Learning a new language

Post Reply New Topic

I don't know if I have asperger's or not. my son was diagnosed with it by the school, and i notice similarities.

what i do know is that i've been trying to learn spanish since i was in middle school. I'm 30 now. i been trying to get back into it, i have joined a couple language exhange groups and i have a couple friends that i talk with via skype. it's been an anxiety riddled hell trying to ge tthrough this. some days i feel bold, and can do it, other days i just don't have the will power to talk to people. then there are people who want to talk and don't want to type at all, and that freaks me out so bad, particularly when they won't type the word that i'm having trouble with.

i've never talked via video on skype, just through voice and chatting. maybe video would be better?

I don't know, does anyone else on the spectrum have trouble learning a new language? a few people say i'm good at it, but i have to keep practicing and talking to people, and therein is where the problem lies. i wish i could learn a new language all alone by myself. but then, what would be the point?

I have never liked the speaking and listening parts of learning a new language, just like with the old language. I enjoy the reading part, and a little bit of the writing part. For the most part, the whole thing is not enjoyable, but being able to read multiple foreign languages is a skill that I would like to have.

I'm good at reading and writing new languages but I have trouble listening and having conversations in them (beyond the fundamentals) no matter how much I practice. What's even stranger is that I grew up in a bilingual household where English was mostly spoken, yet I've retained very little of the other language despite regular exposure to it. Very frustrating.

You're not alone...I've lived in Brazil for about 9 yrs now & I still have trouble understanding spoken Portuguese, although I have no problem reading newspapers/magazines. Once in a while I still mix Portuguese & Spanish.

Last time I took an online assessment test in Portuguese it told me I was 'intermediate.' I don't feel that way at all...still struggling.

Language has never really been a problem for me. I'm such a sound-oriented learner that if I hear something, I can tell you what it was a month later, verbatum. American Sign Language (which I am taking now in college) is a little harder, but as I think in images, sounds and patterns, which believe it or not, are all a part of ASL, I am retaining more of what I've learned than I ever did in a spoken foreign-language class like Spanish or the little bit of French I've picked up from my sister and my best friend.

I learned Spanish in high school and college, and I learned Romanian in my 40s (over the past 2 1/2 years). I still need practice in Romanian (though going to Romania in March really did help with my ability to speak the language), but I pick times when I'm feeling confident to chat up my teacher or someone else who might be online at the time (I've collected a few people in Romania and Moldova who are willing to let me practice with them). I don't like talking on the phone, but Skype is a little better for me, and I'm not really sure why. The only advice I can give is to seize on the times when you feel confident...it's what I do, and it works okay for me.

~Kate

hm, maybe sign language would be easier for me to learn.

i tend to be sound-oriented, but only to music, not to language. sometimes even english washes over me, just sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo coming out of people's mouths if i'm not in the mood for listening.

but i like pretty little tunes, and they get stuck in my head. I like turning my kids' disney movies over to the spanish dub. and then, i hear a funny little phrase, and sometimes i can repeat it to myself over and over and i don't even know what it means. sometimes, a funny little "spanish saying" will pop up in my mind that i've heard on tv, and i don't know what it means.

it's really weird, and I don't feel like a good partner to the people who are on my list who want me to help them learn english. well, maybe i am because i can talk (type?) their ear off in english and they learn a lot that way, but they get tired and want to switch to spanish, and i studder and stumble. I'm told I can read and pronounce words with hardly any accent at all. I can slur the words ending and beginning in vowels together just like I've been doing it forever. Because again, I like to precisely repeat sounds. But you ask me to tell you what it means, well, i frequently wouldn't have a clue.

they also said that spanish is hard because of so many tense differences, so that doesn't help things.

does anyting help?

I'm currently taking Norwegian at the university here. It's going pretty good so far, but it's supposedly a pretty easy language to learn.

I took French in high school and couldn't stand the conversational exercises. Reading phrases off of a sheet of paper is one thing, but when one already has trouble understanding people in English, things get rather awkward!

I can now proudly proclaim that I can get the gist of a passage's meaning if I stare at it long enough.

I started learning spanish before I was in MS. Most of my good spanish teachers would get pregnant and leave, and the other's were just boring. In HS I changed my program so I didn't need a foreign language to graduate. Considering how many spanish classes I've failed, I do have a rudimentary understanding of several of the latin languages. The teachers just wanted me to write or say long strings of words that meant nothing to me.

It is notable that learning languages in the US is not the same as it is in europe. Only two other languages are used by the countries bordering us, and they are a thousand miles apart. In europe it is possible to drive through a dozen different languages worth of countries in a single day. Europeans pick up languages because they are in regular contact with speakers; Americans are not.

I've also heard of people who went through grade school foreign language classes and passed, and then went to a country where that language was used, and were still unable to communicate properly. If you ask me, the only way to learn another language is through immersion, possibly what Rosetta Stone software does.

I was unable to fulfill my language requirement for school because of my learning disorder so I got an language exemption. My learning disorder affects my ability to learn lots of words, spelling and grammar. I'm very reliant on spell check.

I started to learn English at age 13. Before that I was attending compulsory Russian classes (communist era), and I was always weaker at that than at any other subject. I suppose not because it was mandatory but the complexity of that language, especially its grammar/tenses/lengthy words. Now I'm glad I can still read Cyrill alphabet plus count and say a few words in Slovak, another Slavic language. (I have Slovak roots besides German and supposedly Romanian.)

I've put up with my weak language learning ability, that I have to make more effort to reach the same level that others can without so much effort. I noticed that my speaking is the weakest area, my pronunciation isn't very good, while I understand or at least get the gist of what I read, even with more complex, difficult texts. Sometimes even exchanging a few English words leaves me perplexed and exhausted, wondering why I am like this, knowing so much and so little at the same time.

To Jocli: I'm currently reading "To Kill A Mockingbird" in the original English(!), it's an interesting and challenging reading.

I have trouble learning new languages in a way that suits other/normal people just fine.

Even after 4 years of taking French classes in school and another 4 years of attending Russian classes, I had learnt next to nothing that way while my classmates had advanced. During those years, I simply did not feel as if I improved because I didn't know any French/Russian besides the obligatory personal introduction. Unlike me, even the poorest learners got something out of being taught a foreign language based on memorising tons of grammar rules and vocabulary beforehand as if foreign languages are completely different from native languages.

That's why I figured to stay away from standard-teaching/learning of foreign languages eventually.

To me, a foreign language is a real language and I learn it fastest and easiest if I treat it like any other language. I can't learn to speak a language for real if I am to learn it as if it is a study topic to be strictly memorised from a textbook. I didn't learn my languages like that in childhood either.

I have a strange love-hate relationship with foreign languages. I can't envisage ever becoming fluent in a foreign language - you have to be able to do it without really thinking about it, like riding a bike, and that's not how it is for me. I studied French at school, beyond the required level, and ended up with a mediocre C. And I've been trying to learn bits and pieces of Italian and not quite getting to grips with some things, especially pronouns and verbs. But, I'm very good at deciphering written Italian or French (and would be the same with several other languages, if I tried) and verbalising a specific request or instruction. I'm just not so good at understanding spoken word, without thinking time, or coming up with a response quickly - I need time to think, but I can do it. When in Italy, I can order from a menu quite clearly, but have the unfortunate problem of very good pronunciation and no sign of a Scottish accent, when speaking Italian. So the server assumes my Italian is better than it is or that I am in fact Italian. So they'll say something else, which I haven't foreseen, and I've no clue how to respond.

For the mental effort of learning one language I could pass three other topics, so I dropped languages as soon as I could.