I talk "wrong"?

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I just visited a good friend I hadn't seen in a few years. She is the one who first realized I probably had asperger syndrome, and taught me some of my first social skills. She's a very honest person, always very direct, which was very helpful for me at a time when I didn't understand why people treated me so differently and no one else had been "rude" enough to tell me.

During our visit she told me that she thinks I speak incorrectly, as in, I produce the sound in the wrong way when I talk. She said she had always noticed it but didn't want to add to my stresses at a time when I was just learning to make eye contact. I didn't understand what she meant, and she elaborated that it sounds like I "push" the sound out somehow in the wrong way, though she isn't sure exactly how. She recommended I talk to some kind of speech or voice therapist to try to correct it, as she has known at least one other person who spoke in the same way but was able to correct it.

It's true that my voice has always had an odd, nasal sort of quality that I never liked. I can't stand the sound of my voice in recordings. But it never occurred to me that this might be something I can change. Do any of you guys know what I'm talking about, have experience with it, and maybe be able to offer a few pointers on how to correct it? I would love for my voice to sound more natural. Unfortunately I don't speak the local language very well where I live and I'm not sure how easily I'd be able to find a speech/voice specialist who could deal with me in English.

Thanks a lot in advance for any help.

I think it is something you can change. When I was a kid I talked nasally and with a lisp. I had speech therapy and dropped the lisp and later taught myself not to speak nasally. What it takes is to learn how to speak differently and to practice, practice, practice.

In my experience I've found that speech therapists can do wonders.

Thanks. I guess I'm stuck on how to change it. I don't know what I'm doing that produces that nasal sound. I'm definitely willing to put in whatever practice it takes, but right now I don't know what I'm practicing. Do you know of anywhere online that might have some helpful information?

I guess I can look around for an English-speaking speech therapist, but I don't know how much luck I'll have. Or how much it will cost, which I'm trying not to think about.

I think this is what they call "odd prosody," which is common in those with ASD. I don't think I've had it (if I do/did, no one ever told me), so I never knew it was something that could be corrected or that it even needed to be. Do people have a difficult time understanding you?

I have been told by multiple people that I do not have the local accent. Instead I sound very "textbook" I suppose this would be considered overly formal.

No, people understand me fine. I'll be brave and upload an audio clip of myself, see if that will help, if anyone can figure out what's going on.

EDIT: ARG this is far more complicated than it should be. Can anyone please recommend to me a good place to upload a 190 kb mp3 file to share on here?

I looked online, and there seems to be several how-to pages for stopping speaking nasally. Here's one of them.

http://www.ehow.com/how_8286305_stop-ta ... -nose.html

I haven't listened to your voice sound clip yet; my computer is hiccuping today.

OK, try this one, please let me know if it works alright, just a random passage read from my favorite book: http://ge.tt/5kMu8LZ/v/0

Thanks for the links, Lucywlf. I'll have a look.

I sometimes wonder if I talk ''wrong'' aswell. Not in the ways the OP described, but still in a way what I hard difficult to change or even figure out how I talk, since I believe I talk relatively normal. But sometimes when I'm out with a friend and I say something, other people often turn round and look at me as though there's something in the way I talk that catches unwanted attention, and they're judging me for it (which is what I don't like). I don't see why people have to do this though, because there's a lot of people around that talk a lot more weirder than me in every way, like very slow and lisp-like. I don't have a lisp at all, never have done.

Hm... I've tried to read all the instructions I can find online for reducing nasality, but it doesn't seem like I will be able to use them on my own. Most of them I simply don't understand - I never seem to be able to understand descriptions of how to position the body. Why do these sorts of articles never have diagrams? I also have extremely poor proprioception and whenever I try to move my body in any particular way (especially things like "standing up straight" which I don't even fully understand), I never manage to do it right. I guess I really will need some assistance, if that's what it takes. Maybe I can start by having a friend read the directions and show me what to do. If that fails, I'll have to start looking for a speech therapist.

Actually I might be able to manage this one:

I was born in Canada and I get told by people that they can tell I'm from London a fair bit. There are also those who refer to me as "That little Cockney over there". That doesn't mean that I talk wrong. It means that I have an accent. There's nothing wrong with accents. I see it as another difference that I have an opportunity to celebrate.

No, this isn't about my accent. Where I grew up (New England), where I was living when this friend first noticed my voice (Switzerland - she was from Germany), and where I live now (Prague - I regularly interact with Czechs, Brits, Americans, and Australians), everyone close enough to me to be honest, regardless of where they are from or what their native language is, agrees that my voice has a very strange and somewhat grating quality to it. I'm convinced now that it really is about the nasal quality of my voice. And I want to change it because I don't like the way my voice sounds. Even more important than it being annoying to other people, it's irritating even to me. I never thought it was possible to change, but since it seems it might be, I'm going to try.