Bilingualism and autism

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I also grew up bilingual with Greek and English, I learned both at home before I even went to school. At age 17, I learned Hebrew because I lived 5 years in Israel. At age 24 I learned Dutch because I moved to Amsterdam.

I have taken 2 years of Italian (can hold a conversation), Japanese (can hold a moderate conversation), and French (can understand more than I speak, unless in France where I pick it up easily again). I have also learned Dutch sign language and basic American sign language.

I can read many alphabets: Greek, Latin (English, Dutch, French, etc), Hebrew, Sign language finger spelling (= alphabet) of Dutch, US, British, German, Greek and a few more. I can also read and write in Braille (both US and Dutch).


Example of American Sign Language (ASL) finger spelling

I love languages and different cultures and traditions.

Star

my native language is Spanish, I also speak English and some French.

No, but I can read dutch almost as well as I can read english.

My first language is English, and I learned German as an adult (prior to my AS diagnosis). As I began to have conversations in German, I noticed that I had the same difficulties with introducing myself, making smalltalk, turn-taking in conversations, etc. that I'd always had in English. Now I know that was part of the AS, but at the time I just couldn't figure out why I was always having trouble remembering the "crap" phrases like "how are you, nice to meet you, where are you from?" etc. That's because I never said those things to people in English, much less a second language.

Bilingual. I learned Dutch when I was 30. I've never cared to become truly fluent though.

For me, the 2nd language will always remain merely a "code": You can transmit info via a code (numerical, for instance), but that carries precious little emotional content. That's what a 2nd language means to me; will NEVER carry the same weight as my mother tongue.

Sometimes I think this lack of fluency is merely a mechanism to keep folks at arm's length though.

English is my first language, though I grew up in a mostly hispanic neighborhood, a man who was from El Salvador lived with my family off and on and often tried to teach me (when he wasn't drunk and/or psychotic)...and some of my better friends could hardly speak a word of english. Somehow we managed to play and communicate just fine despite the language barrier.

When I was a little bit older, i would often have friends in school who didn't speak english, (sometimes hispanic, sometimes asian) partially because (duh) it was hard for me to make friends...so I would mantain these brief friendships until they found a less-eccentric peer group.
When I was a teenager, I ended up dating a guy from Ecuador for 6 years and I preacticly lived with him..He was educated in the US and spoke English without a hint of an accent, but his mom and grandma both could not speak english.

I took Spanish and French in High school...and studied spanish on my own....at one point I was able to have a conversation entirely in Spanish..likesay at the grocery store...or what-have-you...

But my language skills are awful...I am mad at myself that I have had that much experience with spanish and simply cannot function in that language at all. I can pick up a phrase here and there and I know some rudimentary stuff, but that is about it.

Flakey is the same way. He lived in Brazil for several years when he was young. He used to speak and understand Portugese, but no longer does.

I'm fluent in both English and French.

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Life is a journey, let's ride

My first language was German. I learned English when I was in first grade, and took Spanish in high school. Of these languages, English is the only one I know well.

"Is anyone on here bilingual?
I am and I think my speech (development) took some damage by this."

I doubt it. I know plenty of kids who speak two or three languages without any problems. My oldest daughter was fluent in three languages by the time she was five. It seems to come very easy to them at that age.

Well, I learned a second language as an adolescent, and a third as an adult. I don't think it caused any 'problems' to my brain per se, but when I am at parties based on a second or third language, the daze induced by the 'cocktail party effect' (many conversations swirling around me) is much worse than in my native tongue. My first panic attacks were in Europe - I would go to a party or family function for an hour or two, get sick, go home and collapse into sleep, and awake in an hour or two with full blown panic.

My daughter was raised English/Scandinavian bilingual and speaks French and German well enough to win awards at the high school state competitions. I don't think the bilingual thing had any negative effects on her. One family we knew raised their kid in a quadrilingual environment - there was a slight delay in speech development, but the kid does not mix languages, the delay seems like it was caused by the kid taking time to separate the languages.