Not understanding your own language

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In those days it is happened to me.
My brother has said things to me, and i didn't understood his words, like if italian was a foreign language for me.
Maybe is just because in those days my head is too much into norwegian studies (and if i'm not into norwegian studies i'm into visual thinking). and maybe because i write mainly in english.
This is happened to you?

Yes, I'm familiar with that. A person changes their tone of voice or something and I can't understand them. Like I had auditory processing disorder. This doesn't happen to me very often, but it's annoying.

I don't find that I have difficulty understanding someone if they are talking to me. However, if they are READING something to me, I will understand hardly a word.

Anyone else notice this?

I started a thread about something like this the other day.

Sometimes people speak to me and all I hear is noise.

I had that on the train last Friday! An English man and a Frenchman were talking English to each other (We speak Dutch here) Took me a few of their sentences to realise it was English. It all sounded gibberish for me for the first few minutes. Was very surreal experience.

That's due to the sensory and cognitive processing delays that are so much a part of AS. With me it depends on the particular person, how much a person is saying, how fast they are saying it and how long they drag it out or go on and on about the same old thing.

I can easily talk to my sister for hours on end because she takes the time to listen. However my mom talks AT me and drags the same subject out endlessly while moving from one subject to some side subject 5 and 6 levels deep. She pays no attention to me as if SHE were the one who is mindblind. When this happens I feel like yawning and only hear the sound of her voice with no real meaning behind it.

There is one very good scene about 10 minutes into the movie, Ben X that depicts this effect. Ben is walking along outside through a crowd of people watching them as their mouths move talking to each other incessantly. As he does so, he thinks to himself, "they just talk and talk and talk". Then immediately afterwards he looks at a couple deep kissing in public and thinks to himself, "and they drink each other's saliva too". This observer's perception viewpoint rang especially true with me when I looked back at many of my own reactions to people over my lifetime... I am the lonely observer rather than the participant.

The thing to ask yourself is whether you can comprehend the same communications in writing but not in spoken form. Take a look at my very first post upon joining WP (follow my profile list)... it was about this very same subject and the difference between written and spoken communications.

Have plenty of that! The more worn out, the worse!

Actually it happens to me on a, nearly, daily basis. Last week, i had a really overwhelming experience, as one of my colleagues had to tell me the same thing tree times, before i finally were tuned in. And therefore able to understand, what he needed help for! Really scary stuff! - Luckily i have told, all my colleagues, that i have AS. - Else, i were told, he'd believe me to be "less functioning"...

TTRSage, You have most of it! - But, for me, theres also another thing playing a major role. Environment! The more sensory distraction ( noise, people, flickering light ect. ) the worse!
I really like Your parallel to Ben X. It just seems so familliar! Thats one of the main reasons for me to feel alien...

Yes, i understand better written language. Italian, English, much of french and a bit of norwegian. Somethimes i misunderstand written language too, probably is when there is double meaning.

Another very good point (that is also addressed in Ben X)... all the noise and all the people!! ! What is even worse is people making people noise such as talking outside your door or through walls in the next room. And what is even worse still is when they are talking about you and trying to intimidate you in order to put a feather in their hat (typical bullying behavior). I get a whole lot of that lately where I live after a group of young aggressive jock types moved in about 9 months ago. It is enough to drive an Aspie absolutely crazy... far worse than the boomboxes that used to be there (I should not say that or as luck goes they might get one of those too).

Do take a look at Ben X if you ever get the chance. It is a Belgian film festival movie, not that easy to find, exclusively in the Flemish language (maybe that is close enough to Danish so that you might be able to follow it) and I had to read subtitles all the way through. But it is well worth the effort and in my opinion is one of the better and more realistic portrayals of Aspergers Syndrome. Ben has AS to a more profound degree than it affects me but I could really feel his pain and understood the reasons behind all that he experienced so much better than with any other autism movie I have seen. It has a surprise ending that will make you smile, but I won't ruin the movie for you by describing it. The scene I absolutely love is the one in the corral at the very end (after that surprise ending) in which Ben's mom accepts and is happy for him exactly as he is in his fantasy world state. That is an expression of real love and greatly affected my outlook towards another real life Aspie who seems too profoundly affected to ever be reached by me... even though I have spent the past 18 months (as of this Tuesday) gently attempting to do so. It was as a result of this Aspie, this movie and a lot of research and understanding that I came to realize that I myself had AS.

Last edited by TTRSage on 22 May 2011, 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My younger daughter sometimes speaks so fast I do not catch even a single word, but a more common experience such as being mentioned here is for me to "begin hearing" in/at the middle of a multi-syllable word of a given sentence and never be able to discern the next "space" preceding the next word so I can get into sync with the speaker.

And then, of course, there is the matter people sometimes placing "em-pha'-sis on the wrong syl-la'-ble" ...

Oh that is indeed annoying. I had a roommate my second year of college who used the pronunciation or RUB-ber bands. And my mom pronounces the word TUS-con as Tus-CON and the word Thailand as Tah-land. I had a Thai friend a number of years back and one of the things I learned in listening to him talk in his native language is that the Thai language is very rich in bright sounding vowels with all kinds of inflections between them that make the normal pronunciation of the word Thailand quite appropriate if even not bright sounding enough.

I have an autitory processing disorder, a 45bd hearing loss in both ears, and autism on top of that. Needless to say, much of what people say does not make sense to me...mostly it sounds like trying to hear someone talk underwater.

Already knowing about clutch bands inside transmissions, that would cause me to think of some kind of anti-friction device!

Funny, it USED to be that if a person spoke english, German, French, Spanish, Italian, or several other languages, I could geerally tell you in one sentence.

TODAY, I have trouble even with ENGLISH! it is my native language, I spoke it before I was 1yo, and I can read almost any book written in it, but sometimes I can't track it audibly. Of course, I DO have to discern several new "dialects", and understand the MEANING that may even be 100% different from what is said.

Oh dear, I think that might be my problem, too! When a girl uses that seductive/flirtatious tone, I can barely understand them. As you can imagine, it tends to ruin the mood when I ask "What did you say?", lol.

Sometimes it happens.

But sure, Everywhere it happens. Jargon and slangs may be the reasons.