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poppy-lou
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03 Feb 2011, 5:15 pm

I am starting to learn German, as my partner is from germany and we want to go and visit the family.
And oddly enough I am kicking ass! I have never learned anything so well, I actually have high hopes that I could be great in this area and learn many new languages!
I heard a rumour that aspies are more talented in language then autistic's, I didnt have a speech problem but did choose to be mute at times, but I did hear that aspies can grasp new languages like its a gift.
Is this true?



anbuend
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03 Feb 2011, 5:24 pm

It really depends. There are some non-AS autistic people who despite having bad language comprehension, have a real gift for learning to use languages through echolalia and pattern-matching. Unfortunately for me that's only worked on my first language. :-/ I am trying really hard to learn Spanish and Middle Egyptian but it's a losing battle sometimes.


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03 Feb 2011, 5:35 pm

I'm impressed, well done you! :)
I'm half German on my dad's side, also my mother is Geordie (apparently Germans find it easier to adjust to our accent and vice versa - cue joke about Auf Wiedersehen Pet), but I'm completely incapable of learning German, I've had a lot of people comment to say that German is one of the hardest languages to learn, particularly for English-speakers.

This would be one more tick in the 'possibly autistic' box for me then, I didn't learn English until I was quite old so trying to learn any other language was impossible for me, I struggled with English until I was quite old and just cannot take-in or get my tongue around other languages - I am quite good with reading/listening in other languages, I can hear patterns of words quite well, and I'm good at sign language, but verbally languages are a no-go for me.


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dunbots
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03 Feb 2011, 5:38 pm

Well I have AS and I'm really good at learning languages, but mostly just reading and writing them, as I'm not that great at speaking English in the first place. :P

I used to learn German, but I still can understand a lot, and it's easy for me.



Tsela
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03 Feb 2011, 6:03 pm

No idea. I'm still not officially diagnosed although in all likelihood I have AS, and as it happens I am very good at learning languages. I am fluent in three (French, English, Dutch), conversational in three more (Modern Greek, Spanish, Esperanto), and have some basic knowledge of at least three others (Japanese, Italian, Arabic). I don't speak German but that's only because I'm not interested in learning that language that I find ugly sounding.

In my experience as long as the learning method's right for me and I've got the right motivation, I can learn a language within a few months. I learned Dutch within a month, Greek in three months using a learning CD in my car.

I know that Aspies tend to have a better ability to focus on what they like and actually use their entire learning ability towards it. So I guess an Aspie who is truly interested in learning a language will put more effort into it than someone else, and thus succeed more often.



syrella
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03 Feb 2011, 6:12 pm

I was always pretty good at languages, since I have a very strong rote memory and I'm good at repeating what I hear. To date, I've studied Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese. I always really liked my language classes and excelled at them... they were the only classes that I was pretty much guaranteed an A in. I've been told that I'm near genius level when it comes to language learning. That said, I still struggle with some of the nuances. Good pronunciation and good memorization skills aren't everything. Knowing when and how to use certain words or phrases is equally important. And sometimes that is more difficult that it sounds.

Anyhow, though, if you like languages, study them. Knowing more than one language is always a bonus. If you really get into them, you could always make it your field of study... for example, you could study linguistics. For me, though, I just liked learning languages, not necessarily studying the grammar or syntax in nitty gritty detail.

What I also want to point out though....particularly for someone with AS or social difficulties, language classes can provide a valuable opportunity to further develop conversation and other social skills, albeit in a foreign language. Everyone is on more or less equal footing and everyone is going to sound awkward. You have an opportunity to study about a culture through its use of gesture and speech patterns. I suspect that that may have been a major reason as to why I enjoyed them so much. I got to learn about people's customs and ways of doing things in a structured environment. Stuff that always seemed a bit foreign to me, perhaps more so than even the language side. In turn, this helped me learn how to interact with people better.


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buryuntime
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03 Feb 2011, 6:20 pm

I'm learning a language and reading comes okay/easy to me but speaking is a whole different matter. It is too difficult to inflect words without having to think ahead.



Cicely
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03 Feb 2011, 7:41 pm

I'm good at learning other languages. Not so good at conversing in them.



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03 Feb 2011, 7:52 pm

Learning grammar, rules, and structure comes very easy for me. My downfall is vocabulary and remembering how to conjugate irregular verbs. I have a really hard time with that. I also struggle with pronunciation.

I can pick up a new programming language really quickly, but that might require a different skill set.


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Descartes
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03 Feb 2011, 10:32 pm

At the moment, I am attempting to learn Spanish. I've very good with pronunciation. When I was taking Spanish in high school, I was probably the best non-native speaker in my classes. One of my teachers even commented that I sounded almost native when I spoke Spanish.

I suppose I have a really good grasp on learning how to pronounce some languages properly, because I can pronounce Japanese quite well, too (although I can only say a few phrases in Japanese).

I know quite a bit of Spanish, but I'm far from fluent.


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04 Feb 2011, 4:21 am

I suck at languages :( I'm not that great at English either! :lol:

I find it easy to memorize words- particularly nouns- but my grammar in Japanese is atrocious. I have to think about the sentence in my head before I actually say it. It doesn't come naturally at all.


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menintights
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04 Feb 2011, 4:33 am

I still can't speak my native language with the fluency that I really should have by now. :(

Oddly enough, I'm pretty good at speaking my third and fourth languages. Less association with all kinds of emotional crap I went through when I was learning my first and second languages perhaps.



alexi
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04 Feb 2011, 4:41 am

I like learning individual words (and am quite good at that), but struggle very much with how to put any of them together. I like lists very much, so this kind of learning probably suits me well. :roll: