Exactly. The hysteria about LLMs has betrayed how many people never make the leap and are constrained to thinking in the words and structures already familiar to them.

It is also incredible the extent to which abstract visualization is looked down on by our current academic fashions.

My Spanish teacher used to tell me not to try and translate everything in my head but to just think in Spanish. This seemed ridiculous to me at first but, over time, I understood what she meant. Put simply, you can't have a conversation in Spanish if you are mentally translating every word as you go. No Spanish speaker is going to hang around that long.

I never did get to that stage but can appreciate the concept.

People thinking in other languages also work stuff out abstractly sometimes.

I'd say it's likely that learning new languages can improve your ability to work in abstract concepts. Something about the different forms of grammar, and deep paradigm shift in outlook implicit in the language (aka Sapir-Whorf). For example, the Mayan languages were fantastic for closely describing nature, compared to English, and (probably as a result) their astronomy was incredible.

Being forced to translate from a language you are proficient in, one you possibly think sublingually in, forces one to move from system 2, to system one.

Esp if the destination language has a much higher precision for the arguments you are making.