I recently heard the story of “Firefox”. No, not our favourite web-browser but the book. Come to think of it I guess it was “Firefox 2”. Importantly its the story of this plane which can be controlled by the mind :). In the climax the hero gets the plane and tries to launch the missiles… I guess to destroy his enemies. He orders the plane and it does not respond. The hero by the end realizes that he needs to ‘think’ in Russian to launch the missiles!

I was well amazed with the story, I totally appreciate anything innovative. But I did not buy the part of the story where he had to think in Russian. This story brought about a simple question:

Which Language do We Think in?

This is how I analysed the question… Firstly what is a language.

A system of finite arbitrary symbols combined according to rules of grammar for the purpose of communication. Individual languages use sounds, gestures and other symbols to represent objects, concepts, emotions, ideas, and thoughts.

I know thats the heavy weight defination but thats what i got in Wikipedia.

Language in my words is the simplest way to communicate. Sign language the oldest of all languages needs no words to be spoken.

Now lets move to how the brain interprets language. Lets say u scream at a person who hopefully knows english :) “Watch out!!!”. The ear picks up the viberations started at your throat. It sends a decent signal to the brain telling it, “Hey dude I picked up something”. This is where the uncertianity starts. I dont know how exactly the brain processes the information but I guess this is a possible way. It probably compares the information to similar information it has recieved before or data it has “learnt” over time. Hopefully everything goes fine and the guy actually takes evasive action.

Now back to the topic. If i want to ask my brain say what is “2+2” and lets assume the brain works on a specific language. Im basically communicating between parts of my brain at maximum. If the brain goes ahead and converts the info to a language of your choice, say english and sends the info ahead. This is recieved by the part of the brain that does justice to “2+2”. This part converts it to processable format and calculates the result. It then sends the info back in english(coz remember you are thinking in english). The answer finally makes its way to the destination and you get the result as “4”.

If your brain processed it that way… well maybe thats why you probably flunked MAT-1.

Another way of looking at things is that… When a baby is born it does not know any spoken languages. Yet it does a huge amount of thinking. Little kids have awesome memory and can tell person from person eazily.

If you are still not convinced and still say… “Look at me Im right now thinking in Engish”. Try to think in a different language(did I just say that :P ) and you will realize that the same thought in any language has the same effect. The “Language” is just the way the brain communicates back to you (cant believe i said that, The last line was insanely crazy).

Anyway, if anybody has a convincing argument about this I would love to listen to it. And for the record the plane should hv fired when he thought the command in english.