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That weird moment when you're not a native English speaker, lying in bed at night, pondering an open question while trying to fall asleep, then suddenly thinking to yourself: "Wait, why'm I thinking in English?"

For me, it seems to happen most often when I remember a certain word or phrase in English only, which causes my thought stream to switch languages.




Yes. At first it was weird, but then I got used to it.

The thing is, nowadays I read and write much more in English than in my native tongue, so there's an ever-increasing amount of things I default to thinking about in English. I also tend to switch languages on the fly in my thoughts, depending on which one "feels" better at any given moment.


Exactly.

The turning point where I started thinking in English increasingly was when I stopped watching TV shows and movies dubbed and went looking for the original version instead.


Yeah.

Curiously, I noticed that I still prefer to have subtitles on original versions. Not in my native tongue, but in English. Besides not missing some unintelligible dialogues, I found it reduces the feeling of cognitive load for me when watching a movie.




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