Easier is a mindset and there are still people that wear analog watches to tell time. If you wear a digital watch, you still have to convert to analog in your mind to relate to the time of day.
In my long-ago youth, I thought that people who spoke foreign languages had to mentally convert what they heard into English before they could understand what was said. (I still think so.)
Some do - they don't become as proficient as those who don't, IMO. You know a language when you don't flip it to your native in your head.
