Hector Martin

Oh I do that too, explicitly, sometimes. I find it interesting to imagine myself writing an article or giving a talk. But most of the time there is no conversation, it's just some kind of higher level conceptual flow.

This is related to how some people learning languages "translate" in their head. I don't; if I have trouble recalling a word I might search for it based on other languages, but most of the time when I'm speaking or listening in a language, there is a direct mapping to ideas.

That is really interesting. For me the words don't have to associate to an *image*, but they do associate to the concept. I think imagining is probably a good way to learn word associations, but of course that doesn't work for you. I wonder if there's another way?

Hey, you've been getting better at faking English your whole life right? ;) I think it's just that your brain needs time to break some patterns