Learning languages and AS

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I've just realised why I am not very good at learning languages. The reading and writing part is okay the oral and listening I find difficult. And the reason I can't hear the words properly they sound muffled and the words are spoken too fast, my brain can't process it quickly enough.
Does anyone else have this problem?

I have that same problem. I can't understand what a person says unless they sound really gringo (I'm learning Spanish.). When it's written, though, it makes so much sense to me.

The big trick in fluency in a language is to think in that language, to forget your mother tongue and have only thoughts in your second. This assimilation works in understanding a foreign language.

I also seem to think without a language barrier. I tend to find multilingual puns and I can think in pretty much any language I understand.

A good example of that is when my brother's friend started singing the song "Here Comes the Sun," and immediately, I think of the song "Sonne" by Rammstein. When I started singing Sonne, though, everyone gave me a strange look.

You may have damage to your Auditory Processing line. it isn't that big a deal, just makes things like you discribe (learning languages) a little more challenging.

That's a common problem, and it doesn't seem to be due to AS. The simplest way to take care of it is to get a device to play media slower(but keep the tone) and/or get transcribed audio. Just listen, and try to pick out the words, etc... Do it enough, and you'll learn it. BTW a good transcribed spanish magazine is:

http://www.champs-elysees.com/products/ ... fault.aspx

So you learn the culture, history, news, AND language, and improve A/V fluency!

Steve

As an aspie linguaphile, I can say with certainty that asperger's does not preclude learning foreign languages. There might be some comorbidity that keeps certain aspies from learning languages, but I speak six languages (three fluently, three to varying degrees of proficiency) and am learning a seventh and eighth.

The trick, I find, is to hear a lot of it (to get used to it. Many people, NTs and aspies alike, report that foreign languages sound "too fast" or "garbled" when they first hear them) and also to get into the right mindset. It's easy to start off by translating everything in your head to your native language but you want to get beyond that and have the new language interact directly with your brain.

Good luck! Learning a new language is great, I'm a hopeless addict in that regard.

I probably should have said it but, like dibujante, I know 6 languages to a degree. I am somewhat proficient with 3(Read/write/hear/speak), understand a lot of spoken written stuff in 2 others(I just want to wait until I am more comfortable), and am getting there in a sixth. I am toying with learning 3 others. At the moment, they cover 3 main language groups, and 2 major alphabets. If I learn the other 3, it will be 6 main groups, and 5 major alphabets! I AM doing some at the same time(It is AMAZING how you can keep all the languages seperate! I don't know if I EVER mixed them up.), while working a full time job, etc... I know well over 1000 words in each. My major problem has been memorizing vocabulary, but that is getting easier. If you get good enough with the vocabulary, and equate it to the meaning, rather than another word, it gets easier to listen to.

Steve

In all fairness, I don't think that being an Aspie allows any of us to say much with certainty.

Personally, I think AS really needs to be split into two conditions.

One is stronger at math and the other is stronger at language.

Diagnostically and with regards to services offered, there are distinctions within AS that need different types of attention and recognition.

Language is more my strong area. I can't memorize strings of numbers or perform any unusual string-parsing abilities.

Now, when I drink, I can sometimes identify typed words by the sound of a keyboard or phone numbers by the sound of them being dialed.

However, learning english the first time around drove me to acts of self-harm. I remember hurting myself as a child (biting my hands, hitting my head) because I had trouble remembering the alphabet. But I learned the language and was years ahead of my grade level when I did. I did spelling bees. I had a PhD-level vocabulary within a few years.

But learning Spanish has been very problematic for me. I failed the second Spanish class in high school. I took the class in night school and the test evaluator was a family friend who allowed me to cram and take multiple tests minutes after reviewing my notes. I took as many as three tests in one night and finished the course in two weeks.

In college, I worked in the foreign language office one summer, translating texts from middle french spellings into modern french spellings. I speak neither but I can get by very well when supplied with a dictionary and list of conjugations.

So I took a test to bypass Spanish 101. I did but largely based on intuition based on my knowledge of English and some latin roots. I started Spanish 102, which I had to take three times to pass with a D. I am taking Spanish 200 for the second time this summer.

I'm a student who typically gets A's in classes that don't involve hands-on/group projects or math in my head. I could probably be a lawyer or a psychiatrist or a sociologist and be quite successful. I could probably even be a physicist as I tend to grasp the concepts quite well.

But learning Spanish quite literally makes me want to beat my head against a wall.

It's not that I don't think it's useful or that I have a problem with immigrants or internationalism like some people who seem to have resistance to the material and difficulty acquiring it.

It's that it involves wrote memorization which I have virtually no capacity for. In order for me to memorize anything, it has to be intuitive, procedural. I often find myself pointing out analogies between Spanish and English to professors when a concept arises because I simply want to treat the whole of the Spanish language like a few thousand new vocabulary words with special rules and every teacher I've encountered wants me to approach the language as a mute, without forming English associations. Which thrusts me back into the mindset of the child who would punch himself in the head.

I'd actually like to know some other languages if I could pick them up as a hobby and learn them without a fourteen week timetable.

But one real issue I've had is that many instructors want me to be able to identify words SUNG in Spanish... and I can't do that in English without repeated listening. Also, I'm expected to pick up new words by tone of voice... and while I can sometimes ferret out words through written context and roots, the tone doesn't help.

I've spent over a decade of my life recording my voice and listening to it to modulate my own tone in English. I've spent hours in front of a mirror practicing facial cues. I've studied acting. I've done a bit of very small professional work acting.

But it's all based off my knowledge of English. I make the cues match the words. Things like sarcasm and jokes take some work for me and that's probably one reason why I've never managed to get into an improv troupe. (Now, give me a keyboard and I can write spontaneously like nobody's business provided the prompt/idea isn't too restrictive or too nebulous.)

But I can't make the cues synch up to words if I don't know the words first.

Everyone has trouble with oral/auditory more so than with written/read language. It's not due to AS. I supposedly have AS and speak 2 foreign languages so...keep it up! You can do it!

Having a second third or sixth language is a great skill. I will keep persevering!

I always hated studiyng languages, and I'm not good in it, as you can see.
Nevertheless, I think aspie people, when trying to learn a language, will try to look for "ordered things", like words. Anyway, when we talk, we "glue" some words, meanwhile "cut" others, what precludes that foreigners can "find" the words. I think this gives the impression that other languages speech is too fast.

! !

Ok, so my son dispite years of remediation reads 3 full grade levels below his age, and writes 3 grade levels behind, and spells 5 grades levels behind. his verbal was so good last night in a hospital with a broken arm, that staff (doctors /nurses) made comments about what a "smart kid" he was, and steped up their talking from being at a "kid level" to an "adult level" with him. One lady went as far as to say, "he is 12 going on 32!"

meanwhile, he was also throwing tantrums like a 3 year old, and could not advocate for himself by expressing how much pain he was in, but still... I can definately tell you, some people do NOT read and write better then they hear and talk...

I was the same way!

I learned four languages. Actually, most languages are easier than English because the rules are more consistent. English is an patois of languages which makes the pronounciation and rules used mind boggling. If you learn one romance language, learning the others is easy because they are very similar in the rules they follow.

Learn the rules of the language to learn it. Is the course trying to have you learn it by speaking it? You, as an Aspie, may have to learn it the old fashioned way instead. That was how I learned them all except Italian, which was so close to Spanish that I just picked it up by living there.

Let go of the social aspect and verbal aspect and allow your mind to see the pattern and the set of rules. Language, like music, is really very mathematical, so if your mind is more geared in that direction, just let youself see those patterns and you will get it.

I learn foreign languages to read only. I won't ever go abroad so there's no point in me trying to speak or listen to them. I want to be a translator from the foreign language into English.

i learn best from reading writing...

and i've noticed that i generally "hear" people better once i get to know them... so especially if they're foreign... i have trouble hearing them for a while.

For some reason, despite not particularly liking people or being good at talking with people, I do travel a lot. I find that learning the language in the country in question is easier than learning it into a classroom, but a prior classroom experience speeds the process up a lot.

I was talking about the relative ease of learning foreign languages in written as opposed to spoken form. If your son has some kind of literacy disability (dyslexia?) or simply doesn't like to read it may be different for him.