Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational

My Spanish is good, but I've had almost the exact same "workman" situation happen to me. I'm positive that a native speaker would have picked up on the subtleties of the conversation and not made the same mistake, but pressure like that does not lend itself well to thinking things through carefully while trying to navigate the landscape of a non-native language.

On top of that, I'm highly sensitive to the "Americans are loud and uncultured idiots" image that seems to persist in lots of places, so I tend to err on the side of being polite to counteract that, even to my occasional disadvantage.

Initially, I just believed it to be about your humor, in that you can't be yourself if you have lost your sense of humor. This is an easy and guaranteed thing to have happen when you are primarily using a foreign language. But it doesn't stop at something as light as humor.

I've had a lot of people take advantage of me, business-wise, while overseas, yet I never allowed this back home. It reached the point where I just decided not to work under foreigners anymore because work ethics aren't clear cut and 'misunderstandings' abound. It doesn't help that I live in a culture where it's seen as a positive to be one step ahead of the other person (even if they are working for/with you).

Having lived on and off in Italy for far longer, and with a much more thorough grasp of the language, I don't hesitate to snap back at people when they deserve it. Although, truth be told, lately I've just been answering the telemarketers in English - I think it must be at least novel for them to hear a foreign language in what must otherwise be a fairly boring job, even though my interaction is pretty much limited to explaining that I'm not interested, thanks, bye.

I don't know about decision making processes though, I can't say I can recall which languages various decisions in my family were discussed in. I wonder if there's a threshold above which the language is not 'foreign' enough to cause the effect.

I'd be curious if this would improve if you got together with a group of drinking buddies or something and try just hurling insults at each other for a couple hours.

Here's an example that isn't really about what I am talking about but speaks to the cultural and environmental differences:

Here in Los Angeles it is not too uncommon to see people crossing a street without even looking right or left and without continuously scanning for cars as they cross the street. I've also seen (kids!!!!) crossing the street running. Now, go down to Buenos Aires and try that on for size. Or do it in Rome. Or cross a bike path in Amsterdam without looking. You'll land yourself in a hospital, if you are lucky.

It's the same out in Manhattan, of course.

Non-scientific, non-extensive observation, but I don't think the lack of assertiveness has anything to do with language but rather culture. I can be assertive in a few languages, but I spent most of my young life in a more, shall we say, "fire-y" culture.

I don't relate to this research at all. I found my reactive thinking has always been slower than most native.

In fact, when I go see comedians, I will quite often start laughing half a second after everyone else.

Somewhere deep down, there is a rewiring done and some latency added naturally. I believe.

I am used to live with it. In fact, thinking in French hurts my head now.

So I wonder if it's not about the fact that the person in a different language is mostly in a different place in his mind, and therefore more feels analytic, naturally.

That, or I'm just an edge case.

I've also felt at a strong disadvantage in arguments with others in the first 5 years, now I just yell French and go ape at them (not really.)

I'd say new languages really disarm you. I can barely argue in Spanish, least to say an offencive word (although I've seen the famous Tano Pasman, el hincha del River), and not at all in Portugese.

Also, isn't it curious: we all know a bunch of swear words in our languages. We get to know them at early age, probably as soon as we have a need for them. But it takes years to get exposed to obscenities in a foreign language: books don't print them. Dictionaries often omit them. Radio and podcats also deliver correct content.

A similar effect happens with code -- any language with syntax localized to russian looks funny to me.

Now that I am back in Mexico, I feel funny discussing work related issues in Spanish.

I would say it's close to that, except there isn't the feeling of a sound. It's more as if language were a muscle and you were exercising it silently, producing words. Not that all thoughts come in complete sentences or even with words, but some mental processes definitely involve language. I'd be surprised if you didn't have this as well. Hard to say, of course. But you may catch yourself "thinking in words" someday and then realize you do it all the time.

Random tangential statement: I predict that Sapir-Whorf will come back into fashion and be thoroughly rehabilitated.

For me it is exactly as you say, sometimes I am, say, writing a function, and I think about which parameters to pass, how to name those parameters, the name of the function and the documentation. All this I do in English in my head. And your description "words sounding in your head" is exactly as it seems to me.