Language and thought

An idea that I've left undeveloped for a few years (and which is still undeveloped) is concerning one's capacity to think. Aside from reflexive and physical activities, general thought (intellect) as I see it is founded in language.

What initially prompted my curiosity was the mind's ability to process thoughts. Because language is learned and executed verbally (with exception for those born without a sense of hearing) it is continued in that form throughout our internal and non-vocalized thoughts. So, when a two-syllable word goes through your head, it takes less time to process than a six-syllable one. We get around complex ideas that are expressed by multiple words by creating a shorter conjunctive word, i.e. instead of "young deer" we could use "fawn", but the number of narrower terms to keep in mind if a solution was pursued in this manner would be daunting.

I often find myself having a thought such as "That means that I need to do -blank-", and finishing the thought before the phrase's syllables in my head are fully articulated. I've looked at this phenomenon as a type of bottleneck on how we think, but I'm completely clueless about how to get around it or make the process more efficient. I'm aware that there's some work in linguistics describing language as a "means" for abstract thought. If so, without language we could only intuit concepts directly related to sensational experience.

Maybe there's a way to process thoughts (language) without executing them verbally. It wouldn't be in the same sense that you make a conscious decision to move you arm, because that form of thought isn't intellectual, it doesn't involve a predicate expression or any form of deduction.

I'm curious on how deaf persons get around this. Is it simply transfered over to another sense, i.e. sight or touch, or is there a different approach?