Aspies and foreign languagues

Post Reply New Topic

I took German in high school, and on the AP exam, we had to tell a picture story by speaking, and this was a horrible combination of my suckages, buy one, get one free. However, it turned out that other people sucked as much as or more than I did, so I ended up getting a 5 on this exam, which I had thought was a clusterfark for me.

I speak a little Spanish and a little French.

If I have any talent it's foreign languages. I pick them up effortlessly, and can mimic the pronunciation like a native speaker. I love learning them, right now I feel like trying to learn Danish.

English: native.
German: fluent (literally 1 credit from finished degree), getting teacher assistant job at a German immersion school this semester, strong possibility of having teaching job there once I finish degrees.
Spanish: 101 and 102.
Russian: 101 starting this semester.
Can read International Phonetic Alphabet, at least what is used in English and German. I even take many class' notes in it for practice.

Lol I actually meant that the learning is faster, at least for me, when there is a person to talk to. The problem is getting a person to practice with.

I agree, though, that natural speech is something advanced to grasp.

One thing that I forgot to mention is context. A loud background noise (eg. canteen) or the presence of too many people in a conversation makes it already hard for me to join a conversation in a language that I know well or even my own... if it is one I don't know so well, my level of comprehension drops considerably with respect to optimal conditions.

I happen to have languages and linguistics as a whole as an intense interest. I find myself picking up on vocabulary in foreign languages very easily; grammar is a bit more difficult, but I think that's just how it is for basically everyone. I hope to know at least 4 foreign languages (5 including my native tongue.)

I'm fairly good at the written part, but I'm horrible at the spoken part, which causes the written part to lag a bit behind too as I don't pick up as much naturally.

*sees you're in Brazil* Is English a foreign language for you?

I find learning languages easy. I learned Spanish in high school and college (ages 14-18 mostly) and I learned Romanian in my 40s, and I can communicate well in both, as well as English, which is my native language. I don't "get it" when people try to say you can't learn new languages after a certain age. I'm planning on studying another language soon, and my goal is to speak 5 languages well by the time I exit the planet.

~Kate

It's exactly the same for me. I can read French and a bit of Italian, I can also construct sentences, quite well, given time. But, don't speak to me and expect me to speak back immediately, unless I've already anticipated your question and have prepared a response.

I guess it varies between aspies. I've always been fascinated with languages and have learned languages that are like swedish (my mother toungue) fairly easily. The weird thing is that grammar, which if I understand correctly should be the easiest for aspies, actually was fairly hard for me. I can read and talk swedish, finnish, english and german fluently, but my grammar is far from perfect. I had to drop out from german at university, because we were supposed to read the whole Duden (a german grammar book with over 1000 pages) and I just didn't get it.

My aspie mom spoke and wrote 6 or more languages

She was a gemini, like a flatmate who became an interpreter

gemini loves communication and duality

I self-taught myself advanced Spanish because my high school was so dreadful in its language program. Became fluent in six months. I believe I'm hyperlexic in Spanish like I was in English as a child. I took a couple French courses at the same time as Spanish throughout the years. Found French very easy, too. It just never interested me as much, so I never got to advanced grammar or anything. I'm like a sponge when it comes to linguistics it seems.

I am extremely gifted at languages...I am fluent in French and picked up Spanish fairly fast but didn't like it...it didn't sound or feel as nice coming out of my mouth I can read fluently but might not always understand what I'm reading or what it means just like in English. I can mimic accents very well when I"m speaking another language...but I can't speak English with any other accent. I find conversation hard sometimes but that's because I don't do it enough I think.

I tried to learn Spanish but gave up on it and can't even speak my mothers language which is Hindi but foreign languages are not my natural strength anyway.

I can't see that Aspies are any more proficient in languages than NT's. As often as not, those Aspies I know who can speak a foreign language can do so because of where they've lived previously or their family. One friend is self taught in German and Esperanto, and apart from having a heavy English accent when speaking them he seems proficient in them. And indeed, I used to be proficient in foreign languages because they were a special interest, which I lost interest in. But most Aspies I know haven't demonstrated ability in a foreign language as far as I know.

I lost interest in speaking or maintaining proficiency in other languages partly due to not having the economic or employment need to do so. And partly because of what I guess is a little bit of misanthropy and mistrust in people putting me off languages, as I realised the speakers of foreign languages were as flaky as anyone else, therefore I didn't have a social need for languages either.