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2ukenkerl
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24 Feb 2008, 8:49 am

Sora,

Were you bilingual as a really young kid(with one of the languages as english)? English IS a lot simpler than German, and most of the grammer and sentence structure is found in German, whereas much of the German grammer/sentence structure is NOT in English. But I thought that Germans just grew up with the ability to look past that.

After all, English ALSO requires some early consideration, so it isn't totally devoid of some kind of subconscious processing. ALSO, MY brain can now do some of the complicated German stuff without any conscious thought. BUT, as I indicated, it DOES become apparent that something is going on behind the scenes and english just comes easier. Then again, I have had few opportunities to think/speak ONLY in german. One of the reasons many give for english being easy is that it is ubiquitous.

But many studies claim that people that grow up bilingual may not speak either language as well, etc... I don't know how an AS person would react. Apparently normal kids don't really take any extra time, so they may end up with like half the vocabulary in either language, for example.

ALSO, I don't know if you take liberties, or are a perfectionist. Apparently, most Germans today take liberties, and aren't perfectionistic. If YOU are, you may take longer, and be more critical of yourself.



Sora
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25 Feb 2008, 4:10 pm

2ukenkerl wrote:
Were you bilingual as a really young kid(with one of the languages as english)?


I dread writing this post, because it's a lot more complicated than just that.

I'll try to shorten this as much as possible. My parents went to the US and got married there even. But they did decide to come back just about when I was born. I had access to English from the start, I have all these picture books with bears and kittens in them, but my parents decided it wasn't worth to teach me English. I showed enough strangeness with learning German and they were busy with divorcing anyway.

I didn't learn proper English until I was past age 10. So not young. I was thrust into an environment in which I understood nothing and when nobody offered me translations, I just stopped speaking German and learned speaking English during the following four weeks. I didn't speak English during the first four weeks though, only learned to understand the others and then finally spoke after that and exercised in the following two weeks. I just spoke full sentences out of sudden. It freaked out everybody, haha. I could write too, I actually did that shortly before speaking, because speaking proved to be hard. (Speech issues.)
I still have the first text I wrote. Mistakes present, but not that bad. It's an extract. I can't believe I still have this. (I was YGO crazy at that age.)

Quote:
he felt so miserable. It was hard to speak about it, even to think about it. Millennia ago, he had lost the one that meant all to him. They had been very young when they lost their parents. His little sister had just been a baby and he was the one that had taken care of her since then. The too had survived very well. He had always taken care of the food while his little sister had stayed in their secret place. She had always done what he had said, she had trusted him, and she had always waited for him.

Nathifan had trusted him and he had failed her.

The two had grown up very good in their bad surroundings. Then happened the thing that Bakura couldn’t forgive himself. One day, when he had been on his search for food and had come back to their secret place, something was wrong. His little sister had always met him half ways, but this time, she hadn’t been there. Bakura had run to her as fast as he could, he had had a bad feeling and knew something had been wrong. She had been lying there, motionless. He’d tried to wake her up but she hadn’t moved. She hadn’t reacted as her brother was crying out her name over and over.

(I melodramatic for a half-mute almost-teen, please don't hold it against me.)

I showed trouble switching back to speaking German during the following half a year after that summer. My mind was absolutely mad during that time, I had random trouble with understanding and speaking. After that period, all my languages abilities improved a lot though.

I didn't receive formal education in the English language until I was about 14/15. By then, I gained nothing from the classes. (I hate English classes in school. They tell me I have a horrible English and I get corrected for not speaking the "German-English" that is taught here and not knowing how to translate all these English words into German. And the students all speak funny, did I mention that?)

You know what's truley weird? I hear the German accent. But I hear the English accent too. I don't think I should hear both accents.

I do mix up words, use the wrong grammar and autism is one of these topics that when discussed in German, I find myself slipping back into English quite often. When I get tired, I slip into English too. I talked to people who were raised bilingually, read through articles and all I found out up to now is that I shouldn't be a bilingual speaker, but that I don't fit the profile of a foreign speaker either.

The only thing that I can do better in German is: pronunciation. German is hard and guttural and thus is much easier to speak for me, because I tend to 'slur' words which makes it hard to understand me in German already, but even more so in English. And I detest speaking 'clear and guttural' English, because it just sounds so... horribly not-English.


Well, I did say it wasn't the shortest of explanations.



2ukenkerl
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25 Feb 2008, 6:29 pm

Sora wrote:
I still have the first text I wrote. Mistakes present, but not that bad. It's an extract. I can't believe I still have this. (I was YGO crazy at that age.)

Quote:
he felt so miserable. It was hard to speak about it, even to think about it. Millennia ago, he had lost the one that meant all to him. They had been very young when they lost their parents. His little sister had just been a baby and he was the one that had taken care of her since then. The too had survived very well. He had always taken care of the food while his little sister had stayed in their secret place. She had always done what he had said, she had trusted him, and she had always waited for him.

Nathifan had trusted him and he had failed her.

The two had grown up very good in their bad surroundings. Then happened the thing that Bakura couldn’t forgive himself. One day, when he had been on his search for food and had come back to their secret place, something was wrong. His little sister had always met him half ways, but this time, she hadn’t been there. Bakura had run to her as fast as he could, he had had a bad feeling and knew something had been wrong. She had been lying there, motionless. He’d tried to wake her up but she hadn’t moved. She hadn’t reacted as her brother was crying out her name over and over.

(I melodramatic for a half-mute almost-teen, please don't hold it against me.)


That's actually VERY good for a first attempt!

What is "german english"?

I hear all the accents ALSO! I don't think that is a problem.

Why shouldn't you be a bilingual speaker? You write english well, and I am sure you must do fine with german.

For autism, that is ODD! A LOT of english psychiatric terms are GERMAN!

And I think 10 IS kind of late, but still you imply you spoke English for like 7-8 months or more. If you didn't see German as important, I COULD see how it could really suffer. There are probably 2-3 times as many ways to create a German sentence, and that much more grammer as well, and they require more effort.

I AM shocked they said your English is horrible. As for the gutteral German, I never got that. I mean HITLER spoke gutteral, and I think horrible German. He was Austrian anyway. But I hear people like Nena Kerner, or people on Deutsche Welle, and it doesn't sound so gutteral.



Sora
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26 Feb 2008, 8:44 am

German English is a term hopefully solely invented by me to describe the act of using English words and grammar in a typically German style.
Of course, learning a foreign lanuage means learning lots of vocabulary which is usually learned by learning one single German translation of the English word. This word is then said to hold exactly the same meaning as the English word - and this is obviously not true, just because two words can have a common meaning it doesn't mean they're used in the exact same context.

Another thing is that Germans just speak very differently from English people, because of different cultural and historical backgrounds. I somehow managed to mix both up. While I obviously don't speak English 'the American style' (though it's harder to notice in English with most of the world speaking it), I get asked from foreigners whether I'm foreign too when I speak German also.

I don't speak this German styled English, so teachers are usually the one who complain about my English. The way they teach English in German schools is crappy. When people are forced to get in contact with the English speaking world, they're usually surprised that nobody speaks English they way hey learned it in school. It's even way too formal, nobody really speaks like that.

----

About these German psychiatric terms being used in English, I never noticed that before. In German there isn't even a translation to words like 'stimming', 'meltdown/overload', 'sensory integration disorder' (the German word's ridiculous...) and there is only a difficult phrase to say 'LFA'. It drives me insane to think all these nice terms I got so used to on Wp are just non-existent in German.

Autism is largely unknown in Germany. Despite the fact that Asperger was German-speaking, it's sad isn't it.



xrz99
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11 Dec 2009, 9:10 pm

markaudette, Sounds like the same problem I'm having, I'm an artist as well and also could get sucked in to traces where I couldn't stop doing art till it was finnished. I cant seem to focus on anything for longer than 20 minutes aside from tv and even in watching tv I get up constantly to go do something random. I am not sure what this is maybe the fact I'm getting older, no clue but hopefully I can figure it out. It suck though because things i love to do that keep me focused are no longer working for me. Seems to me a constant state of randomness.