bilingual connection/impact?

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We have friends who have recently found out their child is suspected of having Asperger's, which for us is interesting because we both have bilingual kids. Does anyone have any experience with the development of bilingual Aspies? I can't help wondering how the development of bilingual children differs from monolingual kids, and by extension those with Asperger's. We had always explained our son's slow language development by the fact he was learning two at once...

Ok, I'm still a newbie, but one thing I haven't seen talked about is whether Asperger's is all chemical/genetics or whether environment is thought to play a role. Enlightenment, please?

They did studies with normal kids, and found that they tend to learn language at about the same rate! If it is say 10 words a day, it is 10 words a day PERIOD, for all languages together! In other words, the studies found that learning one language hinders another proportionately. If a person that WOULD have learned 10,000 english words learned 2000 spanish words, they may only learn 8000 english words.

Anyway, you can take it for what it is worth. Frankly, everyone is unique, and the heisenberg uncertainty principle is true for almost anything.

I don't even know if you should give him credit for it. After all, "A watched pot never boils"!

It is often said that language development amongst Aspies is poor but that does not mean our capacity for language is limited. I am bilingual and uniquely so. Students in Singapore are required to take on a second language and it is usually Chinese just like Americans are made to study Spanish. For the time when I was in school and forced to study Chinese, I could never master it. When I was 30 and found myself unemployed again and with lots of time on my hands, I decided to study Chinese. Initially I thought that if I got myself reacquainted and learned to read a few characters it would be enough, but I was surprised that I actually made good progress just studying on my own. However, the process of learning was uniquely difficult and oddly disturbing. I would study for a couple of hours and be forced to take a nap due to exhaustion. As I slept, Chinese characters would often jump into my head in bizarre and meaningless configurations. This went on for a couple of years and I could literally feel that something in my head was changing. But my acquisition of the language was astonishing and within a few months I decided to move on to classical Chinese and read the old texts. Today I speak Chinese with an accent that is almost naturally native. It is so good that the Chinese people I meet think that I am from China. Where others are often fixed in their language capabilities once they grow past the age of 10, I believe that in my case the disruptions caused by autism created a certain plasticity that has enabled me to acquire a language system that is radically different from my primary language and to do so to a very high degree.

Actually, I heard language in aspies was supposed to be GOOD! I learned English well. I am ok in german and danish, and trying to do well with 3 other languages.

I WANT to know at least the 3000 most popular words of each language. I have certainly exceeded that with english and almost with german and danish. Of course, there is so much cross pollonation of the various languages, that I know a lot of words going in. Unfortunately, they aren't always in the top 3000.

So far, three completely different opinions: For, against, and neutral.

I hope a few more people will weigh in on this one.

whoops...missed that. Sorry, looks like i need to read more carefully.

Actually, I may be misrepresenting myself. I'm interested because my kids are growing up bilingual, since I speak English as my native language, but my wife doesn't, and we live in her native country (in Europe).

In other words, I'm not for or against bilingualism for my kids, it's simply their reality (only the older on is thought to have Asperger's).

A friend asked me if bilingual aspies have even greater challenges than others, or even if having to learn two languages could contribute to a child's difficulties. I think it was a diplomatic way of asking if bilingualism could some how "set off" asperger's. I assume that's off the mark, but the issue still interests me.

There seems to be no common development of bilingual speakers that learn both languages at the same time.

Some actually start speaking delayed in both languages, some just develop speech normally and manage to barely mix up languages, some grow stronger in one language despite being taught both at the same time (preference based on language of environment may be a simple cause here).

Personally, all the bilingual speakers I have met or heard of so far were all different in their language acquisition.

The impact of bilingual language acquisition on aspies, well... I have yet to find a study about bilingual ASD children. I wish there was one.

I am newly bilingual (in french aswell as english) - the process of becoming bilingual I found fascinating - when you have spent 27 years speaking and thinking only one language, to start doing so in another is amazing, I really felt things changing in my brain. Now Ive got used to it, but planning to become trilingual soon as Im moving to germany next.

I grew up more or less bilingual. French is my mother tongue and I went to a Flemish (Dutch) school at the age of 2. Then, 8 years later, I got to a French-speaking high school. I didn't have a lot of problems learning the two languages. I did have slight problems to write well and express myself well during exams or assignements but I got better at it from year to year. Now I can say I've a very good level of French, I'm less fluent in Dutch though, but I'm working on it. All in all, I'm very happy my parents gave me a bilingual education.

Most of my family grew up the same way. It didn't cause them any problems and they're all happy to be bilingual.

PS: I don't know whether or not I'm an Aspie, I think I'm somewhere in between an NT and an Aspie. And I don't think there's any correlation between being bilingual and being Aspie.

I've been bilangual since i was about 12 years old.
My native tongue is Dutch, but i rapidly learned English from watching TV.
I seem to have some talent for languages as i figured these things out by myself.
Once i understood the gramatical differences, it was all like a ride in the park.
I can speak a bit of German, but not nearly as wel as i speak English.

I've always been kinda different from others as in that i watch virtually no Dutch programs on TV.
For some reason i only like movies spoken in English.
All of the day to day soap oprah's, soccer shows etc that your average NT is mostly focussed on are in Dutch.
My only annoyance is that i've never really had someone to speak English to.
Everywhere i go on vacation in Europe they speak poor broken English...
I guess it's time to go to England or something, where they can actually speak it properly.

When it comes to the southern European languages i plain suck lol.
They never interested me one bit.
I had French in school but got horrible grades there..
It seems i only have talent for Germanic languages like English and German.

I'm an english aspie living in france with my AS son and his french father.

My mother is german, but always spoke english at home cos my english dad said we should learn english properly first.

My son was very late speaking at all. When he did ( aged 4 or so) , it was very broken up, no grammar or tenses etc, apart from approximate subject-verb-object groupings, with very little use of the short words, of, with, at, in, etc, and pronounciation so bad almost no one but me understood him. And that was the english. French was even worse.

Since he learned/started to read a year ago ( aged 7), his spoken language has improved dramatically. We are almost not worried anymore!

I have sometimes thought that i may have learned a particularly pedantic/"foreign"/alienated/detached english from my mother's use of a second language all through our childhoods. But my dad's use is highly pedantic and precise/pernickety, so... ...

My idiomatic but limited german, picked up on family holidays in germany in childhood, has been almost completely suppressed by learning french. I find it virtually impossible to speak german anymore; all i get is french words.

Living in france has aggravated my AS because I can't follow, or even identify, all the subtle and significant and miniscule "in between bits" and over and undertones, and references, and layers in language which i use to navigate in english, which i suspect that i learnedso extensively/deeply in english in order to help me navigate socially.

I was in france for 4 and a half years before a desperate desire to find some stuff out pushed me to read a whole book, as opposed to mere mag articles etc. French was with music my worst subject at school.

im not quite bilingual... i always know what's being said though sometimes i have random moments of clarity where i understand naturally (rare, and usually when i'm not expecting conversation). other times, i'll mishear people in different languages (as in, they are speaking english but i hear spanish)... i also dream in different languages (i've had 3 languages in one dream!)

i started reading spanish dictionaries when i was 10 yrs... and i am still better at reading romance languages than speaking... but i still do well with listening.

Sedaka thats the same way I am!!

marry me!