Autism friendly cultures and languages?

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Maybe that's why I get along so well with Jews?

Yes. Authoritarian societies are very autism un-friendly. The power plays you have to sustain in such a society take up all the energy, so there is none left for rationality.



There seems to be a greater crisis in Eastern Europe concerning identity, culture, self-understanding. There might be a greater shift of paradigms coming out of it in the future, but for the moment there seems to be a lot of conflict.



It seems like many autists can agree on this. I feel the same.



There is a culture of machismo and a tendency for violence that makes me a little bit afraid. But I understand it is a phenomena of the working class. A part of society I sympathize with in general out of moral reasons.



Since people perceive English as generally easy to learn, many forget to learn its vocabulary. The usage of the word "like" attests to it, when even native speakers start to speak in comparisons, because they lack the proper word for an idea.



I wondered about Chinese. With its reduced assortment of syllables (is it around 400 compared to English's 12'000?) it would make a good candidate for a global language in the future. The pictograms pose a high entry level difficulty though. I get lost in such pictograms and am not able to use it to convey information.



Interesting.



I thought about starting a topic where we would think about the kind of language we autists would come up, if we were left to our own devices on a planet without neurotypicals. My first guess would be, that it would not be as verbal and use a lot less sounds. What do you think?



Most sports are a mystery to me. Attending sporting events is interesting though, because they are a very repetitive and structured ritual.



I was thinking about this theory when starting this topic. Not every classification on this list seems to be fully correct. So I wondered about your personal experiences in that regard.



Interesting. Yes, I imagine there is potential for conflict with the high-context Arabic cultures.



Interesting take. Japan is the prime example of a high-context culture due to their 200 years isolation. They developed an intricate self-referential culture that is intriguing to outsiders because of its lack of known (for outsiders) context.

I wonder about China though? They seem very direct, bordering on rude.



Jewish religion almost seems like a pre-cursor to the West's idea of rationality and science.

I have to say, that Islam has a very intricate and pleasing aestheticism. The mosques in Istanbul left a lasting impression on me, with their formality and minimalism yet intricacy of calligraphy and decoration. There is great guest-friendliness in the Orient and people are very heartful. In Istanbul I experienced an atmosphere of tolerance towards other beings, shown in how well cats and dogs are treated and respected.

First ensure that we are talking about standard Mandarin.
Yes, Chinese have about 400 pronunciations.
But Chinese have been more than 8000 commonly userd chinese characters. This Means that a large number of chinese characters are homophones, which may be quite difficult for beginner.

And Chinese is a kind of tone language, and most of the languages in the world are not linguistic. This means that many people encounter difficulties in pronunciation.

Chinese characters are another difficulty. I heard that Beginner can usually grasp spoken language, but it is difficult to read or even write.
Even as a mother tongue user, after five years of input in the keyboard, I often forget how to write some common Chinese characters.
PRC reforms Chinese characters and uses "simplified Chinese characters" to effectively reduce the illiterate rate. This is more friendly for beginners than "traditional Chinese characters" (and more common).

Moreover, as Analytic Language, Chinese is quite inaccurate. And it has too much changeable/flexible sentences.
In Chinese writing that needs professionalism, we often use English-like syntax, replace traditional syntax, to ensure that expression is clear enough.

In summary, I don't think it has the potential to be a lingua franca.
Moreover, for the residents of the non East Asian cultural circle, its complete learning is too difficult. Just as I don't think it is a good thing for Arabic or Russian to become a lingua franca .

It depends on how you define "China".
I am not familiar with Macau.
Mainland China and Hong Kong are quite pragmatic because of stress in life and fast pace. We pay more attention to efficiency than emotions. This sometimes even looks cruel.
But "direct" does not mean "sincerity." Even the "face" culture has led to being quite hypocritical in the communication in certain areas.

Taiwan's culture is like a mixture in mainland China and Japan. They pay more attention to each other's feelings when getting along.

Last edited by SkinnedWolf on 02 Jun 2022, 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It was news to me that Japan was considered a high context culture (In fact I had to google that word). But I can see where you are coming from. Many Japanese, especially the younger ones, make plenty of faux-pas but the intensity of the shame they feel ensures they don't make the error twice (if they do, there's a good chance they end up as hikikomori as they can't take the embarrassment).

I'm not sure I'd recommend Japan for aspies. It seems like it's better for most to enjoy it from a distance. Unless you're a Japan-otaku like me.

Possibly... but at this very moment, East Europe is extremely dynamic. Changes are all around me and I'm trying to put my tiny brick for them to be changes for the better.

Just something relevant to add to the topic, though it may not be related to anyone's post here.

In everyday English you use only one second person singular pronoun "you". In many other languages, depending on the relationship between you and your interlocutor, you might need to choose the appropriate pronoun. Examples include "tu" and "vous" in French, "du" and "Sie" in German. I hear that Japanese is even more complicated, having several first person pronouns and second person pronouns. You use the ones that are most appropriate in a given situation. So in those languages your choice of pronouns forces you to be conscious of the relationship between you and your interlocutor, which in turn makes you very self-conscious. You need to be able to read the unspoken cues/messages and determine what's the most appropriate, which probably is not easy for autistic people.

That's one of the reasons why I say English is an autism-friendly language.

Japanese, as I understand it, doesn't have pronouns, just forms of address ranging from pejorative to honorific. And it seems to me that the rules which decide which honorifics to use are somewhat straightforward. Whereas in European languages, it can be difficult to know when to use the formal pronouns, and this has changed over time IOW there are situations when I, as a student spending a semester in France in 1972 would have used the formal pronoun, but nowadays the same situation would call for the informal pronoun. I think that knowing which to use requires a certain grasp of social cues that an autistic person would be more likely to miss.

^Well, it was actually a Japanese person who told me about this pronoun thing. He said he tended to become untalkative when speaking Japanese due to discomfort in having to choose the first person pronoun and second person pronoun as well as in having to choose the auxiliary verb to end the sentence, despite Japanese being his mother tongue and first language. He said he even uses English when he speaks to Japanese people here in Australia because he doesn't have to worry about those extra social things in English.

hikikomori seems like Japanese for someone suffering intense autistic burnout as a result of a strict and demanding society.

Has thou forgotten about thou?

Yeah, lots of hikikomori here have some kind of autism (usually what was called Asperger's before). That being said, a lot of them also suffer from ADHD, depression, OCD, GAD, etc. Then there are some people who simply have an extreme phobia of being judged in public, so they withdraw to a safe place without judgement (being/having been a hikikomori brings shame to your family so parents often try to "cover up" the failure by giving the child a place to hide). And even then there are some people who for purely personal reasons become hikikomori because they refuse to conform to society. Some of them live a happy life online and sell shady fanservice manga for a living.

It's complicated.

Regarding cultures, I am not sure about this, but perhaps English, Spanish & ASL for languages?