language can be a thought but not vice versa

Why is it that we need to express what we are thinking in language? Before we (as an individual or as a species) learned a language, we surely had thoughts. We just thought of them as they were; the raw, direct thoughts. It's kind of hard to explain because what I'm using to explain it is words. (Which is the very thing I am trying to question. So either I am a hypocrite, or none of this makes any sense anyway and I am crazy.) Let's continue shall we?

If we had thoughts before we knew language, when we were babies, then it is no wonder we can't remember our lives from before the time we could speak. We have no memories that are in the language we currently process information in from that period in our life.

For instance, I remember dreams far longer if I write them down, translated from thoughts to English, or even think about what happened in the dream in my inner monologue, no doubt in English. Rather than remembering the feelings of the dream combined with the "raw thought", as I will refer to it from now on, I am remembering the words which almost instantaneously trigger the memory because English is the language I think in.

You can see this when you are trying to remember something. You can usually work backwards from a visual or a phrase you remember. But sometimes, if in the first place you never worked the experience into meaningful words, you just have to "think about it" for a minute without any inner monologue in the slightest. Those, I am assuming, are your raw memories. How else do you think you can go from not remember going to the circus when you were 4 and then remembering? When it finally "comes to you" you then work it into meaningful words from memory and it is then stored in your memory longer because of the words you worked the memory into. If you revisit the non-raw memory again, then you will most likely "remember" that day when you were 4 forever.

Say I am trying to write an essay. And I have been pondering (in English) what to write about specifically. And then I am thinking about something or other and then it hits me...kind of. "Ooh ooh! Wait what was that! I had something!" Might have to work forwards from the last thing in English I remember thinking and see where me mind takes me, but go slower. It was a raw thought, something in the back of my mind. Something that my inner monologue was barely keeping track of, so it just kind of rushed by. But in the severe mental state I was in, racking my brain for ideas for this essay, I sensed it somehow.
At this point I would sputter out seemingly (but not actually) random words aloud, trying to get a feel for my raw thought in the English language. And a lot of times, it helps. And I can "remember" (really just understand in the way I know how) what I had thought of.

In the time when I am about to fall asleep, there is a brief period of time when I am just freely thinking. Sometimes about my life in a very disorganized and tangent-like way, sometimes in a daydream about something that could happen, sometimes random visuals as if I were high. I think this time gives the perfect in-between stage between raw thought and language. I am not aware in the slightest that I am thinking, it's all about the thought. But it is often in the English language and if I become aware at any one point that I am thinking, I could describe what I had thought without any sputtering of words or mind strain at all. Perhaps that that is only because of the relaxed state of almost asleep that helps me, but I'd rather think it's because it was mostly in raw thought.

Tell me your thoughts on my thoughts about thoughts.