Foreign languages

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Hello, anyone else very good at foreign languages? For me, leatning a new language is probably the most natural thing at all. I just wonder if it has anything with my AS to do (i have been officially diagnosed 3 yrs ago).

Take care, Linn

I probably would have been GREAT earlier. It IS surreal though. Most speakers of most languages seemed to be talking FAST TODAY, most seem to be talking SLOW. ANYWAY, I am trying to get better with six languages. HECK, I watched DW all the way through today. I just wish I could see some of those films. BTW AS people MUST have an inate language ability. The language part is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the social deficiencies, and AS people tend to excel in their native language.

Steve

Hi Steve

I am definitely excellent at my native language as well (and it is not English, as you have probably realized
When studying foreign languages, I am actually very intuitive and I don't have any problems to adopt a praticular accent - which is really strange and which definitely doesn't correspond with my poor nonverbal skills.
Just wondered if my talent could be caused by AS.

Linn

The paradox you gave is PRECISELY the one thing all the AS people have in common! Asperger collected the records based on non verbal deficiencies, and singled out the ones called AS people because of their advanced spoken language. BTW Most of THEM didn't speak english as their native language either. Most probably spoke German.

There IS more to it than that, but THAT much is true and COMMON!

Steve

It depends - I was good on paper during a foreign language class in school. When I was 11 0r 12 I also worked on a Berlitz book on German just because I wanted to learn it. However, I have difficulties processing spoken language - with even slight delays with English and if people have accents I have difficulty understanding them. So I really wasn't able to translate the spoken word of foreign language very well. I had a neighbor one time who was from India and had a heavy accent. She was very nice but I often tried to avoid her because she spoke so fast and it seemed like there was a 3 second time delay between what she was saying and me figuring it out. By then I was often missing alot of the conversation. I think now I would be more comfortable asking someone to speak more slowly.

English is Made up of nearly every language in the world with the same spelling, mainly its made up of 4 languages, Old English, Latin, Greek, French, mainly words with (gh are Old English) , French words keep they spelling, Ph - Ps - Pn - Ch come from ancient Greek, which most of our long words come from roman language, ( a e i o u ) is made up of Latin which sound 19 vowel sounds, English only has 26 letters...


I should note that you have to take it from England English as allot of people have tried to re-spell the English language.

Last edited by logitechdog on 21 Jan 2007, 1:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This is like me too. I'm good at learning foreign languages, and can understand other students when they speak it. However if I listen to a native speaker speaking at his normal speed, I often have trouble understanding what's being said. This is even though if he were to write it all out, I'd have no problems reading and understanding it. Similarly I have trouble understanding people with certain accents even if they are speaking English, whereas it'd seem like the person next to me can understand that person just fine. Always thought it was a hearing problem on my part (and based on auditory tests, it is).

I can not learn foreign languages for the life of me, ask me to memorize the formula for the dervivative at a point, no problem. Heck ask me to memorize the proof for the power rule (which is about a 10 step proof) or gabriels horn (which is a shorter but more complex proof) I can do that no problem. Ask me to remember how to say goodbye in Korean, not a chance in hell... lol I really don't get it.

Whenever I'm traveling, I'm typically the first in my group (if I am in a group) to start using the local language. I'd speculate I do so out of necessity, as I'm rather bad at communicating 'with hands and feet'. The latter has to do with AS, of course.

It's one of my special interests.

Tim

Not to sound too arrogant or anything, but I am incredibly good with foreign languages. French is my best subject at school next to maths. I do struggle with the speaking exams though.

That isn't arrogant at all.

Tim

In my high school Spanish class, we had a language lab where the students had to put on headphones and listen to a tape. One day, the teacher decided to play some kind of pop song sung entirely in Spanish, and we had to transcribe all of the lyrics the artist sang. Well, when we had to turn in the assignment, I was shocked that almost everybody else in the class was able to turn in a page full of lyrics, and I had only one single line. Even though I was the best student in the class, I had such a difficult time with that assignment. Could barely understand anything the person was saying. My teacher remarked, "that's it??" and I was so embarrassed.

Look up at my post about the English language... ; here is a question for the Americans why do you say you speak English when you speak American English? color is a dyslexic persons way of spelling colour as he rights(writes) it how he thinks it sounds its really spelled colour, do your country class anyone who spells color - colour as dyslexic just wondering and people who spell it color as good... as if you stick color in a speak out program you will see it does not say colour...

Last edited by logitechdog on 21 Jan 2007, 1:42 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I guess I'm quite good at languages (not to boast or anything). I catch on to other languages quickly and it seems easier for me to learn them than for many of my friends. Ironically, when it comes to writing and general "sense of the language", I'm better at English than at my native Russian. But then, I've been learning both from almost the same age.

But my spoken language is anything but good, unless I talk slowly and watch everything that I'm saying. I can't always construct full sentences and usually use fragments of them instead, and I also tend to "jump" from one thing to another. My thoughts can be very clear and coherent to me, but I can't get them out like that, because they consist of images, color schemes and other things that can't be immediately translated into words.

If languages are one of your 'interests' then AS would
certainly help you focus when learning a new one.
Some people with AS also have a talent for imitating
accents.
I passed a French exam but my real interest is in
etymology,the origins of words. Most European languages including English have words originating
from Latin,Greek etc as Logitechdog pointed out.
My interest in Latin means I can understand a lot of
words in Spanish and Italian as well as French,although
I'm not fluent yet in any of them.