Learning a new language can be an exciting or frightening experience and it will depend on several factors which one it’s going to be for you. Whichever reason pulls or pushes you to learn it there are a few things you need to pay attention to in order to better grasp how a language is used.

Here I will talk about one in particular, the thinking part, and I will speak of my personal experience and how I managed to think in a language I didn’t grow up speaking.
Thinking in English doesn’t, or rather didn’t, come naturally to me, I had to “force” it at the beginning, not letting my brain go to a Spanish word first. It did take some practice but before long I was using English words first and after some time I realized I wasn’t translating anything, whether I was thinking in Spanish or English or both at the same time (yeah, it can be a bit strange when that happens).

But, How long did it take me? And, How much I did I know when I started to use English in my thoughts?

The short answer to the first question is “I don’t know”, and to the second one is “Not that much, really”.

The long answers

How long?

I don’t know how long it actually took me to think in another language because it was gradual. Practice and time were key; I also started to learn new things I didn’t have a word or idea for in Spanish.

I’ve always been surrounded by American culture in one way or another, and I took advantage of that. From television to movies, music, videogames and books; this took me longer to get into, though. However, the biggest influence and help was the internet, because it was with the internet that I could do all of the above in the same place and surround myself with the language.

When I got more familiar with the language I changed the default language in all of my devices and started to use it on the internet, even for homework and that was a great help both in my research and my learning.

It might have been a few months or the good part of a year or two (time flies) but it definitely wasn’t an overnight achievement.

How much did I know?

When I found myself starting to think in English I started with a few words and short sentences I had already learned. Many times I wasn’t sure if I was correct, other times I was sure I wasn’t. That didn’t stop me; it just gave me more reasons to keep practicing and investigate what I wasn’t so sure about.

Truth is, you don’t need to be close to finishing a language course (of any language). You just need to know some of it well enough. And you need to take what you know and make it yours. It’s not about how much you know, but what you do with it.

If you know only the most common phrases in the new language repeat them, that’s a key part of learning. Repetition helps your brain become familiar with new information. Once you get to that point, or are close to it, you begin to refer to ideas you are already familiar with but now you’re thinking of them with new words and sometimes even a new perspective.

One thing that started to happen when I immersed myself in the English world is that I began to learn new concepts and ideas I hadn’t heard of before, so my first contact with them was with an English perspective (which has made it difficult to translate some of them to Spanish more than once, Oh well… ), so when I think of them now it is mainly with those new English words.

What have I learned so far?

While learning the grammar of a new language has been very important for me, the most helpful approach has been to figure out how people speak the language and what words they use, and what they mean with them. With that, it becomes easier to take the new words and use them confidently with myself, and that is a great help to think in a new language and a good way to start speaking it with other speakers.