Can Hyperlexia Explain...

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Can hyperlexia explain my knowledge of various languages?

I know a good bit of a few romance languages... predominently because i sat down and read lots of dictionaries when i was small. I can sit down and read pretty much any romance language though i don't really consider myself a fluent speaker... even though i can follow conversations pretty well... i just can't formulate my own sentences w/o remembering reading/hearing a similar phrase or "expression of my desired thoughts" from some other outside source. (I can break this down further to say that i can write and formulate my own sentences in foreign languages but it takes me a while to "find" the words... so forget about actually talking usually.. i get this dumb look on my face that generally haults the conversation)

I'm wondering if hyperlexia is kinda my method for learning languages cause... when i look at a word in most any romance language... i often see slight variations of the word (diff languages spell diff) but i also have a general emotive picture associated with all those variations. sometimes the english equivalent word is attached to this collage of pictures/words... sometimes the english word doesn't pop up... but i always remember some kind of context that i associate with the words... so like, i could hear the foreign word or see it... and while i can't always pull up the english definition to provide someone with a quick definition... i could tell you where and how to use that word in a sentence.

i'm not a very good speaker but i have often fooled several aquaintances from different countries into thinking i'm a fluent speaker because i pick up really quickly on short retorts or vague "multi-use" responses that i can use in an educated manner because i can actually follow the conversation (i have wondered too if this is a form of echolia; i hear the phrase and can just repeat it/apply it and i will often repeat these phrases to myself so that they kinda stick with me better)...

so i fool people into thinking im totally fluent because of this and the fact that i don't talk much to begin with... but i get flustered when this gets me too much social attention and they turn the conversation towards me. i can't ever seem to think fast enough to be effective in conversation.

does ths sound like hyperlexia? (or whatever that term is that denotes being able to infer stuff from words w/o actually knowing what the word is)

I would think it can certainly contribute to your learning of various languages.

Combining hyperlexia with an Aspie's obsessive traits could explain your penchant for various languages.

I think you are in a chicken-egg argument. Which comes first? Or which is more dominant? I was given a dictionary at a young age and my parents bought a set of encyclopedia when I was 7. I was already reading early (not hyperlexia) and I loved the information, just facts and facts and stories too. (word etymologies read like stories to me)
I had an early interest in foreign languages and these interests merged in 6th grade when I started reading my brother's Spanish textbook for fun. Especially the glossaries. I started collecting foreign language dictionaries (Langenscheidt is the best) and travel books (Berlitz guides).
Enough exposure to Romance languages will reveal the roots, prefixes, suffixes and etymologies of everyday English. So, it's kind of a back and forth with reading and listening. There's a lot of practical insight in viewing language like this. It helps with studying medicine, breaking compound words into their Greek and Latin bases.
I studied Spanish and eventually got a degree in it, can read and write "fluently" but fall greatly behind in basic conversation. I could order in a restaurant and probably give directions. Part of that is lack of conversation practice but I think it's an uneven skill mixed with lack of "thinking on the spot".

I think that hyperlexia is, as with many aspects of the autism spectrum, complex and varies between individuals.

Example: my kid. He spoke late, and only then with a lot of help from speech therapists in preschool. He seemed to understand well enough when people spoke to him (IF you could get his attention and interest), but was disinclined to say anything. When he started talking, a lot of it was echolalia. But we read to him a lot, and he obviously enjoyed the input side of things.

Then came kindergarten. We talked to him about it, and he was pretty excited about the prospect, so a few weeks before it started, he asked for help with reading. HUH??? I sat down with him, and sure enough, he could read and understand text about as well as an average 1st grader, and only needed help with long or uncommon words. We had never made any effort whatsoever to teach him to read up to that point, but within a few weeks he was getting through books without any help. (His mom, also an aspie, had manifested hyperlexia in a similar way, she taught herself to read at age 3, and immediately became a voracious reader.)

He's now 9, and reading at middle-school level. His speech is still far from graceful, and getting him to write has been almost impossible until just lately (and only then with ice cream bribes). But he reads almost from the time he wakes up until we turn out his light at night.

His hyperlexia is obviously specialized, so it wouldn't surprise me if others had hyperlexia that gave them different sorts of gifts. There's no reason to expect it to be all-purpose hyperlexia.

Foreign language is definitely a love it or leave it interest. That's why I call it a chicken/egg topic because for me, interest in words and definitions led to obsessive interest in Spanish, then other Romance languages, and then vice versa (don't tell me to look up a word in a dictionary in a hurry). I didn't have the specialized or significantly early reading skill. I was 5 in 1st grade and learned to read quickly, never looked back. But the interests/obsessions definitely fed off each other.