I can't always speak properly. Am I the only one?

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I have a very poor way of exspressing myself. I have the general thoughts I want to express, but not the exact, precise words and phrases. The result is usually a mumbling jumble of words and hesitations and pauses. I sound ret*d

I know this feeling all too well! Quite often, I have a coherent thought in my head, but I try to get it out and either I can't put it into words or the sentence gets horribly scrambled around when I utter it. It's typically worse when I'm stressed; when I'm feeling really exhausted or overloaded, I start stuttering as well, in addition to all the other garbling that goes on.

Interestingly enough, I don't have any problems of this sort when writing.

Hm, for me, it's more like the idea is there, but words do not fit into any coherant order and sometimes meaning is absent, too.

I also have no problem when writing, though I can also take the necessary pauses to think over what I'm going to write. In speech, that is much more difficult to do, especially while also being concerned about the other person listening to you, and everything else that is going on in your environment.

Overall my expressive language can be very poor when I am either nervous, overloaded or trying to deal with a subject I haven't manage to rehearse or am not well-versed in. I do at times get going really well and can speak well, but overall I am told by my neurologist that my expressibve language is still relatively poor (unless it's only for a very short time).

I do get times where it's a lot worse though, where I have a lot more difficulty with word finding problems than usual, where it feels like my mouth is stuck in glue when I try to speak etc. It gets particularly bad during PMT when movement in general goes down the drain somewhat (not literally thanfully!! !).

Yes. Frequently all the words will e there in the sentence but they are in the wrong order. Surprisingly, a lot of people seem to make sense of it anyway!!

At other times, I will stand there and frown because I know what I want to say, and after some thought my brain can find the wiords, but then my tongue can't. Or i have the gesture for the word and once I make that the words comes out. The timing of my speech can also be off. I will sit quietly for half an hour or more whie others are talkign before I blurt out what I want to say. It can be hard for me to shut up once I finally have everythign lined up and ready to say!! It is hard to discern the right time to speak...or to change the topic, since most of their topics are very dull and boring.

The worst of all is: I will be talking, and say something interestign to me, and they do not respond. They ignore me, or start to walk away, or talk to soemoen else as though I suddenly vanished. I do not know how to remedy that or make a graceful exit. Sometimes I will stil be talking when they turn away and ignore me. Should I abruptly quit talking? Finish the sentence? Keep talkign as though I'm now conversing with myself or noone in particular? Sometimes I just trail off, reducing the volume and then stopping.

The weirdest part is how the words do still make sense in a convoluted way, at least sort of. People seem to know what I'm saying, but the way I say it must sound totally insane. It happened when I was talking to my boss recently and he just stared at me like I was from Mars. And that's the problem with talking--once the words come out of your mouth, there is no way to stuff them back in.

Since reading these posts, I realize I also have the same problem several other people mentioned about being unable to "find" words--like I'll go blank on random words. I'll forget the names of common objects. I end up calling everything "the thing".

Oh, I hate that! What's really bad is when I say something, go completely unnoticed, someone says basically the same thing, and only then does anyone else notice...

ARGH!

My main problem is I know what to say but the wrong words show up. This morning I was talking to a guy who went on a trip and visited Ukraine. I meant to say something like "were your genes glowing when you left?" but instead it came out as "did your genes get on fire?" Luckily everyone knows I'm a verbal klutz and he understood that I was referring to Chernobyl. I still felt really stupid. I say something like that at least once a day. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to try and be social.

Argh, I do things like that quite often as well... I have the thought perfectly formed in my head, but when I try to translate it into words, something just goes horribly wrong.

Wow!

Kind of blown away here ... I do that "words out of order" all the time! When
questioned (or more likely, harassed) about it, I simply state that I think in
a language other than English, like French for example, where word order
is similar to my own speech pattern - BTW, I think in pictures not words.

In French: "The car, he drove" or "To the cinema, we traveled today" would
be considered excellent diction and sentence structure. For my money that
form of sentence construction is far more logical than in English.

My $0.02,
Jeffrey

Yes this happens to me a lot. Today on the bus a guy asked me about my shirt I was wearing. I had on a Legend of zelda shirt and when he asked me if it's a kids game. I said "I think it's for all ages. No it for adults too, for all ages."

I think it's for all ages? I know the game is for all ages so why did I say that. It all came out wrong when I said it so I had to say "no it's for adults too, for all ages." I felt like an idiot because I still sounded ret*d as I said that too. Doesn't sound like to me that's how an adult would talk. But my boyfriend said it sounded right. I guess others don't notice my speech problems but me.


Another thing I hate is, I ask a question and it all comes out wrong and I have made myself look like an idiot. I already knew this but I didn't mean to ask it that way, I meant to ask about something else. It's good others may not notice but it still bothers me when I do it. I am wondering if I had always had this issue and I just became aware of it. Unfortunately I can;t ask my mother because she might not know because how would she know if she doesn't know what is on my mind and what I was really trying to say so of course she wouldn't notice it either. She will just assume the things I have said in the past I meant to say it that way.

Sometimes the word that comes out is not the word that I was thinking. Sometimes it is related in meaning, other times not. Sometimes no word at all comes. Sometimes a sentence evaporates half expressed. I do have to translate from picture/concept to words in order to speak or write. It's difficult sometimes to express myself in words. For some reason this has been very difficult in the last year or so.

I have the problem the original poster describes. I think it's called expressive dysphasia. I often cannot find the right word or everything comes out half-ass backwards and garbled. Amanda Baggs interviews someone with expressive dysphasia on youtube. Amanda is "silentmeow" on youtube, and the dysphasic's name is Laura Tisconcik (sp?). For the most part, Laura's speech is fluent, but she does hit a snag that sounds very familiar to me, maybe to you too.

I struggle with verbal expression at times (this can cross over into written expression, but the ability to review, cross out, transpose, add, and otherwise edit text before presenting it mitigates the negative impacts by allowing problems to be edited out before the text is presented to others).

I find I have trouble with prosody (speed, diction, placement of pauses) especially when stressed, nervous, over-stimulated, overwhelmed, discussing things I have a strong emotional reaction to, etc.

I also have trouble with word ordering, word substitution (sometimes one-off, sometimes persistent [for instance a couple of months ago every time I wanted to say cucumber, I said capsicum and when I wanted to say capsicum, cucumber came out instead; this occurred even when I paused before uttering the word and deliberately thought about it first, it persisted for a number of weeks]), and going blank on a particular word I need.

It's very frustrating and also impacts negatively on credibility.

I can't speak well either. I can't seem to organize my speech properly. Words or sounds come out wrong or in the wrong order and I often feel like I can't find the right way to explain my thoughts. It's worse when I'm tired, then I make no sense at all.

I don't think this is exactly connected with Asperger's, but I've read that this is one of the symptoms of dyspraxia, which many aspies (including me) happen to have too.

I have a lot of trouble here too. Verbal abilities are somewhat limited. In any conversation or circumstance in general, it's important to be able to know how to pick out what's most essential, in order to effectively respond. I have a general lack all the way around. I can comprehend very well, but when it comes to needing to advocate or communicate about a specific issue, it seems relatively hopeless for me to really do.