all the responses guys! I look forward to the day when my second language becomes more routine. :)

I suppose it's not much different from reading music (in a way). To this day I don't ever properly think about what I'm playing, I just see and respond to the notes... I suppose eventually language gets to the same point. We stop thinking about it and we just start responding.

@nickybr38 it's exactly like reading and playing music, yes. When you start out you are completely stuck and can't do anything right. Then after some work you can do maybe one or two simple things right in a row. Then after some more work you can do three in a row, etc. After a long period of hard work, things that were extremely difficult when you started become easy and you can do them unconsciously.

James

I started French at the age of 9 (when I arrived in Switzerland). I think I've now reached a sort of weird fusion between English and French, which goes further than just thinking in it from time to time. To begin with, my thoughts were usually context-based, as my friends, studies and family were split between the two. But now I sometimes don't even notice when I switch (like when I was interviewing a candidate in English and, when she came back, told her that she hadn't been taken in French by accident :/). With my bilingual friends we tend to go back and forth between both languages constantly.

As for the sub-conscious thing, I dream and think in both languages indifferently. Once, when thinking in French, I realized I couldn't force myself to think in English anymore, which was quite scary. But I think that properly learning a language requires sacrificing a bit of your first language anyway.

For me, making the occasional idiomatic mistake in English has been worth being able to speak (or beginning to speak for Chinese) 5 languages before finishing high school.

I remember that feeling when within relatively short time you start from translating in being able to talk in the second language without any effort. For me it goes through living in that country and speaking/hearing/reading all day.
Now I am thinking in German (mother tongue), English (work language), Spanish (country where I live) or Italian (language at home) depending on the situation, although sometimes I change within the same sentence from one language to the other, without even noticing it. :-(

In Japanese I clearly do not think and am still lightyears away from that :-( I guess unless I go and live in Japan for a few years there is no hope for reaching this mastery for me.

Just keep up with your Chinese and you will improve day by day until you reach the day when it becomes fluent and effortless.

I grew up speaking french and english natively. I think in both languages. A "second" language for me would be chinese although it's my fourth (or fith idk).

I don't recall thinking in chinese, unless I was practicing in my mind when I'm alone. However when people speak to me, I don't think about the english/french word, there's no translation being done.

I started learning german when I was 16, and when I'm in a situation where I need to speak german, or when i'm listening to german I am "thinking" in german. Sometimes, I dream in german, where my friends from school or even family members (who don't speak german) are speaking german in their voices...

I'm wondering when the switch occurs when you can "think" in the second language. Conversational mandarin also seems to include many short-forms which native speakers all know. This second point is quite hard for me.

What I have noticed is that phrases I hear from the news casters or from conversations or from something I studied recently are my "raw materials" that I try to string into sentences.

Was quite funny because sometimes I don't the the subtle differences; like the verb to marry. Apparently it is gender specific, and I was ignorantly talking about the subject and those around the table were giggling away. :-(

I've been studying Japanese for almost two years, mostly by myself with tools like Skritter or writing to pen pals. I've been studying Chinese for about 8 months with less intensity, mostly via Skritter, but also w/ pen pals and again, mostly by myself.

I have never actually had an entire thought in Japanese yet. I've had dreams that had Japanese in them, but I think they were mostly because I went to bed right after studying Japanese, and whatever I just studied was still spinning around in my brain.

I'd love to be able to think/dream in either Japanese or Chinese, but I don't think my environment is conducive to the proper level of immersion. This, I think, is the answer to your question. Yes, it's possible, but the speed to which it happens is directly proportional to the level of exposure, and I suspect, more importantly, inversely proportional to the exposure to your native language.

That last sentence should read...

"Yes, it's possible but the speed to which it happens is directly proportional to the level of exposure...

**to the language you wish to learn,**...

and I suspect more importantly, inversely proportional to the exposure to your native language."