Everything I hear sounds like gibberish

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I've noticed this lately. Everything people say to me evetualy starts sounding like gibberish. I pretend to listen but in reality I can't understand what they are saying. I don't really watch TV or Youtube, as opposed to listning to it. Almost everything on YouTube is just a talking head so I don't think looking at them is going to help me understand them anybetter. My favorite program, Coast to Coast AM is a radio show anyway and when someone posts an eppisode to YouTube they usualy just have the logo or a picture of an alien. Anyway, no matter what I listen too, I notice it eventualy starts to sound like gibberish. In everyday life, I feel like I am in the Sims game when people start to speak. I never felt like English was my first language and didn't learn to speak until I was five. I've been watching some Japanese cartoons and have even picked up a litlte bit of the language; I'm not not fluent in any way, I have just been able to pick up on a few words. English is such a "prickly" language whereas Japanese words are "smooth", I think it's got something to do with most of the words ending in vouls. Even as a kid, I would always turn the closed captining on so I read what was being said. Hearing the exact same thing I was reading just seemed to make it click in my brain as opposed to one or the other.

I can identify with this to a lesser extent. For me it tends to depend on who is talking. I dont understand it at all. Some people when I am listening to them, all I hear is a stream of sound and I then need to work really hard to break up the stream of sound into word sections and match them with the correct word they represent on top of processing what the person is saying. I dont understand why this only occurs with some people and what the variable/s are that determine whether someone will be hard or easy to understand.

Yeah, sometimes this happens to me. Someone will be talking to me, but their words don't make any sense.

This sounds like slow processing of verbal information. I used to be a bit like this with English as a kid. I would say 'what' all the time, thinking I hadn't heard, but realised that if I left it a bit the sentence would start to make sense, as my brain slowly processed it. However, I didn't speak late - I had more words at 18 months than most children of that age do.

When I was living in France I had the same problem with French - whereas most other foreigners seemed to understand spoken speech as long as it was words they were familiar with, it would all sound a garbled mess to me unless I had a lot of time to figure it out, despite the fact that my vocab and grammer (written and thought) were a lot better than theirs. It did speed up with practise, as did English, but my general impression is that my language comprehension is not that great compared to most people. Languages are certainly not my strong point and French was an effort to aquire. Written language however is fine (more time to get things across). It also ebs and flows with my mood. In the last few years I have found myself saying things without thinking for the first time ever (I am now in my mid 30s) so it definitely improves with practise - perhaps due to using other brain regions, or just strengthening the language part of the brain.

Its worse when you only barely speak the language, it turns to gibberish very fast.

You mean that it has always been like this (and you only noticed recently) or that it seems to have gotten worse?

I didn't understand most things said to me as a child unless I strained to listen very closely because of auditory processing disorder (as part of my autism) but this has improved drastically with age. I still need to silently echo everything that's said but doing so has become second nature. I hit my limits when it comes to people with dialects though.

On wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder

Oddly, I'm fairly good when it comes to understanding kids with speech impediments, many are no harder to understand than everybody else. I imagine that might most likely be because my language skills are also impaired and my brain does not have a set system of language/speech rules to go by and does not have to compare expectations of what will be heard with what is really heard.

it happens; i indeed have to focus to make sense out of the gibberish.
however, being trained like that makes me easily able to understand dialects and accents, and even grasp the context of a language i barely know.

This happens to me to varying degrees, to the point that I wear headphones and/or use subtitles wherever possible in videogames and TV/movies.

Have you heard of "audio processing disorder?"

Every time I talk to someone on the phone, this happens to me. Almost without fail - words start to jumble together and I have to say "what?" constantly. I usually blame it on my cellphone's reception to avoid any weird questions people might have. It also happens in conversations with certain people in person, if I get caught thinking about something they've said earlier in the conversation... everything that follows from that point is a struggle to catch up with.

This has been happening to me for years. It gets worse when I don't take vitamins and been eating unhealthy. Lately, I can barely hear other people but it's not bothering me as much as it used to.

I noticed this as recently as today IRL.

I notice it when getting instruction. For some reason what the person is saying is a blur and you don't get all the info there spitting out, only bits and pieces.

Its annoying man. Part of the reason I'm leaning towards giving disibitity a shot, there's just too much crap wrong with me.

I notice this sometimes---actually as of recently. In fact I was wondering about it the other day---why I just don't seem to understand some people when they are talking. I have been under a lot of stress lately, and anxiety. I need a vacation.

Yep. I really have this issue and it's one thing that scares me as far as messing things up at work.

I don't listen most of the time, but it doesn't matter and it's actually an advantage for me when I'm really engrossed in something.

In work situations though, I have been reprimanded and have basically gotten a "WTF is wrong with you? Are you high?" reaction from bosses(they didn't use those words).

Aside from meds I don't know what to suggest, it's technically APD but part of AS and ADHD pretty frequently.

So nobody actually knows of a way of improving this?

I don't know if I'm typical in this sense, but I take adderall and it helps me quite a bit with this problem -- when I can afford the full monthly prescription. Lack of health insurance is diabolical.

What is adderall prescribed for? ADHD?