Does anyone here learn foreign languages for fun?

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I've been thinking maybe I should try it, since it primarily involves rote memorization, which is something I'm very good at. Any tips on how someone on the autistic spectrum should go about learning a foreign language?

I love learning languages although never have had a great deal of success as I have always tended to favour more obscure languages which means despite reading all the books or even listening to tapes, you never know anyone else who speaks it to practise on.

I tried Maori once, needless to say that was one that stalled pretty early

I definetly recommend learning a language though, its quite enjoyable and very challenging.

Depends on if your an audio or visual learner.

Most aspies are visual I think (I am as well) I found it best to learn to read and write the language first then move on to speaking it.

Ive been trying to learn japanese myself but it gives me a headache (3 different alphabets used concurrently and two different nearly complete languages for male and female.. ouch).

Depends on how you learn-a friend I suspect is aspie learns by saturation (being thrown into conversation at a fluent level). I learn by first learning phonetic pronuciation, spelling, grammar, all like a dictionary format. I stuck to one language family (Romance-Spanish, Italian, Latin and French). I tried German and hated it.

i have never learned a language for fun, not the whole language anyway. i usually learn a few words and phrases and then get bored or i am satisfied with that. I know more german than any but i still only know vey little.

I did that on one occasion. When I traveled to Israel nine months ago, I learned a little bit of Hebrew, at least enough to be able to do things like ask for directions back to my hotel, buy a cup of coffee, and ask someone to dance in a club. When I got back, I decided to keep learning it, since it felt good to be able to communicate with the locals in Israel, and I liked the language itself. However, it turned out to be harder than I thought, and I dropped the idea. I still remember some travel phrases, though.

I hated foreign languages and it was the only D I got in college it was Spanish and a requirement to graduate. Of course I waited to my last semester to take it it was touch and go if I'd graduate for a while. Later when working as a trainer at a construction company I picked up more Bosnian just from interacting with my trainees than I ever learned Spanish in class

I like learning spanish but I've always wanted to buy a computer prgram that will teach me how to speak it but I never taken that step yet.

i love learning foreign languages...

what works best for me is listening to music in various languages and i remember the words that way... but i also just remember a lot cause i used to read dictionaries when i was little... if i looked the word up i rememember seeing it on the page. i think that's what actually helps me most...kind weird.

my only problem is i can't really think fast enough to speak well... i am best at reading/listening/writing/speaking in that order with a BIG gap inbetween the listening/writing.

I had a great time with spanish when I was working construction and the few times I've traveled to spanish speaking countries. The culture helps tremendously. I always got the impression they figured that if you were trying to speak their language you were showing them respect, so no matter how bad you did, they seemed happy to help, and when you totally botched something, they just found it funny.

One of the first words I learned was "possible," since it's spelled just like in english but pronounced different. Whenever a situation came up that called for it, I knew how to say, "It's possible." They found it amusing that a guy who knew almost no spanish would be saying that so often, so they called me "Possiblemente," "The guy who is possible." I really enjoyed those guys, and I never could understand the racial cold war we have going in the US.

I suspect maybe the reason I get along better with people from other cultures is that they don't really expect me to know how to act right by the rules of their culture, plus, so many mainstream people are such arrogant jerks toward them that it's not hard to seem like a decent guy. Unfortunately, I'm now living in white bread city.

I ran into the opposite response with many blackfoot. Unless they knew you pretty well, a lot of them seemed to have the attitude, "first they stole our land, now they want to steal our language." They weren't all like that, but it happened more than once, and I still don't understand what makes the difference.

I've dabbled with a few other languages and always had one common result. I guess my mom didn't read the DSM during my fetal development, because I always got told that my pronounciation was really good, but my ability to memorize is abysmal, so I never managed to get much of a vocabulary in any language I've studied.

I've always loved languages and been very good at learning them, although since I hate dealing with people and tend to be a perfectionist, I never actually speak the languages much. I took French in high school, and I still remember a lot of it, although I didn't get all that far. I majored in Mandarin Chinese in college and got quite good at it, including reading and writing, and even speaking because I went to Taiwan totally on my own after graduation and was immersed in a bunch of people who didn't speak any English (this was in 1969-73, before Nixon went to the PRC). I also minored in Japanese, because I figured since I was learning the characters anyway, why not? I haven't used the language since, but I'm still reasonably fluent with what I remember. I really need to get back into it! Since I did those languages before I had my ECT and memory loss (see my introduction in the getting acquainted forum), I still remember them. Oh, and I tried learning Welsh from a Teach Yourself book when I was in high school, so I still remember words and stuff from that. After the ECT, I taught myself beginner Hungarian, working all the way through the Teach Yourself book, and had a good foundation, but because of the memory damage, I've forgotten most of it. As someone else said, when you go in for "obscure" languages, which are a lot more fun, you don't get much practice!

Anyway, it's possible to learn languages as an Aspie if your talents run that way, although not being good at talking to people does get in the way of oral fluency. Unlike when I was first studying, there's a wealth of different tools available nowadays: CDs, computer programs, books, videos, etc., so whatever your learning style is, you can do it. I'd say go for it.

I was going to learn Spanish for fun.
But it seemed impossible.
I'd take 30 minutes to memorize 10 words.
I would know about half of them.
Than an hour later i would have forgotten all of it.

On the other hand i was always the best at my class in English.
Once i got the hang of it when i was 12 years old it became so easy.
German was alright except the male and female ways of saying words.
I can speak decent german even though i have never done much studying german.

Like Spanish the French language was like impossible for me to learn.
Proberbly because it wasn't a Germanic language like Dutch/German/English.
There were verry little simularitys so it wasn't like with English/German, where once i got the hang of how gramatics worked it became easy...

I loved learning languages in school, and while I haven't taught myself any languages for fun, often I would buy used language textbooks for languages that I had taken a year of and continue teaching myself more of that language over the summer.

I personally recommend Latin. One really nice thing about Latin is that if you take a class on it, they will rarely ask you to speak it or to translate spoken Latin. It's a dead language and we don't know all that much about the proper pronunciation, so in most classes you don't have to deal with that aspect. And Latin is so neat and orderly...it's just so nice...very few exceptions to rules occur in Latin.

I'm always learning some language. Right now I'm mostly improving my Russian. I've never studied anything besides English and Swedish, but I speak French, German, some Spanish, Danish, Norweigan and basic Finnish. Lucky for me, I'm not really into obscure languages.

My best tip is to try finding someone who knows the language so that you can start having everyday conversation.

Organic chemistry is like learning a foreign language. I have heard that quote. There
is a visual part with the chemical structure pictures. I used to work out long complex
multistep chemical systhesis. I could start from anything (with enough common
reagents) and end up anywhere you wanted me to.

I agree with Mnemenosyne; Latin is wonderful. I learn it by learning the rules, which are varied and complex but are very regular (with a few minor exceptions). The sheer complexity and orderliness of the language is usually enough to send me into paroxysms of joy.

We know something about the proper pronunciation, actually, but it's not that different from English--basically, pronounce any v's as w's, trill your r's, and pronounce any j's as i's. I love the sound of Roman poetry. Latin's such a gorgeous, almost sing-song language. I'm going to enter Sight Latin Reading this year at Convention and see how I do.