Do we need a language to think?

That afternoon, we were going to IISc to meet some Computer Science professors. My boss who is based in Chicago was visiting our Bangalore labs. He, I and another colleague were in the car (and the Avis driver of course). We passed by a central government institute that has its name written in three languages – English, Hindi and Kannada. So when I tried to read the name of the institute, my natural reaction was to read the text written in Hindi and not the English (Kannada of course I cannot read so there was no question of trying that). Though, English text was written at the top. I asked my boss that if he sees a similar board then which language he will read first. This was a wrong question as he cannot read Hindi that easily and since he is a Tamil by origin, he does not know Kannada. So I changed the question that if there is something written in Tamil, English and some other language say French (he knows French) then what will he read first. He said Tamil and English are the one he cannot miss reading. Which one will be the first, he was not sure. I asked the same question to another colleague who is a Telgu by origin and he said that he’ll read the English text first. I was not sure.

Then the conversation continued on different languages and my boss started talking about his experiences while learning Japanese. He mentioned that he was finding it difficult to first think in English and then translate that to Japanese before writing/speaking. So he tried thinking in Tamil and found that Tamil was closer to Japanese than English and it was easier for him to speak/write Japanese now. The discussion continued but I started picked one thing from what he spoke. He said that first he used to think in English and then he started thinking in Tamil. SO do we think in a spoken/written language? May be in this particular case when one has to express in words (by speaking/writing) what he or she is thinking then may be a language is required to think. But what if we are just thinking something that we don’t have to speak or write. Do we still need a language? So, I started thinking something, but it was in some language – Hindi or English. The most I could do was to think in my mother tongue – Garhwali. I tried hard to get rid of a language while thinking and the best I could do was to think about some past event pictorially like a movie running in my brain. But what about something that is not some event – past or imaginary? What about the abstract thinking? Can we think without a language? I mean the answer is certainly yes because humans are thinking since last 4 million years or so whereas the concept of a language is relatively new. An infant, before being able to understand a language, certainly thinks. Original inventors of sharp edge weapons and more advanced things like fire and wheel were not using any language to think. Then we know that there are many animals that do not have any language for communication but they too think. So why can’t I think without a language?

Taking this argument further, we know that every language has some limitations and not everything can be expressed in a written/spoken language. We use body language, hand gestures, facial expressions and eye contacts to augment the words we speak. So by molding ourselves to a language or two that we speak and write, have we limited our thinking powers? As far as only thinking is concerned, are we better off without the spoken/written languages? And if this is true, then how to harness the power/capability of our brain, that is being limited by the expressive limitation of a language.

Are you thinking something after reading this? If yes then in which language?

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