If you've a second language, how did you learn it?

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Being a very visual person I've always been told that how I learn certain things isn't common. I'm wondering how those of you who are diagnosed or pretty sure have learned other languages in comparison to NT people.

I don't know how others learn languages (feel free to explain if you're NT) but I don't understand how many of you can cope with the mixing of languages, Spanglish, French/English can be very confusing for me. I often get really annoyed when people speak like this. And yet they seem to prefer it, filling in the blanks for words they don't know with their other language.

Languages are separated in my brain. It takes me a few seconds to switch between them. What I do to produce speech is to see all the visual stuff in my head and translate it into words. If I need to speak English I go to the English part of my brain and take words for the images there. If I want to translate a word i have to make it into an image, go to my other language, and look at the word for that image in the other language. This takes a few seconds and I often get stuck because I'm in English mode. For languages like French that I don't know very fluently I'll go into a state of almost pure visual thought except for the words I know and be able to quickly assign new words to the blank spaces of pure visual thinking.

I've done this since forever and is probably how I learned to speak. Because for example, I don't remember learning English or what method I used but I probably used the above because it ended up in it's own section. I remember learning French though as that was recent and I used the above method. It's very helpful and quick for me as I'm always immersed in a language whether our teacher is speaking something else or not, but it has a few drawbacks.

I also find that I don't pick up "clues" as to what a word because of it's similarity to words in another language unless it's almost the same. While other people I see do this easily. Another thing that will happen is I can't use my knowledge of la/el in spanish to help with correctly adding le/la to french words. I have to associate la/le to each french word individually. I can do it on tests because I can take those few seconds to switch languages but not speaking it whatsoever.

I mix languages, because I use whichever word in whichever language comes to mind first. For me, this is easier than searching for the equivalent word in another language than the one that I used for the previous words in the sentence.

It sounds as though you are indeed a very visual person. I have no idea what it must be like to see images in your brain. I do not think in that way. I am not NT but I am good at languages, and when I am learning words I do not see them in my brain. I hear them in my brain. My own voice says the words out loud inside my head.

There is no way you can make yourself think in a different way, so you might as well focus on doing things that your particular style of thinking makes you very good at. Either that, or come up with a new way of learning the words or storing them in your head, so that you are able to remember them more easily.

I'm sure there must be some sort of method of utilising your brain's visual memory to your advantage to make learning languages more easy.

When you say you are seeing the images of the words, do you mean that if I say "potato" for example, all you see is the image of a potato? Or do you also see an image of the word "potato" spelled out in letters?

I am curious to know whether you are seeing the actual words written down, or only visualising the things they represent.

I learned english by watching the same movies in english over and over and over and over and over and over again.

I have a hard time hearing things in my head apart from music and my own reading voice. My dreams usually don't have sound for example. I have focused on my style and I find it no trouble. It's rarely that i have a hard time finding a word. I learn languages very easily apart from those 2 problems I listed. Wasn't looking for help or anything, just curious. I'm undiagnosed and I'm pretty sure it's AS and they say people with AS are often very visual so I wondered what other methods others used or what other methods very visual people used. If they "fenced" off their languages.



Like just reading that entire first sentence, "images" I imagined Polaroids or framed pictures, "words" imagined a word spelled out, "potato" imagined a potato, "image of the word "potato" caused me to see it spelled out, "spelled" pictures of spelling tests, "letters" the letters A B C in my brain. I'm only visualizing the things they represent unless told otherwise. I hear myself reading it in my mind, but that's the only sound usually and my understanding comes from visualizing. This happens really fast of course and usually with the nouns that pop out at me.

Oh wow I see. You actually see images in your head when you read words! I thought you only meant you saw images when you were thinking or memorising.

Sorry if I misunderstood you and thought you wanted advice. I see you don't. I'll just answer the question, then.

I learned my second language by reading the words I wanted to learn and then 1. writing them down lots and lots and lots of times and 2. saying them out loud lots and lots of times, until they looked familiar to my eyes, felt familiar to my tongue, and sounded familiar to my ears.

You sound similar to me. I have always been good with languages, at least with grammar/vocabulary/comprehension, which is fine for reading and writing, but I also struggle with speaking and listening for some of the same reasons you describe. I even have the same difficulties with English - that is, that I'm very visual, and it takes me a few seconds to translate my visual thoughts into words. That is one reason it often takes me longer to respond or answer questions than most people. In a second language it takes even longer because it's a less familiar language! So, I'm also a bit slow when it comes to speaking.

I've actually never had a problem with English words in other languages and other similar situations, but in my case it is because the languages are completely distinct in my head that I would never confuse them. An English loan word in another language is generally not pronounced the way an English speaker would pronounce it, and I am very particular about correct pronunciation, so I just think of them as being part of the vocabulary of the second language. If I was thinking of the loan word as an English word I wouldn't be pronouncing it like a native speaker. For example, a French person saying "le tennis" would be using a French pronunciation, so it would sound very different to an English person saying "tennis". Therefore, to me, if I am speaking French, that is a French word, not an English one. I hope that makes sense because I'm finding it difficult to explain, but perhaps if you can also think about it this way it will help you, as it sounds like you process things similarly.

Make sure you deliberately play to your strengths. I am better able to learn vocabulary when I have a clear image to match that word. For example, if I want to remember the word for "flower", I would visualise a flower with the correct word written above it, and memorise that image to pull up when I need that word. Perhaps you are doing something like this already without being conscious of it? If so, try to consciously use it and drill yourself doing it over and over so you are able to do it more and more quickly. Beyond that I think it is just practice, especially if that is your weak area. Language learning for anyone is best done via immersion and using the language as much as possible. It's a challenge for anyone to learn a language when they aren't surrounded by it - even young children who pick up language quickly wouldn't be able to do it well if they weren't surrounded by it all the time!

Take a look at www.fluentin3months.com for some of the best hints on learning languages.

That's probably why people thought it was weird. But yeah. The faster I read the more vague the impressions are though. So often when I read fiction really fast I tend not to understand/memorize the environment and characters because I didn't take my time imagining them. I had a really bad problem with large amounts of characters until I slowed down and took a second to visualize each and associate it with a name. I was taught to read quickly out loud in school but doing it results in less comprehension. Strangely enough while I can easily associate a word to an object or action (writing them once, hearing them a few times for correct pronunciation) I can't pin names to faces unless they're an actor or something and they have been part of a special interest. It's easier for me to associate aspects of that person to their face, aka, associate other images to their faces. Like if someone is religious I pin a cross on them.

There was an episode of House I watched while back were somebody got their speech part of their brain all messed up (I think it's called aphasia). They could speak but there words were not the right ones. And house explained that words are either stored grouped by sound thus the guy might have been trying to say "bag" and they say something like "drag" instead. Or the words are grouped in similar category, "leaf" instead of "tree". When you're trying to find a word you might find others come to mind (because they're stored close) and they follow some rule. For me surprisingly or perhaps not, they only follow the second. I tried to say straw once and I said glass instead. And similar stuff, very rarely if ever by sound.

I understand you completely. And it has it's cons like I said and the pros like you said. Although for pronunciation I learn the rules of pronunciation for that language, sort of build an accent for it (often times too good), and then I can pronounce it correctly. There's still three copies of the word tennis in my head. I get what you're getting at though. It's just sound doesn't come into it for me unless it's a strange word that's not pronounced according to the regular rules of pronunciation.

I don't exactly see the image with the word on top of it though. It's like I go into my English part of my brain and any images I form I can say in English. Don't read the word of anything... I wonder where it's stored? or if I'm just making the connection to where the written word is stored and how to write it but never notice it (don't see the word spelled in my mind).

I can read Spanish well and speak a little but cannot understand when someone speaks to me unless it is an interpreter. When I read I read out loud and as you do if I read slow I can follow it in the world it is in and as in pictures. If I say “puedo abrir la puerta por te” “can I open the door for you” I see in my mind “can I” – a picture of myself with my hand near my chest in saying with your permission can I “to open” – I see myself near a door in anticipation in opening a door” and “for you” – myself looking at someone in waiting for a response” otherwise the words mean nothing. Now to your question – a lot of words that Spanish speaking people speak that are in English simply work better and make more sense in English then in Spanish and a lot of things do not have Spanish names instead it would be described so it is easier to use English. Most it appears of the Aspies that I know have good memories but I do not, I live it pictures and speak in pictures which can cause serious problems in communicating to NTs sense they work in words as a rule. Corse as they say the best way to learn a language is to be forced in to using it.

I know there's certain untranslatable words and there's certain made up words that are a blend because the word in spanish is not well used, but you can't tell me this: "Puedes abrir el door?" is better than "Puedes abrir la puerta". And mostly I'm complaining about people who learned two languages fluently and thus have no reason to be doing this and just confuse me. At least you know, pause a bit if you can't remember the word, try to remember it, than use a word in another language to show you're not just being lazy.

The only problem I have with thinking visually is that I can't express concepts to other people. They just cannot visualize it and I'm often at a loss for words as to how to describe a piece of machinery once they don't get it the first time.

I learned Spanish by studying it in highschool. I seemed to pick up on it more easily than the others. Also, I was also more interested in foreign languages. I would occassionally watch tv in spanish. Now, I am pretty much fluent. I have started learning German and find it just as easy as learning spanish. On occasion, if I am surprised or emotional, I will accidentally curse in spanish. A few times when drinking beer and having a heated conversation, I have answered in the wrong language.

I learned english from computer games, cartoons and Star Wars. ^^ I had been a big star wars fan since i saw the films, this was around 1990. But since there wasn´t a great german star wars fan base at that moment (the new films and so on hadnt been pronounced yet) there were only english star wars novels and comics.

With the computer games it was the same: Nowadays every bigger game is translated in various languages, but in earlier times most of them were english or you had to wait 6 months until they had been translated.

When i was 12 my father finally had a pirate card for an english movie package, with 4 cartoonchannels, and a science fiction channel and so on...

So thanks to Darth Vader, the Turtles, Silverhawks, Galtar with the Golden Lance, Stonekeep, Warcraft, Diablo, Dungeon Keeper, many more and specially Timothy Zahn and his Star Wars novels.

I agree with the different parts of the brain, so i am not translating my thoughts first into german to translate it into english, but i have the thought and i can directly think how to say what i mean in english. So my thought is not language based. I also need to remind me to switch the translations language again, when i used english some hours in a row. But didnt think this would be weird, because my mom is french and she also forgot sometimes to change the language part, so its familiar to me.

In my case, I grew up in the era of the apartheid regime in South Africa. As a 'white' person I went to good schools. However, as part of that privelege, I was obliged to learn to speak Afrikaans. Afrikaans is a Dutch dialect. I also had lessons in Zulu. The problem was that all this was forced on me and as an aspie (which I did not know at that time), this was very stressful. I think all the forced language learning was a major contributor to my phobias later on (public speaking, telephones etc). The Zulu teaching did not affect my grades whereas Afrikaans did. The trouble was being forced to learn and speak these languages. Force does not create a love for the languages in question. Today, I speak Afrikaans passably and understand it perfectly (meaning reading and listening to it). I have a limited amount of Zulu; enough to sound 'intelligent' in New Zealand where I live nowadays.

The thing is, I don't know if the forced learnng did me some good or if it turned me off. Maybe a bit of both. I work in Papua New Guinea a fair bit nowadays, so am keen to learn the local vernacular (Tok Pisin). I am keen to give it a real good attempt. I know that I do battle to achieve fluency because I get information overload. We will see.

I learned French from listening to my mom's opera records when I was really little--from at least age 3, if not from birth. Carmen and Les Contes d'Hoffmann were kind of like special interests since I listened to them over and over, learned arias, and tried to get the other kids in the neighborhood to act them out. Once I learned to read and could follow along with the libretto, I learned things like verb tenses, pronouns, syntax and how to pronounce the different accent marks. My mom bought me a book called Mon Premiere Livre de Francais when I was 5, but instead of doing the exercises in it, I scribbled in it. I took French in high school and college, but only the basics. My vocabulary is very spotty but my accent is tres beau.