Do most people here subvocalize? Even though most everything I read about subvocalization is negative...

I subvocalize, have since I was a child. I've tried to stop but I just can't. I don't know why people say it's bad. I can see how it would be if you wanted to read faster but I read to learn and from what I'm reading on wikipedia, subvocalization helps comprehension and memorization. I also have a decent memory so that could be why. Most of all I am in love with how English sounds so when I'm alone I will read aloud.

I am actually looking for reasons to stop subvocalizing and also techniques to. It seems nearly impossible for me to stop.

I learned how to read by reading aloud, like any other kid. Reading quietly meant not making the sounds, but I still sort of moved my tongue inside my mouth, mimicking the pronounciation of each individual word.
Decades later, I wasn't moving my tongue (at least not all the time), but I was still sort of conscious of it and my throat, which is how I 'heard' the sounds.

To stop subvocalizing, I just focused on getting the words purely through my eyes without waiting to 'hear' the sounds and the pauses between words. It wasn't comfortable but I realized my brain was still parsing and interpreting words, and I did read slightly faster. Not sure how, I just focused my entire being on the text and my eyes.
I can switch whenever I want to, more do when I'm reading difficult passages.

Still, I subvocalize whenever I write even 3
simple words. Not sure if this can be avoided.

Is it just for speed then? I rather like hearing the words and each pause inside my head, even as I'm writing this right now. I feel like reading would be so bland if I didn't, especially when it comes to character dialogue.

It's useful for getting through boring parts
slightly faster or when the prose does nothing for me. You can go really fast but I'm aware this would affect my retention a lot.
I also tend to subvocalize less when I'm reading translations.

On average I'll read from 30 to 40 pages in an hour with either technique.

I do this because some authors are clearly meant to be read aloud.
I was really surprised that I posted Cormac McCarthy as an example of this and people on Veeky Forums actually didn't know what the fuck I meant.
Just take this passage but actually read it aloud:
>A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools
He uses a sound rhythm to link words together very frequently, too much to bother listing here, but take some of the more immediately obvious examples:
>A legion of horribles, hundreds in number
(hear the alliteration and the assonance how they roll the words together in a rhythm)
>bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious
(the rhyme of "whose horse's whole head/was painted crimson red", the assonance of "gaudy and grotesque with daubings..." and the clustering of similar consonant sounds in the same section, as well as being a frequent pattern in the whole text)
Some authors absolutely intend you to read aloud as well, to hear the way the words become almost incantatory.

as well as company/clowns and company/mounted
He uses combinations of interlinked sounds to give a really nice rhythm to passages like this, but you won't notice it unless you're actually hearing the words he writes.
You're missing a lot of the magic of some authors if you don't hear the words.
Then again I'm an autistic little shit about the sound of words so I can't help but notice this.

I meant mounted/clowns

No, I'm not retarded and I can read the words in my head

are you sounding words out individually in your head? guess what, that's still subvocalization. reading without subvocalization is looking at sentences/blocks of text at a time and comprehending it without parsing every single word, like how you only glance at subtitles while watching foreign language film

If you don't subvocalize then you aren't really reading.

I don't subvocalize, I vocalize. After learning that the Greeks and Romans all read out loud, I started doing it about 2 years ago.
It's honestly more enjoyable (although reading speed did decrease a little bit) and it's helped greatly with public speaking.

Does "subvocalizing" mean there has to be minute, residual muscle movement (I don't do that), or is it just hearing the words in one's head (I do that and I thought everyone did)?

One thing I do sometimes is hear the words in a particular voice. With some literature I find that really helps. For example, I listened to some sound clips of William Faulkner and now when I read his books I tend to read them in his voice. (I use Eudora Welty for the female characters, haha).

If I ever listen to a audiobook read by the author I tend to hear all that author's works in his own voice - I do this with Joseph Heller, for example.

On the other hand, even though I know that Keats spoke with a Cockney accent, I certainly don't "hear" him like that. Cockney = evil.

I read everything with the voice of Morgan Freeman.

Hahaha, not sure if you are serious, but I do use actors and actresses on occasion, including Mr Freeman.

If a book is worth reading, it's worth reading out loud. Admittedly I haven't always followed this, but God when I do I end up enjoying the work so much more.

On the end of the spectrum, reading "just to read" leaves me feeling empty and detached...It's supposed to be fun. It's not a race.

Slightly off topic but has Heller written anything else good/funny besides catch 22?

Something Happened (his second novel) is very good, but deeply, profoundly sad.

After that, not so much. There's some readable stuff but nothing indispensable.

I subvocalize poetry and certain kinds of prose, but anything technical, especially philosophy, registers entirely in chunked words or even phrases.

For a bizarre example I don't subvocalize lit posts except the greentext, which has a distinctive voice

subvocaliztion is like counting on fingers — for 7 year olds

How is it even possible to read without subvocalizing? I can't even imagine it, how could I keep my mind silent while reading? Do you just skim the words with your eyes and your mind picks up the meaning behind them?

The words and phrases are just concepts with visual shape. I imagine that's how deaf people read to begin with.

Probably there is still brain activity for vocalization going on but it's not prominent enough to override the conceptual-visual content

Ah ok, I think that's usually how I read especially when I'm reading quickly. I think it's still sort of subvocalization, I still sort of hear the words but I don't fully pronounce them if that makes sense.

Yeah I bet it is a sort of gradient where one thing is pushed higher in consciousness and the other lower.

Not only do I subvocalize, but since I have ADHD, I have 3 tiers of thought. The first two subvocalize. The third one is basically just esoteric thought fog, though.

>esoteric thought fog
this is a top tier expression user. at least I have my own version of this, not from ADHD though

>watching moves sped up so they can get through it faster
do they really do this? disgusting

>you won't notice it unless you're actually hearing the words he writes
You don't need to make mouth noises to notice that.

Most people don't actually pay attention to the literal sounds of their native language unless they're consciously forcing themselves to for some reason. You're so immersed in it that you don't notice the steps between hearing and parsing out meaning, you just get the impression you're dealing with meaning directly. That's why people who speak English can probably give you an impression of what people who speak Spanish or Japanese sound like but probably aren't sure how English speakers sound to non-English speakers. The meaning of language is to some extent antagonistic to the sound of language, the more you focus on one the less you'll be able to focus on the other.

>have 3 tiers of thought
Explain more pls

That's why it's called subvocalisation champ

>mouth noises
the absolute state of the board

Is subvocalizing moving your mouth as you read or is it hearing the words in your head? I'm confused

Not him, but for me, it's just an aural intelligence thing. The sounds make more sense to me than the symbols, if I sound the words in my head I have a much better time apprehending the meaning.

I naturally subvocalize and I didn't even know some people don't. How old are you btw?

I subvocalize only when I begin reading/skimming/while I'm writing, when I'm in a state of flow it's not sounds just words.

Yeah, me too. I thought OP meant moving your mouth and reading in an almost unhearable volume because hearing the words in your head is the only way to read. I mean, I can't imagine how read could work if you don't hear the words in your head.

Hearing them in your head.

You don't need to make inaudible except by machine diagnostic mouth noises to notice that.
Happy now?

>I mean, I can't imagine how read could work if you don't hear the words in your head.
You don't really hear the sound of the words when other people speak normally, it's the same as that, you just focus on the meaning and not the sounds.

It's literally impossible not to subvocalize. And even if it were, it doesn't matter. Reading isn't a competition. If you are reading a text slow enough to actually understand it, you will subvocalize.

>Does "subvocalizing" mean there has to be minute, residual muscle movement (I don't do that), or is it just hearing the words in one's head (I do that and I thought everyone did)?
I'm pretty sure there's research that shows that there is always subtle muscle movement when you read (I'm too lazy to look up the citations, I just read it on Wikipedia).

Yes

I once read a book by Christine Vitrano in a the heavy accent of a middle-aged Italian woman. I don't think she's Italian, though.

But the bar does count. It has a weight of its own, does it not?

Sometimes I end up visualizing certain characters as actors and when I realize I'm doing it it drives me crazy, because then I start associating the two

If this is the case, you must admit that we don't hear any sounds at all. After all, we aren't actually focusing on the sounds, we're constantly interpreting the meanings of the sounds. But this is stupid; obviously we perceive sound, even though we attach meaning to that sound.

Literally all of my thoughts about language are subvocalized.
I can skim read if I try but u quickly drift off and begin to subvocalize as part as some other line of thought while I am skim reading, then I will reallize I've gone over 3 pages and didn't interpret a single word.
Is it not normal?

Never mind I just tested it out, if I'm going balls to the wall I can read about 3 lines a second but it's all subvocalized and I only get part of it. I guess if I read rapidly I can just continue to do that and the subvocalization becomes sub background noise

>mouth noises
>oh, sorry, I meant mouth noises
Are you fucking retarded

It depends on what you mean by "hear."
Obviously your ears are interacting with sound waves if that's what you mean by "hear," but that's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is whether you're consciously noticing the sound of a language spoken to you that you're native to.
And I'm saying no, you don't consciously notice it unless you force yourself to start trying to, and even then you might not do a very good job at it because you've had a lifetime already of getting meaning from that language and that gets in the way.

Subvocalization is associated with the same muscle movements as regular speech, you just need a mechanical diagnostic system to pick up on it.
Are *you* retarded?

I don't subvocalize, but I still pick up the rhythm, etc, of the language used. I do slow down enough with dense imagery that I can end up subvocalizing, or, similarly, slow myself down on particularly good language with the same result. It's not really a different understanding at all, just aural or visual.

JUST CLEAR THIS UP: is "hearing" the words in your head, individually, subvocalization, or is it mouthing the words silently?

Hearing the words in your head as if in speech is subvoc. Mouthing the words is brainletvoc.

>STEMsperg

Subvocalizers still mouth the words, they just do so to a lesser degree that isn't as noticeable.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization
>This inner speech is characterized by minuscule movements in the larynx and other muscles involved in the articulation of speech. Most of these movements are undetectable (without the aid of machines) by the person who is reading.

It has to do with how I visualize "thinking". Shit, I don't know how to explain it, since it's not something I decided on, it just happened that way.

Okay, so active thinking is the top layer. That's the active thoughts, reacting to outside stimulus, or having an imaginary argument, that kind of thing.
Below that is a second layer that I'm still actively aware of. If the first tier is opaque, then the second tier is translucent. That's just random fucking bullshit running parallel. Like, a monologue about grapes.
The third tier is just fog, like I mentioned before. It's 99% transparent. It's less words and more just impressions/emotions.

All these tiers happen at the same time, so as you can imagine, it's hard to focus. So, I like to say that you have occupy the second tier, so you can use the first tier to read (the third one doesn't really matter, since it's so quiet anyway).

bullshit

>science is bullshit

Well, this is a Christian board...

I subvocalize everything. I found it very difficult to read Poe when I was young. I locked myself in a room and read House of Usher, completely misunderstanding everything about it, until I nearly drove myself mad. I began laughing, madly. I then began to scream every word of the opening paragraph in a mock tone- "AAAWN A DAAAAARK, DULLL AND SOWNDUHLESSSSS DAYYYYY (LMAO) EEEEEN ZEEEE AWWWWTUMMMM OFFFFF THE YEEEEEAR... WHEN THE CLOUDS HUNG OPPRESSIVELY LOW IN THE HEAVENS... I Found Myself Traveling Alone, On horse Back, through a singularly dreary tract of country." Eureka.
I found it.

I've read to my mother on a few occasions, and she has always remarked that she gets more immersed listening to me as opposed to reading it (silently) herself; according to her, she often feels she isn't really taking in the information. She's described taking some kind of speedreading lessons at a young age, which I assume involved diminishing subvocalization. To me the idea of purposefully suppressing people's internal reading voice sounds like the product of some dystopian future, a kind of psychic lobotomy or circumcision.

Yes it is. Perhaps you should go back to plebbit.

>when brainlets think they can get Literary cred by mindlessly denigrating science
Embarrassing.

Aww, the retard actually believes this.
>mindless
There is no mind, Platonist.

i subvovalize and im not at all mimicking the noises i would make, i can feel when my larynx is oscillating and when its pure interior activity. right now i have my throat motionless and am reading every word i write in my head aloud