Changing the name

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I prefer the term Aspergers. They are changing it to autism next year. So am I supposed to refer my daughter as autistic. I have always thought of the word autistic as in severe( in my ignorant past).
Don't get me started on NT's either. When I say my daughter has autism, they will run even further.

Another thing someone told me today Aspergers is pronounced with the sound J not G for gum.

I realise a lot of NTs know so very little about autism anyway, so I will stick to what I feel comfortable with the word 'aspergers'

Just tell people you have assburgers.

If you listen here, to the german version of the word, I suspect thats the closest you get the correct pronunciation
http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=asperger%27s

aaah society controls us yet again. break free of that sociological tagging system. We're aspies through and through, they can try and change us and re-catagorise us, but we're aspies, not classic autistics. Yes Aspergers is HIGH FUNCTIONING AUTISM but we're different again, and should be known as that. Don;t worry, its like phasing in a new law, keep your daughter known as an aspie, a home, and around those who know her but in public make it known she has High Functioning Autism and not just Autsim...

As for the pronounciation, well Hans Asperger was Austrian, German is my second Language soooo, the pronounciation is, Ahs-perg ( G as in iceberg) - ers the G has the same G as in Kindergarten which is a German word anyways. There is an "English" way to pronounce Aspergers, which i prefer and pronounce as, "As-purge-ers"

Either way is correct, its just whether or not you want to be posh and do it the German way or do it the English way. =)

Hope that clears it up for you.

By the way ive read there are online petitions to stop the DSM-5 from being brought into play, to stop some of the things from being changed from the current DSM-4 such as PDD-NOS and Aspergers. A lot of other things are also apparently going to be changed in the DSM-5 and a lot of people especially in the Psychological community do not agree to these changes!! Look more into, find the petitions and support the autistic community =)

I often name things according to my own naming processes. Furthermore i pronounce words as I see fit (despite knowing correct pronunciation)... so knowing the official German, Austrian, USA or English pronunciation is unlikely to make much difference to the way I say it anyway

Yeah, it's been eating at me too.
Mainly because of the social handrail it gives other people for understanding me.

I guess I'm at the mercy of the DSM. So, whether I like it or not, it's the way things are.

The eggheads will do what they want, though don't let me stop anybody from signing a petition.

I guess it's only a problem if you have to fill in official forms for a some kind of benefit. Seeing as how there aren't any benefits I know of here, I don't suppose that will bother me. For anybody else, I'm an Aspie, and I might either correct people who call me anything else, or just say something like "well if you insist on calling me that, I can't stop you." I'm happy with High Functioning Autism though, as I don't see any difference, and it's quite a snazzy name that smacks of savant features. And I often refer to myself as autistic, I don't really mind that either. Sometimes I've pointed out to undiagnosed friends their own Aspie behaviour, and I've referred to it as autistic, mostly because I feel people are more likely to know about autism than they are to know about AS.

Like it or not, Aspergers is a type of autism. So if you have Aspergers, you are autistic. Get over it.

I get really annoyed at people who try to distance AS people from lower-functioning autism. It's just different severities of the same condition. That would be like me saying that since my asthma only flares up now and again and I rarely have a severe attack, I'm better than someone who often ends up in the emergency room at the slightest trigger. I may not have as bad of problems as them, but this does not make me better, and it doesn't change the fact that my occasional wheezing and their life-threatening inability to breathe are caused by the exact same mechanism. (And this is true for AS and LFA, in my experience. LFAs have the same traits as AS, but taken to such an extreme that they cannot compensate for them.)

I've been calling the whole spectrum just 'autism' all along, so I'm really glad the DSM is finally recognizing what I've known for quite awhile.

Well, at least people can stop with the assburgers jokes now, hopefully. I normally just tell people Im autistic if they ask or it seems imprtant, it saves a lot of time explaining that Im not joking... Also seemed to get a better reaction from most people, though I cant quite understand why?

I speak German & can take a try at getting the pronunciation into English--

Best I can come up with is "Oz-bair-ga". The "O" is halfway between an "A" and an "O", and the "z" doesn't vibrate very much, so that it sounds a little like "oz" and a little like "ahs". The "r" is pronounced differently, a little further back in your mouth instead of on the tip of your tongue like an English "R". The "g" is hard, not soft.

But if you want to be understood by English-speakers, "Ass burger" is probably the best way to turn the German pronunciation into its closest English equivalent.

Or, like many Aspies, you can simply claim the term "autistic". That's what I do. I prefer to say "autistic" and let people be mildly surprised at the fact that I can talk, etc. People are always underestimating the abilities of classic autistics anyway; I'd prefer that those of us who don't fit that severe stereotype didn't try to pretend we weren't properly autistic, because if people get to understand that autism isn't what they thought it was, they might stop stereotyping non-verbal autistics too. I'm rather sick of the idea that autistic people don't learn or improve unless somebody does something heroic or miraculous--many of us were quite stereotypically autistic as youngsters, and now as adults I don't think we should drop the term "autistic" even if we no longer fit the classic autism criteria, or even if we only ever fit Asperger's. Otherwise it'll take people even longer to understand that we learn things, that our lives aren't dead-end. Think of all those kids out there that are being underestimated because they have "autism"--and how many of those kids are where you were at their age.