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I, as a non-native English speaker who mainly interface English through written language and rarely via spoken language, find this fascinating. I am able to rea

I, as a non-native English speaker who mainly interface English through written language and rarely via spoken language, find this fascinating. I am able to read articles and blog posts in English rapidly and with full comprehension, but I'm totally NOT able to speak out loud most of the words. I find that it's mostly through visual medium the words "come" to me.

Terr_ 7y ago
I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. Maybe an experiment could involve a fictional ideogram language, and compare peoples subvocalizing (or lack thereof) versus their native one.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Why not? I didn't know how to pronounce many of the words when learning English, yet I knew what they meant. I did make up my own pronunciation, if that's what you mean.
  - godelski 7y ago
    As a native English speaker who read a lot as a kid, there are many words I've found as I got older that I was pronouncing entirely incorrectly. So I think this is quite common (I know several others like this)
    - SamPatt 7y ago
      Yes very common among people considered "bookworms" as children. Learning vocabulary through reading not hearing. Can sometimes be embarrassing but it's better to know what a word means and pronounce it wrong than to not know the meaning at all.
- csa 7y ago
  This is very possible. Japanese was my first foreign language. I could read a lot of Chinese while having no idea how to pronounce it. Furthermore, once I learned some fairly basic grammar in Chinese, I could read some texts with a fairly high level of accuracy. All that said, I’m pretty sure I sub-vocalized in Japanese. I will also say that there are words in both languages where I have forgotten the pronunciation of certain characters, but I remember what the characters mean. Thinking more about this some more, I’m pretty sure that there is a conceptual and/or visual “sub vocalization” that I have experienced where I clearly knew what something meant, but the words to say it in any language didn’t readily come to my mind. Specifically, there are concepts in Japanese (esp classical four characters combos) that I almost certainly didn’t know the pronunciation of, but I knew exactly what they meant, and the idea didn’t really directly translate into English (e.g., 不惜身命, which was use by Takahanada/Takanofuji when he became yokozuna).
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >Thinking more about this some more, I’m pretty sure that there is a conceptual and/or visual “sub vocalization” that I have experienced where I clearly knew what something meant, but the words to say it in any language didn’t readily come to my mind. Isn't this a common occurrence when you just can't think of a word, but it's on the tip of your tongue? Another thing that's similar to this would be all the symbols we run into in real life. Things such as traffic signs, trademarks, settings buttons, hamburger menu etc.
    - csa 7y ago
      Not really. Tip-of-the-tongue definitely is a part of symbolic knowledge/cognition. That said, what I am speaking of is much more complex. The example I gave for Japanese, while most educated native speakers would have known the pronunciation, the meaning was not obvious. As a non-native speaker, the translation was something like "with the devotion of a Buddhist monk", but that doesn't really convey the intensity of the phrase. Even today, when I try to translate it into English, my explanation does not do the phrase justice. When I try to explain it to not-so- linguistically-gifted Japanese people, I can provide a gist fairly easily (just as in English), but the weight of the phrase is tough to convey. In English, I might equate this to when someone uses just the right Latin or Greek term. The literal translation is fine, but the depth of the meaning is almost impossible to describe while being almost palpable to those in the know.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. This is actually how many people learn Japanese. They get an anki deck with kanji and their meanings and learn from that. The decks might have some pronunciations of the kanji, but typically not all of the pronunciations (or people don't learn them). This leads to a situation where they can read text and understand most (all?) of it, but would have difficulty reading it out loud. Japanese kanji (and Chinese hanzi) are logographic. Each symbol denotes a word or a phrase and depending on the context it can have a different pronunciation, however the meanings generally stay rather similar.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    But that wouldn't help with avoiding subvocalizing. If you know one pronunciation, even if it's not the correct one, you can still subvocalize. One thing I noticed about myself is that I often subvocalize large numbers (say, 64521) in my native language, especially when I'm reading a language I'm not fluent in.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      Perhaps we're different then, because when I see a large number I just skip over it unless the specific number is important. I'll essentially leave it as a blank. I think sub vocalization for kanji that you don't know the pronunciation of would be the same. On the other hand, perhaps this is not the best example, because somebody learning the language would already be slow enough at reading that sub-vocalization wouldn't make a difference.
- zuminator 7y ago
  Do people subvocalize emoji, I wonder?
- cthalupa 7y ago
  Sure. I'm not fluent in 日本語, but I know a little and I learned the meaning of plenty of kanji before I knew the reading, and for many kanji, there can be multiple readings, as well. (onyomi and kunyomi) In fact, a fairly popular way to self-teach Japanese involves utilizing a book series called "Remembering the Kanji", which teaches the meanings of kanji without any readings at all in the first volume. People are able to comprehend quite a bit on a basic level after volume 1 - no grammar and no way to speak or understand spoken word, but generally enough to get a rough idea of texts published at a fairly basic level. However, I imagine most people at this point, for most words, are probably subvocalizing the english word or meaning in their heads. It's pretty common, even for people that know the proper pronunciation, to still keep translating in their mind vs. just using the word in the foreign language. Personally, I really only subvocalize the Japanese pronunciation for words where they aren't really directly translatable. Kawaii is a good example - it's easy to just translate as 'cute' and it's a word a lot of non-Japanese speakers know, but it doesn't really convey the full meaning of the term and all of the cultural aspects of it. Shikataganai/shogunai are another common example. Phrases and words that don't have accurate direct translations are generally the first people learn to think of totally in their secondary languages, and a lot of people never progress beyond that. Which is a long way of saying it's hard to tell on this because someone who knows another language could be subvocalizing in their primary language, and someone who only knows the non-alphabetic language but can't pronounce it is pretty unlikely to exist, since most kids learn to speak and hear before they learn to write and read. The exception would be people that are born totally deaf - and then you don't need to use a non-alphabetic language. They wouldn't know the sounds to be able to subvocalize them even in an alphabetic language. Doing some quick googling, it looks like even some people that are born deaf develop a subvocalization alternative, with pictures, sign language, etc., though some do not develop the habit at all: https://books.google.com/books?id=8PhwXf9uj1IC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=deaf+subvocalization#v=onepage https://books.google.com/books?id=8PhwXf9uj1IC&pg=PA114&lpg=...
dorfsmay 7y ago
That's interesting. I wonder if subvocalisation has been studied in people death since birth.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  I guess you mean deaf. What you wrote means 'stillborn'. (sorry for the spam. couldn't resist)
  - dorfsmay 7y ago
    yes, sorry.

Terr_ 7y ago

I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. Maybe an experiment could involve a fictional ideogram language, and compare peoples subvocalizing (or lack thereof) versus their native one.

StavrosK 7y ago
Why not? I didn't know how to pronounce many of the words when learning English, yet I knew what they meant. I did make up my own pronunciation, if that's what you mean.
- godelski 7y ago
  As a native English speaker who read a lot as a kid, there are many words I've found as I got older that I was pronouncing entirely incorrectly. So I think this is quite common (I know several others like this)
  - SamPatt 7y ago
    Yes very common among people considered "bookworms" as children. Learning vocabulary through reading not hearing. Can sometimes be embarrassing but it's better to know what a word means and pronounce it wrong than to not know the meaning at all.
csa 7y ago
This is very possible. Japanese was my first foreign language. I could read a lot of Chinese while having no idea how to pronounce it. Furthermore, once I learned some fairly basic grammar in Chinese, I could read some texts with a fairly high level of accuracy. All that said, I’m pretty sure I sub-vocalized in Japanese. I will also say that there are words in both languages where I have forgotten the pronunciation of certain characters, but I remember what the characters mean. Thinking more about this some more, I’m pretty sure that there is a conceptual and/or visual “sub vocalization” that I have experienced where I clearly knew what something meant, but the words to say it in any language didn’t readily come to my mind. Specifically, there are concepts in Japanese (esp classical four characters combos) that I almost certainly didn’t know the pronunciation of, but I knew exactly what they meant, and the idea didn’t really directly translate into English (e.g., 不惜身命, which was use by Takahanada/Takanofuji when he became yokozuna).
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >Thinking more about this some more, I’m pretty sure that there is a conceptual and/or visual “sub vocalization” that I have experienced where I clearly knew what something meant, but the words to say it in any language didn’t readily come to my mind. Isn't this a common occurrence when you just can't think of a word, but it's on the tip of your tongue? Another thing that's similar to this would be all the symbols we run into in real life. Things such as traffic signs, trademarks, settings buttons, hamburger menu etc.
  - csa 7y ago
    Not really. Tip-of-the-tongue definitely is a part of symbolic knowledge/cognition. That said, what I am speaking of is much more complex. The example I gave for Japanese, while most educated native speakers would have known the pronunciation, the meaning was not obvious. As a non-native speaker, the translation was something like "with the devotion of a Buddhist monk", but that doesn't really convey the intensity of the phrase. Even today, when I try to translate it into English, my explanation does not do the phrase justice. When I try to explain it to not-so- linguistically-gifted Japanese people, I can provide a gist fairly easily (just as in English), but the weight of the phrase is tough to convey. In English, I might equate this to when someone uses just the right Latin or Greek term. The literal translation is fine, but the depth of the meaning is almost impossible to describe while being almost palpable to those in the know.
Mirioron 7y ago
>I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. This is actually how many people learn Japanese. They get an anki deck with kanji and their meanings and learn from that. The decks might have some pronunciations of the kanji, but typically not all of the pronunciations (or people don't learn them). This leads to a situation where they can read text and understand most (all?) of it, but would have difficulty reading it out loud. Japanese kanji (and Chinese hanzi) are logographic. Each symbol denotes a word or a phrase and depending on the context it can have a different pronunciation, however the meanings generally stay rather similar.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  But that wouldn't help with avoiding subvocalizing. If you know one pronunciation, even if it's not the correct one, you can still subvocalize. One thing I noticed about myself is that I often subvocalize large numbers (say, 64521) in my native language, especially when I'm reading a language I'm not fluent in.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Perhaps we're different then, because when I see a large number I just skip over it unless the specific number is important. I'll essentially leave it as a blank. I think sub vocalization for kanji that you don't know the pronunciation of would be the same. On the other hand, perhaps this is not the best example, because somebody learning the language would already be slow enough at reading that sub-vocalization wouldn't make a difference.
zuminator 7y ago
Do people subvocalize emoji, I wonder?
cthalupa 7y ago
Sure. I'm not fluent in 日本語, but I know a little and I learned the meaning of plenty of kanji before I knew the reading, and for many kanji, there can be multiple readings, as well. (onyomi and kunyomi) In fact, a fairly popular way to self-teach Japanese involves utilizing a book series called "Remembering the Kanji", which teaches the meanings of kanji without any readings at all in the first volume. People are able to comprehend quite a bit on a basic level after volume 1 - no grammar and no way to speak or understand spoken word, but generally enough to get a rough idea of texts published at a fairly basic level. However, I imagine most people at this point, for most words, are probably subvocalizing the english word or meaning in their heads. It's pretty common, even for people that know the proper pronunciation, to still keep translating in their mind vs. just using the word in the foreign language. Personally, I really only subvocalize the Japanese pronunciation for words where they aren't really directly translatable. Kawaii is a good example - it's easy to just translate as 'cute' and it's a word a lot of non-Japanese speakers know, but it doesn't really convey the full meaning of the term and all of the cultural aspects of it. Shikataganai/shogunai are another common example. Phrases and words that don't have accurate direct translations are generally the first people learn to think of totally in their secondary languages, and a lot of people never progress beyond that. Which is a long way of saying it's hard to tell on this because someone who knows another language could be subvocalizing in their primary language, and someone who only knows the non-alphabetic language but can't pronounce it is pretty unlikely to exist, since most kids learn to speak and hear before they learn to write and read. The exception would be people that are born totally deaf - and then you don't need to use a non-alphabetic language. They wouldn't know the sounds to be able to subvocalize them even in an alphabetic language. Doing some quick googling, it looks like even some people that are born deaf develop a subvocalization alternative, with pictures, sign language, etc., though some do not develop the habit at all: https://books.google.com/books?id=8PhwXf9uj1IC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=deaf+subvocalization#v=onepage https://books.google.com/books?id=8PhwXf9uj1IC&pg=PA114&lpg=...

dorfsmay 7y ago

That's interesting. I wonder if subvocalisation has been studied in people death since birth.

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
I guess you mean deaf. What you wrote means 'stillborn'. (sorry for the spam. couldn't resist)
- dorfsmay 7y ago
  yes, sorry.