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1.3.15Brain Language or Mentalese: Thinking Without Language
Contrary to popular mythology, the language you speak does not mould or shape the way you think. An Arabic-speaking person, for example, does not “think differently” from the way an English-speaking person thinks.
You do not even need language to think.
Humans (and other animals) use a “brain language,” the language of thought, usually called mentalese. If thoughts depended on words, nobody would be able to translate anything from one language to another. The words of the French language do not all have exact equivalents in, say, English. The translation, then, is thought for thought, not word for word. The translator uses mentalese to make decisions on how to structure the thoughts across the languages.
You, like everybody, sometimes have problems putting thoughts into words. That’s not because your thoughts don’t exist; of course they do. Putting them into words means translating mentalese into language. That can be a chore.
When you finish reading this chapter of this book, you might remember only one or two of the specific sentences. But that does not mean you will have forgotten the content of the chapter (unless you haven’t been paying attention). What you will remember is the gist of this chapter. You will easily be able give your friends a fairly detailed oral summary of the chapter (and urge them in the strongest possible terms to buy this interesting and highly informative book), but you will not likely use any of the exact sentences you read in this chapter, because you won’t remember them.