Do you love languages?

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I speak three languages. I'm pretty rusty with one of them, which I never really use, but I used to speak all three perfectly, including the accent. There are two more languages that I can only speak in a limited way but that I understand and can read, one of them fairly well and the other one quite well. All of them are Western European languages, so they are somewhat similar to one another.

I am fascinated by the differences in meaning and emphasis that come through when using different languages. Sometimes whole concepts are easily conveyed in one language and more complicated to explain in another.

I also love that Italy, where I am originally from, has many distinct languages in addition to Italian, one for each "region" (which in Italy have a specific boundary), although those ancient languages are now declining in use. I can understand the one from my mother's region, though I can only speak a few phrases.

Do people with ASD tend to have a facility with languages? If so, is it because we are good mimics and are always having to adapt to other people's way of thinking and communicating?

I suspect this varies a lot. I was terrible at learning languages when I was younger, but I've gotten a lot better. But, the general problems I have communicating in person in English tend to carry over to the other languages as well. I definitely am a lot more conscious about being scripted and anxious about getting off script. But, I can definitely manage my affairs in most common situations in both German and Mandarin, I just have to do a lot of practice as I have limited ability to decide what I'm going to say and how I say it in English, let alone a 2nd or 3rd language.

I may work on Farsi just because I'm kind of tired of knowing that my wife is talking about me and having no idea what sort of crazy things she's saying.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I love Latin, it's very simple, I also make conlangs, before those, I made a script in sixth grade with a unique stacking system. On [url]autismforums.com[/url] , People hated me for translating to Latin but that translation not being the same as what Google says. I hate these truth focused people. My most recent conlang was a letter rootic abjad, where each consonant had a meaning, K is wood/hard, D is rock. And they were combined to create words. I wish I had more time to talk about this.

I love studying languages! I can read novels in Spanish and French, but my Spanish is quite a bit better than my French. I’m more interested in reading, watching movies, and listening to music than in actually using the languages to communicate. I have had some interesting conversations with native Spanish speakers, though.

Languages are fascinating. For me its more theoretical... I dont have the patience to actually learn to master many specific languages- but how languages evolve and split off from each other is fascinating.

A case in point is Magyar, the language of Hungary. An odd ball language surrounded by unrelated Slavic languages on all sides -except for Romanian on their eastern side (which is also unrelated to it, but is a Romance language). Magyar is not even an indoeuropean language (Slavic, Romance, and Germanic -including English- are all Indoeuropean), but is in the Uralic family. Related to Finnish. But the closest linguist cousins to the Hungarians are the Mansi tribe - an aboriginal reindeer herding people in Sibera, and thousand miles away up near the Artic circle in the Russian Republic. This little vid compares and shows vocabulary similarities.

https://youtu.be/vEs0Hmr4-p0

Hungarians are standard looking White central Europeans (like the Gabor sisters) while the Mansi look like the Innuit/Eskimos, or like East Asians. Though many combine Asian facial features with auburn hair and freckles...quite fascinating to look at google images of them. Apparently the ancestors of the Hungarians branched off from the Mansi...migrated southwestward, merged with the Huns, crossed the Carpathians and fought their way into central Europe during the Dark Ages before settling down in their present land of Hungary. Then over the centuries they gradually assimilated to European racial DNA, but retained their Siberian spoken language.

Wow, lots of fascinating stuff from everyone! I didn't know about conlangs. And it's amazing how Hungarian came to be what it is. I knew nothing about that either.

In the limited range of languages I know, which as I said are all similar to some degree (Italian, English, Portuguese and some Spanish and French plus a bit of local Italian "dialect"), I have always been interested in the similarities. A lot of "big words" in English are actually very similar to the regular word that is used to mean that same thing in Italian. For instance in English we sort of dumb down the word dentifrice by calling it "tooth paste" but in Italian it's called dentifricio.

Languages were my special interest at the time I begin undergraduate education which ended up dealing me a setback. TBH I didn't even want to continue school immediately after HS but being told by my parents I must, I chose to study Modern Languages and after getting a degree, ended up working essentially as a busboy in a cocktail lounge. (Much later, my parents admitted to me they were wrong to not let me take a break from my formal education. I was only 16 at the time anyway).

Two things regarding languages and autism. 1.) The sort of jobs that a degree in Modern Languages might qualify you are generally bad choices for people on the spectrum, I mean it would involve face to face communication with others, in particular people from other cultures and your employer will expect you to have superb people skills and take the conversation in the direction the employer wants. No aspies need apply! 2.) Ironically, when I went on two different "terms abroad" my language skills benefited much more than the other participating students, as I would spend most of my free time interacting with locals in some way, whereas the others would all meet up and hang out somewhere. In particular, when I was in France, I would go to bars by myself and get into conversation with people there. In those days, most French people did not speak English but at that time there was also some sort of fascination with the US that didn't exist the same way in other European countries so many times people had never actually spoken with an American and had things they wanted to get off their chest. Obviously that improved my conversational skills much better than hanging out with my colleagues would have done.

As for Hungarian, I can recall one reason I liked visiting Hungary was just the written form looked so wild, I liked seeing that.

Having said that, nowadays I think most native speakers know there's not much reason to learn other Western languages (except Spanish for an American or French for a Canadian anglophone) then simple interest in the language. It's usually not a job skill unless your job requires face to face communication with recent immigrants which isn't a job that will ever pay very well.

I find languages, in general, to be interesting. Recently I started learning German again. My knowledge is limited to basic conversation.

Also, whilst we're on the subject of languages, have you ever had dreams where more than one language was spoken?

It's uncommon that I do, but it does happen. Recently I had a dream which was mostly in English, but there was one person who spoke in German. Understandable since I started learning again, so it must've been on my mind.

However, other languages have shown up before. Well, imitations of them. I had a nightmare once about sitting down to take a test but the test kept switching language. So there were a bunch of nonsense words that my brain threw together in an attempt to replicate Spanish, French etc. I do not know French or Spanish.

One time I had a dream where a boy spoke to me in... what I assume was supposed to be an attempt at Russian.

It's interesting to me that the brain attempts to conceptualise languages even when it doesn't know that language.

I don't think I've had a dream in which people were speaking another language, at least not that I remember, but I think I must have at some point because that actually happened to me in real life. When I was in elementary school we moved to another country where I didn't know the language and I had to go to school and I literally could not communicate with anyone and didn't know what anyone was saying. (My parents did get me lessons in that language before we moved but I only learned very little and it was not really enough to be helpful.) I do remember having dreams in which I'm at a school and I have no idea what's going on, but I don't remember it as being language-specific.

I have an interest regarding foreign languages.

I use Duolingo to learn foreign languages, currently leaning French on it after
taking a break from learning German.

I love languages

https://youtu.be/3rhxeDInKu8

... It's complicated.

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