Bilingualism and autism

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Darn straight, I only speak one language. And everyone else can learn to speak it too.
Seriously, though, languages tend to come fairly naturally to me, I just have never put in the requisite time to gain any real degree of fluency in another language. Plus there's the fact that there is no one in my region to whom I would speak were I to learn another language. Also, you kind of have to start learning new languages by a certain age, or you pass the critical period for effective language learning. I read somewhere that it is nearly impossible to attain true fluency if you start learning a language after age 12. And our schools here in the States don't start teaching us foreign language untill about... age 13 or 14. Great thinking there, huh? Our school foreign language programs are a joke as well. I always got better grades in Spanish than did the native-speaking Peruvian kid who sat next to me, but I do not know Spanish at all. They try to over-intellectualize it, rather than teach us how to use it in practice. Who cares if I know what the informal singular second-person pluperfect of "haber" is if I can't carry on even a rudimentary conversation?

Seems like I'd read some research several years ago that indicated that when one picks up the 2nd language makes a difference. Kids learn very naturally: it's all imitation; they don't have to know all the silly rules about predicates and split infinitives-- they just copy Mom & Dad. Supposedly around age 9 or 10 this switches over to dogmatic, adult-type rule-based learning.

I can only speak English and people say I do a bad job at that. I can pick up words here and there reading Spanish I guess. Every other language than my own seems too fast for me to pick up anything. I think I probably could pick up the written part without too much problem if I applied myself.

My first language is English.

I took French from 6-11 grade in school. It's been a while though, so I'm pretty rusty (I could use a refresher course), but even when I did know it pretty well, I had a really hard time understanding native speakers, because they talk too fast. I can't even understand when people talk fast in English. If I went to France and asked them to slow down, they'd probably look at me funny.

I can read 90% of the Cyrillic alphabet, but I don't know any languages that use it.

In 2 weeks I'll be starting Mandarin Chinese at the university (though I've studied a little bit independently).

I have enough trouble with English as is; the verbal impairment is carried over to other languages with me.

I'd guess that many with autistic disorder would have difficulty with learning another language; those with Asperger's probably have no less trouble than those that are "normal".

I suspect MANY are like Einstein in this respect. He took french, when "required", and did poorly. He later learned it when he figured he wanted to. As for me, I don't have ENOUGH reason for a lot of it. If I speak to a native speaker for a few minutes, I start to get a LOT better.

Yeah, dude; you're definitely correct for many of those with Asperger's who have the narrow and focused interests, apply that to a language and it'll be picked up remarkably quickly. I've never been obsessed with a language, it'd be interesting to see if I could do it or not; French and Japanese in high school were about as fun as...learning English to me.

My first language was French, though I haven't used it very much since the age of 8 or 9. I consider myself to be effectively a native English speaker. I can still understand French fairly fluently though, which can lead to very odd conversations at family weddings and the like: my cousins speak to me in french, and I respond in English.

I have also studied German, Spanish, and Russian. The only language I truly feel comfortable speaking in is English.

Last edited by Doc_Daneeka on 11 Sep 2007, 9:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Alright, so this seems to put me back to square one. I seem to be pretty much alone with my strange problems in English and German - that's not very promising, but what the heck.

I sometimes feel as if English and German are just not connected directly in my brain. When I'm asked to translate a word, I need to think of the meaning of the word and then go from the meaning to a fitting word in the other language. That's why there's no difference for me in 'tree' or 'Baum', the concept behind the word itself is exactly the same. I researched a bit and found that this is still found in several bilingual speakers.

Then maybe my troubles come only from the fact that I'm autistic. Those with AS don't seem to have similar problems though. I don't feel very comfortable using spoken language at all, because often the use of language feels so complicated. This may have something to do with it too.

Gee, I wish I knew all the answers.

That's actually good, that's what people strive for who learn a second language- that the second language has meaning itself, without going through the process of first translating it into the native language. You'll always be at a disadvantage in the second language if you have to first translate it into your native language to understand it. My native language is English, but I'm fairly fluent in Spanish as well, and I don't translate Spanish in my head if I'm hearing it- I just understand it. For German though, which is much weaker than my Spanish, I have to translate it into English.

The person who said it matters when you learn the language is right. As people get older, the brain changes and it becomes less easy. There probably are differences between AS and autism, and from person to person.

My second and third languages were acquired after early childhood. When I try to come up with the German or Scandinavian word for something, I always felt like I am reaching into one part of my brain - like there is a pocket with foreign words. Then I read that brain studies showed that languages learned when a person is young get spread over the entire brain, while languages learned when a person is older are much more localized to specific parts of the brain. Which explained a lot of how I felt.

Actually, it depends on whether you're talking about expressive (your speech) or receptive (understanding others) language. Research found that brain recruits more areas when speaking in a second language, so that more of the brain is used during expressive language for L2 than L1. However, for receptive language, more of the brain is active for L1 than for L2. So here is goes:

Expressive language:
1st language: smaller brain area
2nd language: larger brain area

Receptive language:
1st language: larger brain area
2nd language: smaller brain area

Generally however, the first language is actually more localized in the brain than the second language is.

That's the funny thing actually. I was fairly old when I learned English. I was twelve years old already, but it only took me four weeks in which I was confronted with English to enable me to read and understand a regular English novel for adults. It took another two to make me feel safe in expressing myself in that language. I learned from day-to-day spoken and from written English only (though I preferred written at that time due to my trouble perceiving oral speech). I picked vocabulary as well as grammar up from the raw language presented to me, although I had no idea of grammar other than what I had learned in elementary school about German grammar. Vocabulary I learned mostly by explanation or by looking the words up once and twice when I had forgotten them. I learned by listen and reading - and just somehow got it.
I assure you I had the time of my life and even started to fancy speaking, which I hadn't done much before.

One year later I started my first foreign language at school which was French. I failed horribly at grammar and vocabulary half a year.

Actually more recent studies on learning second languages have pinpointed that after about 10-12 years of age the brain starts to "wire" itself closed to being able to pick up new sounds/languages as easily as before age 10-12. Of course, I am finding this out after I started learning french around age 10 and well continued from there on in in late French Immersion (grade 7-12) and wished I had started in grade Primary like my youngest will be doing in Sept. '08.

Interesting, LostInSpace. I didn't separate the two kinds of speech, and would have suspected the opposite.

The current explanation for this phenomenon as I understand it:

Your brain is able to formulate expressive language in your L1 much more efficiently, thus fewer resources are required. For an L2, expression is more effortful and the brain needs to pull in extra resources.

For receptive language, you have so many more associations and emotions connected to your mother tongue that when you are hearing the language, it activates more brain areas- it's a richer linguistic experience for you. You tend to have fewer emotional connections to your L2.