In what language do deaf people think?
> Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to.<p>Wait, I have a question: by thinking in language, does this mean, that, it's very common for people (in the English speaking world) to think like there was a background voice speaking in your head, like the thinking bubble scenes depicted in movies and sitcoms?<p>As a Chinese, now I can think in languages (dual thinking in Mandarin and English), but in the school days I have developed a totally different, alternative way of thinking process.<p>All Indo-European languages have alphabet to represent syllables, but <i>Chinese is not a language</i> (Mandarin, Cantonese are languages), it's a distinctively unique writing system. Why unique? Its logograms/logographs are not directly linked with phonemes but linked with the <i>meaning</i> itself.<p>When I do thinking and reasoning, I recall a concept by the word's exact character shape and structure, then match with the picture of book pages I memorized, identify the corresponding semantics and then organize my result. This is <i>way</i> faster than thinking in languages like a background voice speaking in my head.<p>Elementary education in China has a technique called 默读, which means read without speaking, after we learned this, later we were taught to get rid of "read" altogether. We only scan the picture of one book page, and cache it as a static picture, then a question is raised about a particular word appeared in that page. We are demanded to recite the context out. This is called memorize-before-comprehend. After decades of training and harsh tests like this, we were totally used to treat thinking as pattern extracting from lines of sentences.<p>This is why Chinese find English grammar funny, a noun is a noun, it should be a static notation of things, easily recognizable universally, why the hell do people invent stuff like plural form to make obstacles for <i>recognizing</i>?<p>Human voices spectrum are way smaller than visual spectrum. And our brain is faster and more optimized at processing mass volume visual stuff(especially pattern recognition), does anyone else think in pictures?<p>Update 1: Anther reason why Chinese are soooooo obsessed with calligraphy. If some idea is really important we write it in an unforgettable, various artful way so the pattern extracting is even faster. And the calligraphy details contains rich hints and link to related ideas.<p>Update 2: Found out deaf people also have problems with English grammar, similar to the common mistakes Chinese makes <a href="http://www.reddit.com/comments/bgasc/_/c0mmn2l" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/comments/bgasc/_/c0mmn2l</a>