Ooo if you are actually interested, the tradition of Chan Zen definitely has more to say than that. I see how Soto Zen may be seen that way with its intense focus on meditation. Also Soto Zen is way more known in the west than Chan.
Me neither. Well, sort of. I kinda have a dialogue in my head where I say what is on my mind while talking to another person. But even if get an internal monologue, it's detached if that makes sense. It took me throughout my life to only realise recently that most people have internal monologues, and a lot of people don't like it.
Studying the inner monologue, or lack thereof, is actually a newly emerging study. There is newly coined term for someone with little to no inner monologue but I forgot what it is called. Anyhow, a study found that those with little or no internal monologue tend to be forgetful, because they don't repeat what they have to remember in their minds. Which explains a lot why I am forgetful.
The way I describe it, is that I can think of words, rather than thinking in words. So, like I could easily make up an internal dialogue, and and sort of mentally roleplay it in my head (though I also have aphantasia, so I even that's not the way most people do it), but those words come after the intention to do it. This idea of "hearing" words in my head that I didn't consciously will in to existence is completely foreign to me