Thinking about thinking - notes

In one of my previous posts I wrote:

Once I moved to professional life, my usage of English went up. And nowadays I think only in English and it's not just technical information. I find it interesting to observe that where the common lingo would have been Kannada when conversing face-to-face, the imaginary talks are conducted in English.

 I was reading a NewYorker article by a Bosnian born English writer. There he writes:

Back in my early years in the U.S., at the time when my English was in transition from tourist to survival mode, I’d catch myself dreaming in English, and noticing, in my dream, that the people who shouldn’t be talking in English were doing so. Even more bizarrely, I would recollect English conversations with my family or friends, which would certainly have taken place in our native language. I interpreted those dreams and memories as my subconscious mind welcoming this non-native language. If I hadn’t absorbed the new language in that way, I wouldn’t have been able to write any of the books I’ve written in English, or to have lived a full life in this language.

It looks like our transitions are similar. But I'd be deceiving myself, if I think, our mastery over English is similar. 

Thinking about thinking

Memory is sketchy. Observations are more of imagination than anything concrete. May the conclusions be objective even if wrong.

I studied in Kannada medium for the first ten years and then as a rule moved to English medium for my +2 (or two years Pre-University Course) and engineering. My spoken English was non-existent. I don't remember what I thought about thinking in English when I was in +2 or whether I really tried to engage in that. However, I remember going completely blank whenever I tried to think about technical concepts in English during my engineering. For some reason, I never tried to translate anything into Kannada. I'm not able to guess whether the reason being I found it difficult to find Kannada equivalents of the English technical terms or found it difficult to use English technical terms naturally in Kannada sentences.

It doesn't mean that my curiosity and creativity were curbed as I moved to English medium(on the contrary I grew up more skeptical though remaining philistine throughout). During my school days too I had been a passive student although I don't think I was much into rote learning by the time I reached the high school (8 to 10 years of my student life). Not that I thought by-hearting silly but didn't have the focus to study multiple times.

Once I moved to professional life, my usage of English went up. And nowadays I think only in English and it's not just technical information. I find it interesting to observe that where the common lingo would have been Kannada when conversing face-to-face, the imaginary talks are conducted in English. In contrast to my inability to think in English I suppose I shouldn't have any difficulty in thinking those conversations in Kannada.

I have heard a saying, if you can't articulate then you haven't understood clearly. But even when I wasn't able to articulate them clearly, I thought I could understand the concepts presented in English. I suppose grasping and articulating are not completely interdependent functions which may appear so if  there is a prevailing condition of a common language in grasping and in articulating.

But my engineering friend, who studied in English medium throughout, once told me he couldn't think in English and always translated everything into Kannada whenever he had to ponder over any of the concepts. He was one of the sharp brains in the class (but volatile and I was average).

I wonder whether there is another brain function called mapping between languages. If that's the case this should be the flow for a student with mother-tongue and the medium of instruction being different.

Grasping in the second language->Mapping to the best language->Thinking in the mapped language->Mapping to the second language->Articulating in the second language

I suppose 'mapping' is not a common function since in general there is no need for this ability. Children who have problem with this function would be best served if they study in their best language. For others the medium of instruction shouldn't matter.