Do you hear the words in your mind while reading?

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Almost never.
Isn't reading while hearing awfully slow? It would be for me.

Me too.

I hear the words when I read. I don't think in words, but reading is not quite the same thing as thinking.

However, when I get absorbed in reading something I stop hearing the words and simply visualize everything.

i do not think of the phonetic characteristics of words when i read them or write them.
i conceptualize directly what the words represent, and i do not run it through a verbal processing sequence at all.

reading words is like looking at objects in the real world. if i look at a tomato sauce bottle, i do not think of the word "tomato sauce bottle" when i am looking at it. i do not need to. it is inefficient to re-trawl what you already understand by painting your observational wake with words.

words are just tools of communication,

in themselves, they (words) have no value, and once the concept is grasped, there is no use to scrutinize the mere words that symbolize it.

if there was nothing in the universe except for a trillion words to describe it, what could the most powerful story about the universe relate to?

i experience things subjectively and i never say words in my head except for when i am trying to imagine accents or when i am trying to characterize how i would imagine a person of interest uttering a sentence of interest.


words are objects, like twigs shaped in multitudes of repeating ways that are all readily recognized by me, and when one understands how to tap into the conduit of communication that is enabled by "words", then "words" become more a component of the infrastructure of a concept rather than a superstructure that attempts to define it.

Yes, I do hear the words as I am reading, and it is in my own voice. I, also, think in words; I can visualize things in pictures, but it is always words first.

When I read, I hear the words as they are read, but in a voice nearly computer- like- that is, it isn't my own voice I hear, but just "a voice", to simplify this....

After posting in this thread I've realised that I do hear a voice when I read, I think it must be my voice but I'm not really sure...very confusing.

The last time I thought about this was when I was around 12.

One of my 'special interests' was ships. I read a book about the history of transatlantic ocean liners in which the authors of the book managed to get Winston Churchil to submit an essay praising a particular British liner ( which he called 'the lady with the fighting heart' because it served heroically as a troop transport in WW2 as well as a civilian luxury liner in peacetime). My mind switched gears and I "heard" the whole several page essay in Churchil's famous bulldog type public speaking voice.

This made me aware that I usually heard text in my own generic text voice- kinda of a neuter not exactly adult but not exactly child voice. A voice that could morph into character voices in either fiction, or in nonfiction.

I suppose that today I sometimes read too fast to actually hear a 'voice", but usually I still hear an inner voice when I read.

In my job I have to read and listen to really boring stuff, while at the same time remembering to push a button when the file goes to the next line. I have to do it at double speed to keep from falling asleep and sliding under my desk.

I've always "heard" a narrator in my mind while reading. She doesn't sound out the words, though. It's like hearing thoughts. When characters in fiction are talking, I hear them in the appropriate gender, like the scene is being acted out in my head.

I got a reading speed of about 800 words per Minute (Bellestrik), so if there was a voice in my head talking what i am reading, i wouldn´t understand it anyway. XD

This is interesting because I agree with looking at a "tomato sauce bottle" not thinking the word "tomato sauce bottle".
I am visually thinking, but my visual thinking has no "picture" for example for the word "real" (though it does have a colour).
That makes me leave out parts of texts which I experience as suddenly I repeat reading it again and again without my mind forming an understanding of it.
What you write gives the thought to me that it seems that I miss the "conceptual-part".