Who gets "talked down" to?

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What I mean by getting talked down at is that people don't speak to you according to your chronological age or at least like a normal human being.
This might apply to mild autistics because aspies usually have very good speech and sound really intelligent so therefore they would never get this problem.
I have people talk to me as if I'm too stupid to understand them if they spoke normally. They often get shocked when I say something more intelligent than they do and that often makes them shut up and go away.
Damn speech problems, they always make me pronounce words wrong or speak to slow, fast, soft or loud. Going to speech therapy just gave me more of a reputation of being "slow" but now I don't anymore but people still get the impression that they have to feel sorry for me because they feel as if I'm lower than them...

I get talked down to all the time. I have a huge vocabulary, but I've never heard most of the words said, only read them, so I don't know how they're pronounced. Somehow most people get the idea from that that I am stupid.

I find that what works is to pay them a compliment using really big words, then they think you're insulting them and you have to explain what you said. This gives you a chance to talk down to them... maybe I'm just being obnoxious, though.

I pronounce a lot of big (and some small) words "wrong" but if anyone asks, I just attribute it to having a "unique accent" Works like a charm. For example, I like breaking up the pronunciation of "alternative" and say it as "alter native". Didn't make much sense in the conventional way, anyway.

I don't get talked down to in this regard, but I do in others. People understandably find it boggling I have a huge problem doing little tasks like household chores.

I try not to make them feel so bad so we can all have a good laugh over it.

I too have a big problem with pronouncing some words. I'll often butcher seemingly simple words if I've never seem them before. I'll see a word and hit the syllables in the wrong places, pronouce long vowels as short ones, or I get two letter backwards...

For example...

Kevlar -> kel-var
Grenadiers -> Green-aiders
Anachronisim -> Anarch-isim
Posthumously -> post-humus-ly

The word that I pronounce wrong the most is "salmon"

Instead of SAM-on, I always say SAL-mon. It's as if the l in salmon is supposed to be silent which makes no sense to me at all. I don't recall salmon being borrowed from any other language so why is it that way. That makes no sense.

I do. I'm always quiet in front of people I don't know well, I'm under five feet tall and I look about 14. In public I tend to space out and wander. Every now and then employees confuse me with being lost and ret*d. It's always a surprise when I answer with, "Ah, no thanks. I'm actually closer to thirty and I'm aware of how to find my party on my own."

I do alot of reading that I think most people find boring. I always learn new words but rarely get the chance to use them in conversation. So there are certain words that I read and pronounce in my head dozens of times before I ever speak them. Eventually I do use them in a conversation. Quite often I find out that I have been missreading or mentally mispronouncing the word. It is very difficult for me to relearn the accepted pronunciation. Before I ever read, "Aspereger's" it was mispronounced to me as "As-pari-guss" and it took me at least a week to get it straight.

It's almost exactly the same with me, except that I'm 21 and am mistaken for a kid.

Ha, I pronounce it the same as you! Which is just peachy in my book. Why waste letters if you ain't gonna pronounce them, tho?

I pronounce "orange juice" wrong a lot. Instead of "orange juice," I pronounce it "oranjuice." I don't mind pronouncing it wrong. I like being different.

Mich

English is not my native language, so I am used to the fact that people talk slower and louder to me than they talk among themselves. A couple of years ago this was indeed necessary, as my speech comprehension was poor, but now people do so as a result of my accent, I guess. My speech is getting better though, and I have been recently told that despite an accent I can be understood without effort. Yay!
(Note that I don't have any speech problems in my native language.)

Nevertheless, it took me a couple of years before I realized that one is supposed to say "Innernet" instead of "Internet". About the "sammon" I just learned today from your post, the_enigma.

The problem is with English language, not you, Taineyah. Most other languages have spelling that is much more phonetic and regular, and they would never cause you this problem.


When I was 20, I looked like 15 year old - that's what people were telling me. I didn't mind, since at that time I thought that being 20 meant very old, so looking younger was actually cool.

some times people feel sorry for me for my anger problems but not many people know that i have AS or that i also have bipolar disorder.....i dont know why i havent told many people i guess its just that i dont like being looked at much different than every one else ... the few people that do know that ive been to the hospital and that i do have problems such as AS and Bipolar disorder do play jokes , pranks and calle me mean names such as psycho except for the few that understand the disorder and the syndrome..... but not many do just a few and then there are the few that have on or the other or even both such as i do but not normally do i get talked down to except for if one of the upper classmen happens to want to talk to calm me down or just ask me a question or just have a conversation with me acting liek they know much more than me and all that .... well thats it

luv,
staige

Yes people tend to be extremely condescending and patronizing to me.

Hear, hear! People speak condescendingly to me quite often. I'm beginning to think of other people as optional rather than a crucial component of human contentment, though, so it's no big deal. If people choose to recognize my intelligence, kindness, and my other positive qualities, so much the better for them.

I agree! Other people are very condescending when they talk to me. I choose to interact with other people on my terms. If they can't recognize my personal attributes then that's their problem.

One wonder of the English language: you can warp the language to such an EXTREME degree and still have it be understandable. It's very flexible -- Ebonics is a paragon testament to this.

I still saw "gawvernment" to this day.

I like "oranjuice" too!