Unusual ability to pronounce foreign languages?

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i am no better than the average amuuurican at not butchering foreign words. this said, i am sensitive to certain terms which irritate me when folk willfully mispronounce them:

karaoke [KA-dA-OH-Keh] - literally, empty orchestra [slang]- NOT "kare-eeohkee"!
oregon [NOT "ohrehgawn"]
ouija ["wee-yaw" NOT "wee-jah"- french-oui=yes/german-ja=yes]- a "yesyes" board, literally!

in the song "little drummer boy", when the chorus says "bah-RUMP-pahpahpah" without rolling/trilling the R of the "RUMP"- it is meant in an onomatopoeic sense, in emulation of the drumrolls, so of course the Rs MUST be rolled to not get on my nerves.

when folk make no attempt at saying somebody's name correctly and respectfully, it curdles my heart.
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just my 2-cents' worth, adjusted for inflation

When I was young (way before my hearing started to go bad) I could pick up an accent as naturally as I could breath. I was more of a dialectician than a linguist. Getting the sound right was very easy for me.

My earliest recollection of this was when I was four years old and a bit. My mom and dad took me to a Chinese restaurant and I started to imitate the waiter who had just had a conversation (in Mandarin) with a co-worker. My imitation was flawless even though I did not have a single idea what was being said. This embarrassed my parents no end and I was told not to do that again. Well, I never did it again in a Chinese restaurant. My next adventure was in a French restaurant.... As my mother often told me, she can't take me anywhere.

It is a handy talent. I can do comic dialects now. Which is to say I can do jokes in English told in an authentic Russian, Croat, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Zulu accent (including the clicks). It is good for a laugh.

ruveyn

although this is a common ability among people with Asperger, unfortunately i don't have the knack to speak foreign languages particularly well. i did french and german for 8 years at school but can no longer speak them well anymore.

I've learn languages fairly easily. Was top of my Indonesian and Greek class. Learnt Polish and Swedish just from the internet.

I can pronounce Spanish very well, but that's because I've been taking three years of it. In my Spanish II class, my teacher remarked that my pronunciation of the language sounded "almost native".

I can also pronounce Japanese decently do to my watching a lot of subbed anime when I was younger.

Last edited by Descartes on 27 Mar 2010, 7:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting topic!

I have a knack of speaking languages with a fairly authentic accent and it's always been a mystery. Even though my parents only spoke Urdu at home, I was well versed in English from a very early age, on my own account.

I can pull off a mean Emirati Arabic accent and a decent French/Italian/Spanish one, even though I only have a very basic idea of these languages. Linguistics have always been very interesting but I think we Aspies get the accent and intonation etc. right because when we hear someone speaking a language, we note every minute detail and reproduce it perfectly. For example, I went to the UK in the summer of 2001, and while there, I developed a pretty convincing 'Saaaauuth' London [Hounslow] accent without really noticing it myself. It's only when I came back that people started laughing at me when I spoke to them, saying "what's with the accent?" This led to my current mixed-up hash of an accent.

Jealous

I don't have bigger problems with pronunciation of Germanic-Scandinavian languages, because I speak naturally from deeper parts of my throat. My pronunciation is full of harsh sounds.

Pensieve, to cudownie brzmi, chętnie porozmawiam z tobą po polsku - zapraszam do Polskiej Strefy w dziale językowym
Polski to bardzo trudny język, jak długo zajęła ci nauka odmiany? A umiesz wymówić te wszystkie sz, cz, ś, ć, ź, dź, ń, ą, ę? Jak ci szło z nauką Ach-lautu?

Diction, cadence, rhythm and intonation are similar to the aural skills associated with music (particularly singing). If you have a good ear, then you can distinguish sound, and more accurately reproduce it. If you have a talent for the sound of language, you probably have a talent for music, as well.

On the other hand, knowing the sounds of a language is a far cry from understanding the grammar, learning the vocabulary, or--most importantly--incorporating idiom.

I am a performer, and my voice is one of my instruments, it stands to reason that my accent is strong when speaking or singing in a foriegn language (even one that I don't know).

I pick up accent and intonation first, then the rest. Obviously, English is my main second language. I used to have a British accent that fooled most people, but after meeting my hubby (who's originally from Michigan) I decided to change it. It became confusing. I'm not very good at doing Swedish accents though, but I often slide into the intonation patterns of other accents when I talk to people.

Languages are one of my longterm obsessions. I have a whole list of languages to acquire before my collection is complete. But I don't stop at pronunciation, I want grammar, vocabulary, intonation, idioms and slang as well. Here's my collection thus far:

Swedish - native
English - near native
Italian - fluent, but need more vocabulary
French - see above
German - was fluent, haven't used it for ten years. I understand it.
Spanish - still got the pronunciation but the vocabulary went AWOL when I started studying Italian
Latin - was at the top of my class but it's all gone. I was rather depressed at the time, so I don't remember much of anything from that year.


Here's the short list of languages I want: Turkish, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Czech, Thai, Quebec-French, Swahili.

It's arduous though, if you want more than the pronunciation. I'm gifted, but no savant, so I need time and discipline.

I always feel like a foreigner, I guess that's one of the reasons I like foreign languages. When I was a kid I used to think my personality was just a different culture, because I got along much better with the Middle-Eastern kids. Now I know it's because they didn't think too much about my differences, or rather, they preferred me to other Swedes. I used to pretend I was from another country.

Now I know that I stick out wherever I go, but because foreigners don't know as well how Swedes are supposed to act, they don't see me as strange, just different. At least in the optimal cases.

All my life I try to reduce my guttural sounds, because it makes people confused.

Yep...languages are a special interest/obsession for me, and I've been asked if I'm a native Spanish speaker before (nope, never studied it till I was 14). I've studied Romanian for the past 11 months and I'm working on getting rid of my American accent I get comments from Romanians all the time too that my accent is very good (especially considering I started studying in my 40s).

Somebody commented that we might be less "wedded" to our original accent/language, and I think that has something to do with it. I lived in Texas for three years and I still use phrases like "y'all" at times.

I am a perfectionist and I don't go on to the next language till I get the one I'm studying learned to my satisfaction, but on my list: Italian, French, Swahili, and possibly Japanese (my son has an excellent teacher and I may just take advantage of that).

~Kate

Ah, Romanian is fascinating - this melodic blend of Italian and Portuguese with an odd but distinctive touch of the Slavic languages. I should add that too my list. It gets confusing when you try to learn languages that are closely related though...

OT:
I'm combining two obsessions in my applications for a PhD position - language and autism. Wish me luck, my ultimate aim is to improve the conditions and the general understanding for autistic people and communication.

I'm planning on learning new languages as a hobby though.

Yes, Romanian is beautiful. It's mostly of Latin origin, but unique because of the Slavic influences. (my signature line is in Romanian, from a very sad song by another one of my obsessions, Dan Bălan). I learned Spanish at least 30 years ago, and I got interested in Romanian when I heard a song on the radio, and it sounded a little like Spanish but I knew it wasn't...so I looked it up and tried to translate it, and fell in love with the language and learning it has been an obsession ever since The song that sparked my interest about a year ago:

http://www.trilulilu.ro/natalia25/5c75fa48bf673c

At this point if you dropped me in the middle of Romania (I wish...LOL) I'd probably manage just fine. I have an excellent teacher from Romania who teaches me by Skype.

My work is in the neurological field, but learning languages is a hobby that I've had for years. My goal is to learn five languages to my satisfaction (and getting me happy with how well I know a language is hard...LOL) in my lifetime. If I exceed that, great. Your plans sound great...I wish you the best of luck. One of the things that fascinates me, given my field, is how ppl tend to say that one can't really learn another language well after a certain age, but that isn't universally true (and I wonder if some ppl with AS are more prone to preserve the ability for some neurological reason...and this thread has only strengthened that curiosity).

~Kate

I studied Spanish in school. I have been complimented on my pronunciation as often as not when conversing in Spanish with native speakers. I took one year in French and only did well in my pronunciation.

I am a bit like a mocking bird. I love to whistle many of the tunes I hear on the radio. I have also been complimented on my ability to do so accurately. I think the two are related.

I speak in a foreign language, i.e., one that as creator only I often understand...