I think is is a perfect example to explain how our brain stores memories and information (images, ideas, concepts, new things, etc). I'm not bilingual (I only s

I think is is a perfect example to explain how our brain stores memories and information (images, ideas, concepts, new things, etc). I'm not bilingual (I only speak English) but from reading everyone's comments on this page a clear pattern emerged: To your brain, language is just another piece of information, normally used for expressing ideas, concepts, or new things you have learned. If you learn about a new thing while you're living in a country speaking the native language, your brain stores it together with the associated language, which you will later use to express that thing, even if you're expressing it after you've somewhat forgotten the language it was learned in. This very clearly explains why most programmers will "think" in English when they're programming -- the majority of documentation and code is written in English and when they learn programming concepts, the concepts are stored in the brain along with the English language used to express it. Our brain is constantly looking for relationships. I notice whenever I play a game on the computer, I instantly feel hungry -- even if I just ate. My brain associates "eating" with the activity "gaming" and tells my body it's hungry. In the exact same way, the brain stores the associated language with the new concept or thing when it is being learned. Taming and controlling this functionality of the human brain is very powerful and I think it's the basis of all habits and addiction. (I say "I think" because I have absolutely no formal education on this topic.) This entire subject fascinates me as I have always wondered why learning a new language seemed so difficult to me. I often catch myself reading aloud in my head and quickly realize how much it's slowing me down. When I switch to "absorbing" the words instead of repeating them in my head, my reading speed instantly increases two-fold. I'm going to write a post on my blog compiling and summarizing all the ideas and discussion on this page, so feel free to look for it on raamdev.com if you're interested.