So to my understanding, most speakers of romance languages have an inner voice, often spelling out the letters of words as they are talking. Do Japanese people do that? Is it usually a mix of Kanji, katana, and hiragana, and just hiragana for unfamiliar Japanese words? Internalizing japanese seems more difficult than other languages for me due to those 3 different writing systems.
2 comments
English is a Germanic language, not a Romance language. Maybe you mean Indo-European language?
no one spells out words continuously as they talk, in any language. in special situations where you need to think of a word you’re not familiar with, sure. but when you’re having a conversation with friends, letters are not generally flying through your mind.
also keep in mind that an inner voice is not something all people have. nor an inner projection of pictures like visual letters or scenes or faces. in fact, many people have neither of these, and it has no effect on their ability to think or communicate.
it’s fine to switch your inner voice to japanese for practice, i do the same, but unless you’re practicing visualizing a character for a really specific reason, like drawing a kanji character in your head literally for practice… there’s no need to try to project text into your mind’s eye. it’s not how anyone thinks on a regular basis.