How To Start Thinking In Another Language

One of the biggest frustrations with learning a language is having to translate everything back into your native language first.

I am often asked “How can I think in another language?” The answer is, it’s easy, but… it’s not easy.

Which really means – it is easy, but it’s going to take some time and effort.

Simply, you need to be comfortable with the language and then you will be able to do this easily.

You Need To Be Comfortable In Your New Language

Being comfortable with the language is the key to being able to think in the language.

The reason you are translating in your head is because you are not fully comfortable yet. When I say comfortable, I don’t mean fluent. I mean just really knowing and understanding what you do know.

When you see a word and you just automatically understand it …you need to be this comfortable. If you take a step back and look at this process you will notice that you do not translate this word, you just understand it as it is. This is what we want.

What Does Thinking In A Language Mean?

If we look at what “thinking in a language” means you will see it is a strange experience as you don’t really “think” … but the fact you didn’t think shows you are actually thinking in that language.

If I say the French word “croissant” to you…. you don’t need to translate it. You just know what it means.

Congratulations, you just thought in French.

Okay, that one is cheating, as it’s the same word in both languages, but the principle still applies.

Let’s take a look at “Bonjour” instead. There is a strong chance that you just know what that means. Some of you maybe had to think about it and tell yourself it means “hello” but I know a few of you just automatically knew what it meant with out having to think about it.   

This automatic recognition, this level of comfort with the words … That is what it means to think in a language. They are words you just understand as they are. If I said A sentence to you that was full of words like this, where you just knew them, you would be thinking in the language.

It doesn’t really feel like now, as you know know one word, but if you build this level up across hundreds of words, it makes a huge difference.

Recalling Words Is Also Important

Being able to recall words is also an important part of thinking in a language and this again requires you to be very comfortable with the language.

If you are able to just recall a word and use it just like any other word, then you have basically thought in that language. Again you will not feel like this is the case when you only know a small number of words.

However, when you can start to recall a couple in a row and form a sentence, even if it is very simple, this is thinking in the language. You will again not really need to “think” about it, it just comes out. This is thinking in that language! you where able to produce it automatically.

You will also find that you do not really have a reason to this, because you are not putting your self in positions where you need to actually do this. Unless you are speaking to some one, you are probably not going to start thinking in that language.

This is where practice comes in, but I will discuss that in more detail below.

Automatic Thinking Will Come With Time

you’ve probably noticed that I’ve mentioned “automatic thinking” a few times already, which is actually the pinnacle of comfort in a language.

If you are able to get so comfortable with language that you do not need to think about it, you have made a huge step towards being fluent. 

Automatic thinking is what you’re probably doing now if you’re a native English speaker. You are just reading these words and understanding them. There are no other processes going on. These shapes you are looking at on your screen, just make sense.

When you are first learning a new language, you can’t do this. You look at a word and it has no automatic meaning. You have to actively think about when you’ve seen it before and in what context. Your brain links everything together and you remember what it means, most likely in your native language, where you then translate it into your new language.

The more often you encounter words, the quicker this process is and it eventually it becomes automatic.

Think back to when you where learning to drive. You had to talk yourself through what gear to put the car in, or when to brake. Now you just drive about and sing along to the radio. You just drive automatically. The human brain and its learning ability is really crazy isn’t it!! I love it.

So basically the goal is to get as many words as possible to this level as quickly as possible. The sooner you can do this, the sooner you will be thinking in the language and the sooner you will start feeling fluent.

Mentalese and Thinking In A Language

There is actually a theory that we do not think in language. It’s kind of a strange concept, because we often talk to ourselves in language, inside our head, but if we look a little deeper it makes sense.

I’ve already explained that a lot of stuff we do is just sort of automatic. You just sort of think outside of language. Think about when you need to pee, you don’t need to verbalise that inside your head, you just know you need to go. This automatic process has been explained as a sort of mental language, which is called “mentalese” like, Chinese, Japanese …mental..ese.

This concept is confusing as the lines are often blurred, we usually take these mental thoughts and verbalise them into language.

This can be seen really strongly in language learning. We will see the new language and probably understand it on some level, but we don’t really trust ourselves, so we convert this into our native language, to confirm that we understand.    

It’s this translating part that is what we need to stop. If we can just allow the new language in and trust our mentalese to understand it, then we will just be thinking in that language. As I’ve said, the more comfortable we can get with a language, the more we will just trust our understanding and we will have be less likely to translate it into out native language for confirmation that we have understood it.   

How To Speed Up Thinking In Another Language

The best ways to get comfortable with a language is to increase your input and your output. You really just need more exposure to the language to give your brain a reference point of how everything works.

You are always going to get comfortable with things you have repeated exposure too.

Increase Your Input – Reading

Simply reading a lot in your target language will help you immensely with getting comfortable in the language.

You will repeatedly see words over and over again in all sorts of different contexts. At first it may be a sea of confusion and some words will just make no sense. However, the more you read the faster you will become comfortable.

You will start to notice you need to translate less and less, especially if you go back and read something again that you might have read at the start of your learning journey.

Reading will really speed up how comfortable and automatic you are with the words.

(You can read more about – Is Reading The Best Way To Learn A Language?)

Increase Your Input – Listening

Listening is another great language input. It will definitely help. Although I feel it is not as effective as reading. There is something about reading words and letting them burn into your brain. Maybe that’s just me?

Either way you should not neglect your listening; it’s a very important skill and will help you in the future with your pronunciation.

(You can read more about – Is Listening The Best Way To Learn A Language?)

Start Trying To Output The Language – Speaking

Speaking is one of the best ways to start making the words automatic in your thoughts.

You will find you are slow at first, but the more you speak, the quicker the words will start to come out. it will not take you long before you will be thinking in your target language without even realising.

You can speak to natives, but you can also speak to yourself. Speaking to yourself is actually probably better as you can do it all the time throughout the day.

As your doing things, just describe what you’re doing or talk about the things around you. You can just repeat the same thing over and over. It may sound crazy but you are just going to get yourself very comfortable with what you are saying, which as we know, will lead it to becoming automatic.

You don’t even need to do this out loud (although it does help your pronunciation if you do) so you can literally do it anywhere at any time.

(You can read more about – Is Speaking The Best Way To Learn A Language?)

What Happens If You Make Mistakes In Your New Language?

Making mistakes is the biggest reason why people do not try and speak. They are too worried they will look silly, but you need to speak in order to get used to speaking!

Simply just don’t be worried about mistakes. Mistakes happen and if you’re smart about it, you will try and limit these.

At the beginning you will probably struggle with this problem. You will doubt everything you are saying and will be worried your recalling the wrong words. If you’re feeling like this, just go slowly and say what you do know is correct.

Perhaps you want to say “I’m going to the toilet” but you can’t remember how to say this whole phrase. Then say the bits you do know. Just say “toilet”. As you build confidence and practice more you will get used to saying the whole thing.

If you are also not sure about what to say, still give it a go. Its okay if you have to translate in your head to take your time. The more you do this, the more comfortable it will be. The next time will be less of a struggle.

Keep Practicing

Just keep repeating everything and practicing until you can do this without needing to translate it in your head.

After about the 100th time you’ve been to the toilet and said the phrase “I’m going to the toilet” it will start to just feel very natural and it will feel like you are saying it in your native language.

I know it takes time and effort, and is not glamour, but if you just repeat everything enough and you will really see an increase in the words you can just automatically produce in your head.

Soon you will be thinking in your head automatically with no translations. The language will just come, just like how it does for your native language.

Using Both Input And Output Methods Together When Learning A Language

I know someone is going to ask what one you should do more of; well the best answer is to do lots of both input and output.

Reading and listening is going to show you the words over and over and this will build your word recognition skills up until they are really strong.

Speaking will also force you to have to think about what the words are and recall them. In this way you are really forcing the brain to get it to be faster and faster at recalling.

Spending time on both techniques is really going to help you gain that automatic level you need to think in your target language.

(You can read more about – The Input vs Output Language Learning Methods)

How Long Will It Take To Think In Another Language?

Saying how long with is will take is nearly impossible to say.

You can start learning words now, but it’s impossible to say at what point you will have enough words stored in your mind to say you are actually mostly thinking in that language fully.

You might be able to automatically say a sentence or two right now without thinking, but this isn’t quite thinking in another language. Although you could argue it is, It’s certainly the start of it.

Don’t worry about how long it takes. Just put the effort in and trust that it will happen.

Conclusion

This is not a fast process. You can’t not learn a word today and start using it to think with right away.

You are always going to end up translating it until it has been ingrained in your automatic system.

Just keep drilling down on what you already know as well as continue to expand your knowledge and you will achieve thinking in another language. The more you do, the quicker it will happen.

At some point you will just notice that you’ve actually read a whole page and didn’t once have to translate any of it.

This will happen, it’s just a matter of time and effort. 

(It can feel like you are getting worse before you get better. you can rad more about –Why Does it Feel Like I’m Getting Worse At My Target Language?)