Thinking in three languages
Short notes on what actually changes when I switch between Chinese, Spanish and English.
I grew up speaking Chinese at home, Spanish at school, and I learned English the way most CS students do — documentation, error messages and English-language tutorials. Three languages is not a gimmick; it is the default way my brain works.
Some things I have noticed:
- Problem-solving. When I am debugging something hard, I default to English. Stack traces, identifiers and most of the libraries I use live in English, and I would rather not translate them twice in my head.
- Emotion and family. I write to my family in Chinese. Spanish is warmth with friends in Madrid. English is, mostly, work.
- Precision vs rhythm. Spanish is the language in which I sound most like myself. English feels cleaner but a bit less expressive. Chinese is denser — I can say in eight characters what takes me a full English sentence.
Translating posts is not copy-paste. An idea that is three punchy sentences in Chinese often wants to be one long paragraph in Spanish, and a pair of bullet points in English. I try to let each version breathe in its own language, instead of forcing one into the shape of another.
That is also why this blog exists in three versions, not one with a switch. Writing the same idea three times is one of the best editing tools I have.