Aspies and foreign languagues

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Are aspies better at learning languages?
Right now I speak French, English, Spanish, Italian and some German and some Mandarin, just wondering if anyone else has that special Aspie gift for languages?

I apologize not my most interesting thread I know but I heard it is more common for aspies to learn languages quicker

I think I've read somewhere that it is harder for Aspies to learn foreign languages because some Aspies have trouble with their own language. I can talk properly and have never had any speech delays, but I still haven't seemed to learn foreign languages. When I was at school we learned French and Spanish, and I actually developed a special interest with Spanish, but the other kids still learn Spanish more quicker than I did, and I had to keep using my Spanish dictionary to find words and I failed in a lot of tests while all the other kids got higher marks than I ever did. I struggled really bad at both languages (especially French), while all the other kids learnt it quicker and easier.

Was meant to learn Arab and French and couldn't, but I taught myself English. I don't know what it says about me.

I can read most Latin/Anglo/Germanic based languages, but the Asian and Mid Eastern I have no clue. If I try to speak Spanish, I feel like someone is going to point and say "imposter"!

Since AS is actually an uneven profile of abilities, I'm guessing this would depend on the aspie. I'd have big problems learning foreign languages, other than written, because I have auditory processing difficulties.

As for the fellow who says he tried learning French and Arab and wound up learning English instead, I would say that it is likely the case that English is simply more important to you--at least assuming you don't live in France or the Mideast. Like it or not, English has become the world's lingua franca.

I live in Israel, but both Arab and French were compulsory at school at some stage. I learnt most of my English at home while reading articles.

Try as I may I can't learn to speak in any language other than English. I've tried to learn French and Tagalog and struggle with the simplest phrases. Ironically I can learn a new programming language in no time at all.

Well there's a lot of foreign people who live in the UK, some can speak almost every word of English and others can't. It depends on the person, not whether they're Aspie or not. It can depend on age too. Younger people can learn foreign languages faster than older people.

I've tried French, German, Spanish, and Ukranian and cannot learn any of it. I think I have auditory processing issues because I can't hear much of the subtle nuances in the languages and I can't remember the conjugations. The one language I can learn is American Sign Language because it involves using the entire body.

I am good at learning to read foreign languages, but I suck at speaking and listening. That is the same pattern as I had for learning my first and second languages in childhood.

I have an interest in German and studied it for awhile, but I gave up when I realized that I had no practical use for it. I also figured that my skills at expressing myself in English were bad enough that I didn't need to complicate things by moving on to another language.

I think it depends mostly on motivation. Written language, like mathematics(which is technically a language as well) tends to be very logical. You learn a set of rules and you utilize the rules to form a meaning. I find the hardest parts of learning a language to be the memorization of vocabulary, the verbal nuances: such as tone, or if a teacher or I do not make a step-by-step clarification of how something works. Actually, this is the case with anything. If I cannot find the logical process, with every single detail, I find it quite hard to deduce things from concepts. If I know every little detail then it is especially easy for me. So the biggest influence seems to be motivation, then individual, inherent ability, and then we may possibly observe a progression based from trends in the autistic population versus the typical population. I guess the natural tendency to logical reasoning over assumptions as well as a specific bias toward languages as a special interest(possibly; based on the individual) is what allows aspies as a group to possibly be superior in learning the rules of grammar than the typical population. Although I doubt any difference would be massively significant for an individual.

An issue might be that learning foreign languages is much faster when talking to other people than by learning on books/recordings. One needs to build some solid basis before perfecting it with television or novels or travels.

One-to-one conversation for learning purpose only is the best settings to start talking, in my opinion. I remember having one-to-one English private lessons as a kid for a long time (because the teaching in school was rubbish), and for other languages I speak it was extremely helpful to have a fluent classmate or tandem-buddy to practice with. The problem is that it is not always possible to have such kind of interaction - and this is basically why my third foreign language got stuck.

I find learning foreign languages hard in comparison to almost anything else. The hardest part is to see many many people around me speaking English as not their first language fluently while I'm hardly able to understand any of it (or only understand some of it). When I have to speak, it even worse, nothing comes to my mind. And this is after decades of learning and practicing. Thankfully, English has a relatively simple grammar, otherwise I'd be lost in it.

One more thing, technically I'm not an Aspie, so my experience may be irrelevant. I have always had issues with speech, although I didn't have speech delay.

I never got to converse with anyone in German, but reading books and listening to instructive recordings didn't do much for me. I had the most success listening to Rammstein albums while looking at printouts of the lyrics, German and English side by side. It worked amazingly well.

That was my problem with French. I'd learnt it for years, but it went over my head when I heard how it's spoken 'naturally' and not in a teaching context - it was just too fast for me.