Learning another language

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I am bilingual Ukrainian-Russian, I learned English in the USA at the age of 10, and I have 3 years of high school Spanish. I plan to start learning German in college this fall. I don't know if Asperger's really affects secondary language acquisition.

I think the issue with language learning is the way they are presented. I prefer to learn by reading. I was doing some personal German learning, and it basically consisted of learning German grammar while reading Discworld, translating words and trying to translate sentences. Also, reading text, even if you don't understand it, will permit your brain to construct a template regarding what the language behaves like. The hardest part is to start because you need a base to kickoff from, but after that, all you basically do is read-read-read and translate words here and there. Most of the grammar will become automatic. Discrepancies and mistakes can be fixed by actually learning the grammar afterwards. The hardest part for me was always speaking the language, since I know quite few people and I mostly converse online. There are some audio courses that have you repeat stuff to fix pronounciation.

Thats a bit different from my case. I can pronounce it really well, but speaking and conversing is hard for me as opposed to typing, writing or reading it. Like for instance, I could translate some German sentances into English, but its very difficult for me to converse in German. I can remember having difficulty on the speaking parts of my German tests because he would ask me a question in German, and I would have to not only remember what that ment, but also what my answer in German is. Pronounciation is good, but memory isnt .

Im trying to think of something to say right now, but I cant remember much. Wie heißt du? Sehr gut. Ich wohne in Pennsylvanien. My German vocabulary is very limited .

i guess different people have different style of learning things... i mean yeah...we all aren't the same... that's why we must try everything... i mean some people good at reading but not good at practical and vice versa...i guess the problem here is really balance..... if we can balance it...it'll be easie for everyone...

My mind just won't understand that French (the second language I'm trying to learn) is a different language then English. I try translating directly, and it doesn't go well. It doesn't make sense to me if I don't translate it directly though. I can read it a little, but don't understand somebody speaking it at all. It's just so fast, and I can't process it all.

It will be more understandable the more you are exposed to it. For instance, any chinese dialect can sound like fast paced gibberish for someone not used to hearing it, but after watching movies in mandarin and cantonese dialects, im starting to be able to pick out individual words I recognise. For German, there are some good videos on YouTube. I cant remember off the top of my head, but this one channel goes around Germany interviewing people with basic questions, just so the viewer can hear German from native speakers in a natural environment. It has the translation and German subtitles on the video as well. There could possibly be something like that for French. I dont see why there wouldnt, I just havent searched for any. Basically my advice is to expose yourself as much as possible to the culture and native speakers and you will eventually get more used to it. If its still hard for you, all you can do is keep studying. There are those that say some people just cant learn multiple languages, but I dont think thats true. Harder for some, yes, but not impossible.

yeah i guess what mist01 sayd is right...i mean yeah like my advice...expose yourself to the culture... be in the french....that's what my french teacher taught me....