I don’t speak any other languages, but after having taken Latin for 4 years now, there are just some Latin words and constructions that English doesn’t have (such as animus, which is spirit/heart/soul, and the future perfect infinitive, which translates into “to be about to be”), and occasionally I’ll throw one of those into my inner dialouge.
Wow. I haven’t seen anyone post who speaks American Sign Language. Depending on where you’re reading, ASL is the somewhere between the 3rd and the 10th most used language in the United States. Interesting.
I speak:
English
ASL
Meow
*English
*Urdu
*Punjabi
I feel that I kinda alternate among the above depending on the situation or where or whom I’m talking to. But I can speculate that most percentage of the time it’s probably English, only because I have gotten quite used to it.
I speak English natively and Norwegian fluently. Generally I will think in English, but if I’m in a situation where Norwegian is being used extensively I’ll think in that language.
I dream in both languages, by the way. The freaky part is that sometimes I’ll dream about real, monolingual people - and they’ll speak the wrong language. And I don’t even notice, until I wake up…
This is closer to my point: the curse words that we were taught were bad as a child feel more effective than those learned in another language as an adult (IMHO).
Actually, this would make me a minor sixth chord 
I can so relate! English is my native language, but I studied French for 7 years in school. While I would never profess to having been fluent, per se, I was certainly conversational enough that when I traveled to the French West Indies on several occasions and spoke nothing but French, I was frequently mistaken for being French (very flattering!). When speaking French, I had to think in French. Trying to think in English and translate to French would’ve completely screwed me up, as they’re completely opposite each other in structure.
Then I moved to Mexico. Oh. My. GAWD! I thought that I’d have a fairly easy time learning Spanish, given my knowledge of French. Ha Ha Ha! I spoke garbled up Franish for weeks before I finally had to give up and, literally, completely unlearn all my French or forever be met with blank stares.
It breaks my heart to have spent so much time learning, practicing and perfecting my French, and now fumble around trying to remember how to ask someone their name!
How people maintain fluency in multiple languages that are so similar, I’ll never know! My hat’s off to all of you!
P.S. Apparently I used to dream in French, too, but I only know this because on a family vacation one time, my mother woke up because I was talking in my sleep. The next morning she told me how she’d listened intently, trying to make out what I was saying, thinking it was typical gibberish mumbled by sleep-talkers, only to realize the reason she couldn’t understand a word was because I was speaking French!
P.P.S. Languages mentioned in this thread I’ve never heard of:
*Gujarati
*Marathi
*Kutchi
*Galician
*Catalan
Where are these spoken?
I’ve lived most of my life in Pennsylvania, USA, where it’s hard finding any language than other English spoken. Nevertheless, I started studying German at age 13, and Japanese when I started going to college at age 17. When I graduated I was fully fluent in Japanese, especially after a year studying in Japan, and reasonably fluent in German. (I’ve also studied French, Spanish, and Russian.) I then went on to work in Japanese tourism in Hawaii for several years.
Obviously I think almost entirely in English these days, but it’s still fairly easy to switch over to my now rusty Japanese. While I was working in tourism, I spoke and thought in both interchangably, and I can remember conversations with coworkers where we’d switch languages mid-sentence.
By the way, Sublight, I know what you mean about getting cross-wired. My juniour year of college, I went to New York with the college’s German Club. We had dinner at Benihana one night and I wound up speaking Japanese to the chef and German and English to my fellow club members. It was a fun, if rather confusing night!
CJ
(By the way, “Howorth” does not work well in Japanese. Trust me.)
<hijack> Shayna, since I´m partially responsible for your confusion, I´ll clarify things a bit: Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, that region of Spain where Barcelona lies (i.e. the north-east) and a small part of southern France, in Valencia (regional variety though), on the Balearic Islands, in one town on the Italian island of Sardinia, and it is one of the three official languages of Andorra.
It´s a bridge language between French and Spanish, i.e. it has many similarities to both of them, but is a separate language and quite distinctly so.
It is one of the three regional languages of Spain, the other two being Basque and Galician.
The latter is spoken Galicia, the region north of Portugal (south-western part of Spain). You may have heard of Santiago de Compostela, to give you a point of reference (plus they had this awful oil tanker spill there last autumn). It´s a bridge language between Spanish and Portuguese. The differences to these languages aren´t quite as pronounced as with Catalan, but still large enough for many Spanish from other regions to have great difficulties with it. (And I can hardly understand Portuguese, so there´s a difference as well.) Incredibly beautiful-sounding language…
The other languages you asked about are spoken in India, I presume, but I´ll leave that to the people who know about it.
sperfur, you might be interested in the"Do the congenitally deaf think in sign language?"- thread.
</hijack>
Gujarati - Language of the western state of Gujarat in India. Spoken by roughly 46 million ppl worldwide.
Marathi - Language of western state of Maharashtra in India. Spoken by roughly 71 million ppl worldwide.
Kachchi - Local language in NW region of Gujarat. Spoken by 866,000 ppl worldwide.
Thank you, universe.zip. I did miss that the first time around and have resurrected it to answer Polycarp’s “How would you say this in ASL?” and Tblue’s “Is there ASL poetry?” questions.
I speak English as a first language, fluent French and Esperanto, quite decent Spanish, pitiful German, and slowly improving Italian. (Also I was startled to discover in Barcelona last summer that I can read Catalan.)
I usually think in English, but with lots of admixtures, mostly French and also Esperanto and Spanish. When I mutter, it can be in any of the above languages.
English is my first language wheras Cantonese (a Chinese dialect) is my distant second. My thoughts are in purely in English.
Interestingly, I do find cursing in Cantonese sometimes so much more satisfying than cursing in English. There are loads of words and phrases that are just so apt for certain situations (or people) but when translated into English - it just doesn’t have the same effect.
I not quite sure why - maybe it’s something to do with my experience in a different culture.
spoken languages:
english
german
swedish
read:
russian.
I think in english, even though I live in sweden. (official language is … Swedish!).
I’m a native English speaker. I’m fluent in German, and because it’s the national language, I’m fluent in Hindi too. Generally I think in English.
There was a period though, when I was working in Germany, when I even began to think in German!! I guess it came from having to speak mostly German all day long, at work and at home too… it was strange initially, but then I just went with the flow…
Incidentally, I speak German better now than I do Hindi!! Kinda weird!!
Well, I can’t answer this question personally, but a friend of mine teaches German, and she said that when she goes to Germany, after a while she’ll start dreaming in German. It’d make sense then if she thought in it, so I’d go with the general idea that you’re going to think in whatever you’ve been speaking and hearing lately
And now I see how I’ve just restated what gouda said… Well, I guess it just reinforces the idea!
I speak Bahasa Indonesia, Tetun (Timor LoroSae), and English.
Although my mother tongue is English, I find myself thinking in Tetun more often than English, and I also have a tendency to think in Bahasa alot of the time as well.
My problem is that on an average day, I speak Tetun and Bahasa more than I do English.
This also creates an amusing problem that can actually be rather annoying. I have been known to switch between languages in mid sentence, even though the listener may not know the new language.