Why would they need to be able to put it into words in an inner monologue in order to form the thought?

The fact that it is possible to translate sentences into different languages should make it clear that the information content is not the same as the manner in which it is linguistically encoded. One simply... forms the thought. And then encodes it into speech for the purposes of telling other people about it later, and separately.

I think one can convey the feeling of "wishing something were real" into spoken words without actually thinking those exact words to themselves.

It's like when you are hungry, and decide to eat. You didn't have to tell yourself to do it to know that you should.

Speech is largely subconscious. Even people with a strong inner dialog are capable of expressing themselves in words without explicitly thinking out every word they say prior to open their mouths.

This was disturbing to me as well, but one way to think about it is how babies end up learning to talk: they don't speak any language initially, but they are still capable of thinking, since you need that in order to learn to talk, so they must be using something else other than language to "think", and since monologue is mostly language, this "something else" is unlikely to be a monologue.

> How can they form the thought 'I wish that was real' if they have no monologue? And to convey that thought they just open their mouth and spew forth a sentence with no knowledge of its shape?

For me, the thought exists in concepts/feelings/imagery until I perform a "reduction in dimensionality" by bringing it down to actual verbal speech.

> How can they form the thought 'I wish that was real' if they have no monologue?

Guessing -- a feeling of wistfulness and desire related to the sentence they just read?

> And to convey that thought they just open their mouth and spew forth a sentence with no knowledge of its shape?

I don't understand what this means. Do you know what you're going to say, before you say it? I mean the actual words? I have the intent to convey some information or meaning, but I don't know the exact words I'll say until I'm saying them. I've queued up intent or agreement or objections but in a normal conversation I don't hear the words until they come out of my mouth.

You’re taking it a step too far. People with no inner monologue are not incapable of thinking and feeling. What they expressed to the author just wasn’t expressed internally the way you and I would (by thinking and talking about in our heads).

A while back I discovered that I have aphantasia. I can construct elaborate ideas that are wholly visual in my head and describe them to other people in great detail but I cannot visualize an ounce of it in my own head. I've since read accounts of illustrators and graphic artists who are successful in their fields and who draw for a living and yet they also have aphantasia. I think this internal monologue thing probably isn't terribly different. FWIW, I _do_ have a _very strong_ internal monologue.

I've not figured out if I have the internal monologue after all or not, or both, but I often find myself composing something I'm going to say or write and feeling that the final sounding out is redundant. I already know what that sentence is going to be, no reason to actually put it in words.