striaght dope, pretty much sums it up.
In what language do deaf people think?
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and has largely fallen out of favor in modern (Chomskyan, universal grammar) linguistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
And modern, Chomskyan, universal grammar linguistics has fallen out of favor among most post-modern linguists everywhere outside of Boston ;)
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Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#23Lisp
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#24My aunt was a deaf-mute (That's what she called herself. I have no idea if the term is pejorative) Her husband, my uncle, was blind. So she would sign things that he couldn't see, and he would yell at her and she couldn't hear them. Made for a great marriage. (Joking aside, it was really interesting to watch them communicate. He would hold her hands while she "spoke" Then she would hold his hands -- so he knew she wa…
I think I saw a documentary about your aunt and uncle, with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#25> Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to.
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?
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.
All Indo-European languages have alphabet to represent syllables, but Chinese is not a language (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 meaning itself.
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 way faster than thinking in languages like a background voice speaking in my head.
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.
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 recognizing?
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?
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.
Update 2: Found out deaf people also have problems with English grammar, similar to the common mistakes Chinese makes http://www.reddit.com/comments/bgasc/_/c0mmn2l
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#26Wow that is mind-blowing. I could not possibly imagine a world without words, especially the ones in my head. It goes against every intuition I have to believe in thought that lacks language.
It goes against every intuition I have to believe in thought that lacks language.
I have met other people who share your intuition, but for me (native speaker of English with normal hearing) and for my wife (native speaker of Taiwanese with normal hearing) it is routine to think visually, with no words at all. We have multiple thinking styles, and quite a bit of our thinking does not involve words. I used to have the intuition that everyone can think visually, until I met people who self-report that they cannot imagine doing so.
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#27My aunt was a deaf-mute (That's what she called herself. I have no idea if the term is pejorative) Her husband, my uncle, was blind. So she would sign things that he couldn't see, and he would yell at her and she couldn't hear them. Made for a great marriage. (Joking aside, it was really interesting to watch them communicate. He would hold her hands while she "spoke" Then she would hold his hands -- so he knew she wa…
are you serious?
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#28> Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to. 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? As a Chinese, n…
That's pretty fascinating.
At least in my own experience, I talk to myself without actually making any sounds when I am thinking (in my head, so to speak).
I never really thought that others would do it differently until this post.
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#29> Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to. 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? As a Chinese, n…
That's pretty fascinating. At least in my own experience, I talk to myself without actually making any sounds when I am thinking (in my head, so to speak). I never really thought that others would do it differently until this post.
I do that too when I'm "thinking" about stuff, which is most of the time. When I get into a flow state though it's a combination of mental word fragments, images, mental conversations with others, and sometimes all of these drop away and I just act. When I examine it more closely, my normal thought pattern is actually more than just mental speech too, that's just the dominant aspect.
Re: In what language do deaf people think?
#30Do people generally think in their spoken language? I mean sure I think in English, but not all the time. If I'm doing some serious, deep thinking, my thoughts tend to escape words and just become thoughts (hard to explain). I always assumed that's how everyone thinks.