• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

A deaf persons internal monologue ?

Peri

Peri

Sapling
Joined
Dec 29, 2020
Messages
393
Reaction score
39
Location
Shropshire
Name
Steve.
This is a serious question - I really hope no-one finds it offensive.

Yesterday, I was chatting to a small group of young adult students about languages. One of the lads was a Polish guy who speaks excellent English.

I said "When I started to learn French many, many years ago, my teacher told me that I'd know when I mastered the language because I'd 'think' in French"

I asked the Polish lad if he 'thought' in English, or did he translate in his head? He said that about 90% of his thinking was in English now, but some phrases and concepts just didn't have easy English alternatives.

At which point one of my quieter kids came up with "I've always wondered, if a person is deaf from birth, do they 'think in sign language?' "

It's a question I couldn't even begin to answer.
I don't think it's sign language, but it did get me wondering. Without ever hearing the sounds it must be very difficult to have an 'internal monologue' that I'd recognize - but I know many people born deaf have no trouble reading............. I really have no idea.

I told the student I'd try and find an answer, so I wondered if anyone could help shed some light?

Thanks folks :)
 
My niece was born severely profoundly deaf.

My niece is now head of maths at Royal School For The Deaf at Derby.

I will make enquiries.
 
That's a fascinating question, Steve. I'm interested to hear further from Malc.

I do recall when doing a short total immersion course learning German that the teachers said that one had cracked the language when you dreamt in it. I always dreamt in English :(

Ich bin ein doof.
 
Interesting and thought provoking question. Lots of coverage on line, eg: https://www.healthline.com/health/what- ... e-think-in

Reflecting personally (not deaf) I don't believe I "hear" sound as such when I think. But I do think in words primarily (some people think more in pictures) and have no idea how that would have developed had I been born deaf. Very interesting.
 
I think that’s a fascinating question btw, another one that I have always wanted to know the answer to is when I close my eyes to design in my head or when I dream there are pictures/videos, what do blind people “see”? Ian
 
Thanks Malcolm, that's what I'm really after - a first hand answer by someone in that position. Appreciated :)

It's not often I can't at least point a student in a direction to get a question answered, but that one really did stump me !
 
It's an interesting question. I've read before though that some people do not have an internal monologue at all, I can't really comprehend that as I'm practically always talking in my head, and when I'm typing and reading I can hear it in my head. When reading other people's writings and I am familiar with them and know their voice, it's their voice that I hear in my head when I'm reading it, but some people just see words, they hear nothing in their head.

Another thing I've been told before is that most people can't comprehend written words in their sleep, if they were to dream about a sign, pamphlet, book, or somesuch it appears as scrambled letters. I've personally always been able to read properly in my dreams, not long ago in a dream I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car that was being driven by a complete stranger and I was navigating using an atlas, place names, road names, etc... despite never having used an atlas.

The mind is a curious thing.
 
I've been having a lovely chat with my niece. I hadn't told you, but her husband is deaf, too, yet neither of their sons are, and son No1 is away at uni atm.

She has written a reply that she has approved that I can copy and paste into this thread. Here it is. I hope this is helpful both for you and for your student.

Every Deaf person is different. It depends on the Deaf person's upbringing. Mum and I communicated through pictures, actions, speech until I was 5 then started using sign language as well since. Sometimes I think in sign language sometimes I think in spoken language, but since I left uni I think more in sign language. Mainly cos I use sign language every day in my family and in my job. If I give a presentation I will do it in sign language as I am more confident in sign language than in my speech. In my dreams I use sign language! Some of my friends who use sign language from birth will think in sign language. Others who were born with communicating in speech will think in speech, but some of them learn to use sign language at a later age, they sometimes start to think in sign language, but it depends on the Deaf person. My husband thinks differently from me cos he started learning sign language at 16. Also he works in a hearing environment where he uses his speech most of the time. Whereas myself I work in a deaf school so I use sign language all the time.
 
A genuinely interesting question that raises many others.

Thanks Malc for asking and thanks to you niece for not being offended by it.

Now I want to know if blind people dream in sound.
 
Thank you very, very much Malc, thats a brilliant answer and I'll pass it along to my student when I see him next.

:)

Dave - that one kind of came up in the staffroom when I asked the question. We veered off into 'Do blind from birth' people dream in pictures? through 'Do we all see colours the same? Maybe if I looked through your eyes the sky would be purple and the grass blue', and into synesthesia (People who “see” or associate letters and numbers with specific colours).
 
This is the sort of topic which would be fascinating for anybody involved in psycholinguistics.

It is, fairly plausibly, assumed that before we get anywhere near speaking, we generate a wordless concept in our heads. This then goes through various stages of processing in the brain before the vocal chords are instructed to go into action. The process takes milliseconds (conversations would drag a bit if it didn't!) and it is the subject of much research.

The bottom line probably is that below the level of the deaf person thinking in sign language and the hearing person thinking in words, there is a wordless layer of linguistic (sub)consciousness.

If anyone wishes to bone up on this there is a book called Speaking by a Dutch chap called Levelt.
 
Psycholinguistics……on a woodworking forum!

Lummy!

I sent your thanks to her.

Goodness knows what they'll be signing about woodworkers in their staffroom today! :D
 
From what I've been told by some old friends, 1 blinded by an IED, he still dreams in full cinemascope and the other friendblind from birth has told me he thinks he sees colours when dreaming. A sort of synesthesia I suppose.
 
Psycholinguistics - that sounds like something my wife does when I've again managed to mix in one of my red workshirts with her white washing, or come to bed leaving the fridge door ajar :D :D
 
It actually exists as a sub-discipline of linguistics. I've got a copy of the Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics kicking around somewhere. I thought it might be useful when I was writing up my thesis. Much of it is unfortunately pretty tedious reading. A lot more interesting for the layman is the Cambridge Encylopaedia of Language which is full of the sort of facts that are useful in pub quizzes. Lots of photos and diagrams too.
 
That reply from Malc was a very interresting read. Other replies were very thought provoking. Opening a wiondow to something I never thought of before.

My internal monologue largely goes in our local very far flung dialect of Swedish. Occasionally for a while in standard Swedish which my mother speaks.
Very often with words or even whole scentences in other languages thrown in when that particular laguage has a good way of describing or explaining something or when I have learned some knowledge or skill in that particualar language.
There are bits of English and for some strange reason they always turn up with either a strong Scotish or Irish accent. Bits of Norwegian and various Norwegian dialects. Bits of Icelandic. Bits of Faroeese. Bits of Finnish. Bits of Danish. Bits of old Norse. In some rare instances even a German word or two.

By the way I have had dreams completely in northern Samigiella and in Estonian and in Dutch though I speak neither language when awake. Only understand some words which often give me some approximate idea of what sort of things Estonians and Sami and Dutchmen are talking about. Apparently I can dream in those languages anyway. I understood everything until I awoke.

Until now I thought this was fairly normal for a hearing person.......... apparently not....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top