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Hi all...

I'm a new member. My son has just been diagnosed with asperger's, and I find myself realising that most of his mannerisms are things I never noticed, because I do the same things. Fortunately, my son is very bright, communicative, and sensitive, and to be honest he doesn't need a lable... the school system does. He doesn't get social cues with children his own age, but then, to be fair, most of them just run around making crude jokes and speculating about each other's sexuality, so it's not like he's missing out on much there... Hopefully as he gets older he'll find his niche.

I've not been diagnosed with asperger's, but like my son I'm dyspraxic. I also have difficulties with social interactions... I've been told I'm too intellectual in the way I phrase things. A typical complaint has been, "most people don't talk in paragraphs," or that I sound like a character in an eighteenth century novel. I didn't speak at all till I was nearly four, then started in sentences. My son likewise was a late talker, but when he started sounded like a much older child.

The pair of us trying to put up a tent is a sight to behold, both being clutzes. My son is excellent at almost all his academics. I'm only good at linguistics. I used to think when I was a kid that I must be some kind of idiot savante, since I pick up languages so quickly, but can never remember my own phone number. However, I decided against it, because I didn't think like Rainman. Now I'm thinking I had a point!

Being aspie hasn't done me any harm. In fact, it's helped me a lot in certain areas. Long live aspies! We make the world a better place.

To WrongPlanet!! !

“Hello,” mgran, and welcome to the Wrong Planet community.

Welcome welcome welcome!

Yay! I like your writing style! I also use lots of ellipses... it takes a conscious effort NOT to. Sometimes, I switch it up with a hyphen -- I think our language needs a better device to handle this kind of speech transition via the written word.

I think it's a positive that you sound like a character in an eighteenth century novel. The world needs more Tea & Crumpets

So what languages did you have an interest in? Around my area it was the Big Three of French, Spanish, and Japanese. So I guess I've picked up the basics of how to "Hola, Bonjour, and Hajime mashite" with the best of them

Anywho, good ta meet'cha!

Welcome.

I'm also bad at remembering trivial information, like what my phone number is. Or shoe size. Or zip code...

But ask me what an agglutinative morphology is, and you won't be able to shut me up for an hour...

Ah, another philologist!

Languages I'm interested in... I grew up bilingual, English and Irish, picked up a lot of Latin, my mother taught Asian ladies to read and write, and I used to go with her and play with their kids, so I picked up some Urdu/Hindu and more recently Punjabi. When I was about twelve my mother decided she wanted to read Dostoevstky in the original, so we started learning Russian. Did the usual French, German, at university I studied various dead languages, then discovered when visiting Belgium that I could understand Flemish, which came as a surprise.

My son claims that I pick up languages like other people pick up hats. I've had conversations in Dutch, Norwegian, Italian, Spanish, Afrikaans and Xhosa. Though Xhosa was very different from what I'd been used to. We're learning Mandarin together at the moment.

I'm very good at speaking other languages, but generally speaking my spelling is atrocious. When I was a teenager I invented two languages, one purely fantasy, and inspired by the Elven language in Lord of the Rings, the other based on what would have happened if, instead of the English invading Ireland, and English becoming the common tongue, it had happened the other way round... in other words, a version of Gaelicised English.

That was great fun, I ended up writing alternative time lines and translating Shakespeare's sonnets into the new English. My Dad told me I was wasting my time on nonsense when he caught me trying to translate the KJV bible into the alternate English of the 1600s.

It should have been obvious I was an aspie, when I think of it.

Thank you guys for the welcome.

French and Spanish were easy, but Japanese was the most interesting and challenging (to tie-in with Ancalagon, it is agglutinative where the others are not).

I'm curious: Did you have any difficulty with language sounds that were NOT part of the English subset? Things like the glottal stop and such? What about tonal issues like in the Mandarin you're currently studying? I had difficutly with that at first, because I simply wasn't paying attention to tone. Even now, I find learning tonal variants is a bit more exhausting, concentration-wise, than simply learning foreign words and base pronunciations.

We started studying Mandarin with the Michel Thomas system ... do a google on him, he was a phenomenal language teacher, and his techniques are stil considered groundbreaking.

The mandarin series that is taught by one of his protegés has some of the most useful techniques for remembering the tones. There are hand gestures, and colours that you visualise to help you remember what tone to use. Admittedly, since I learned classical music (piano and flute) I do find the tones easier than most people... but I've certainly found that the hand gestures help me remember the tones, and as an experiment in schools I've taught "taster" lingustics, using the first two hours of the mandarin class, and discovered that everyone finds the tones easy using this system. You'd need the intro series to properly introduce them... it's hard to explain otherwise, at least online. If you go on the Michel Thomas website, you should find free resources to introduce you to this.

Of all the languages I've learned, Russian has been the easiest (very logical language, and the phonics are surprisingly like Gaelic) and Xhosa has been the most difficult. That may have been because we were in a Xhosa community, and had no books... and the sounds and grammar were so different from what I was used to. In the first few weeks my son developed head and hand gestures to go along with various clicks... so if he said, "Xhosa!" there was a particular jerk of the head for "Xh", that was different from the withdrawal of the chin when he said "Itawa" ("t" being a different click.)

Interestingly enough, we learned our vocabulary through songs folks sung, and my son picked up more quickly than me how to speak, because he wasn't ashamed to jerk his head, or to clench his fist or twist his fingers if it helped him get the click right. I think singing, and making a fool of yourself is essential when learning a foriegn language. Either that, or bring your polymath son with you on holiday.

Welcome to WP!

Where is this Xhosa community?

I am not a language polymath, so I am having a terrible time trying to learn Kinyarwanda. I need a tutor, but how do I find one in Vancouver, WA?

I don't know, you could go to the local African community centre, and ask there... Or try writing to these guys: http://www.ciia-ciai.com/

My son and I went to Africa last year to work on a community project. I'm not sure I'd have learned any Xhosa if we hadn't been immersed... it did really help stretch my brain about how langauges work though.

Thank you. Too bad the link goes to the other Vancouver. I have been to Rwanda three times and hope to go more.
What kind of project were you working on?