Unusual ability to pronounce foreign languages?

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I very bad at learning it, at least as far as english is concerned.

I'll teach you! If you teach French, of course..

I am a Dutch native speaker but I think the past two years I have written in English more than in Dutch. From my highschool years onwards I have this weird habit of thinking in English too.

I love accents, I always try to mimic them, both Dutch accents and foreign language ones. Up to and including several of the East London accents from the area my gf lives.
I do very much the same with German, often mimicking Austrian or Swiss accents.

Its funny to hear my American friends say that I have a British accent.

I don't know French, but if there's instructions for an appliance in French, I like to try and read them with a fancy French accent. I did this in front of my cousin once. She laughed and told me that I really do sound French.

However, I'm not able to pronounce every language perfectly. For example, my step family is Italian and they were trying to teach me how to correctly pronounce certain Italian foods (such as "manicotti" and "fagioli") but I ended up sounding like I had a German accent. Although that doesn't surprise me that much, considering I'm 2/3 German (the other 1/3 being Irish.)

This discussion is fascinating. I am a linguist by accident due to my early interest in philology and adults' mistaken idea that linguistics and philology are synonymous. They are not at all, which few seem to comprehend, indulging in the erroneous idea that linguistics has something to do with studying individual languages. The linguistic research that I do is highly scientific having a great deal to do with math, logic, and theoretical structures.

Yet something of great interest to me is cognitive linguistics and the development of language skills in children. I am of the Chomskyan train of generative grammar.

One thing normally counted as a great part of language acquisition is the end of the critical period around the age of twelve. Not having noticed this in myself, I was always puzzled as to why this might be. Once, a college professor, for whom I have great respect, entertained for a Chomskyan class the notion that in some rare people, the critical period has no end.

In other words, where in a "normal" brain the areas allowing native language acquisition degenerate as part of normal development, in some the degeneration never occurs.

These people, who may or may not fall on the autistic spectrum (this notion was not discussed), are able to learn new languages with the facility of a three year old. In case you didn't know, the language acquisition skills of a small child are one of the most remarkable phenomena you will ever encounter. These children soak up hundreds of words, pronunciation and use simply from hearing them in the environment.

Anecdotal evidence tells us of people able to hear multiple words once in a foreign language and immediately be able to spit the word right back out in fluid conversation, or who are able to learn say, a language in two weeks, or with perfect pronunciation. In my experience it does not seem that these people are able to learn to be a perfect native speaker without the environment or simulated environment of a native speaking population, as would occur for the three year old, yet the skills nevertheless suggest an abnormality in development of the brain.

Fellow linguistics suggested to me that I might be one of these people, an idea which I still prefer to reject as implausible, yet intriguing; especially so due to the revelation that I fall on the autistic spectrum.

I think it worthy of serious research to investigate the critical period of language acquisition in people with aspergers and autism and would like to know if there are many more people with this ability, whether I am "barking up the wrong tree" or on the track of something groundbreaking. I am also interested to know if it might be more prevalent in females than in males, as most anecdotes I have heard are of women, myself included.

This would be interesting research. Presumably, this would answer questions such as whether these abilities are a result of some autistic behaviours (such as echolalia) or whether some autistic behaviours have their roots in these abilities.

From my own experience, I pick up foreign languages pretty easily, and am told my pronunciation is very good. Yet due to auditory integration issues I have trouble following conversation even in my native language, piecing together meaning from the few fragments of the conversation I can actually discern. When exposed to foreign languages, I do catch myself perseverating on certain words or phrases and singing along to songs in the language, things small children often do. I also have a compulsion to read road signs out loud when in foreign countries. I would be interested to know whether these tendencies, which I can only imagine are not common in the non-autistic adult world, contribute to my ability to learn languages fairly easily even at this age, or whether I tend to engage in these particular autistic compulsions in part because they come easily.

I agree and find the same tendencies in myself. It is often nearly impossible for me to understand the meaning of words in my own language and surprisingly easy to gain an equal (and comparable misunderstanding) of other languages. For instance, songs in my native language sund like gibberish, memorizable in the sound that I hear, yet gibberish. Foreign songs are often more comprehensible.

Contrarily I do not believe that this is echolalia. I also experience a degree of synaesthesia, which often makes the words and phrases especially fascinating and pleasing, but it is not echolalia.

One of the most fascinating aspects of language is its infinite dimensions. Language, syntactically is infinite. What I mean by this is probably clear to a linguist. Certain rules govern the creation of our sentences, yet there is an infinite number of combinations of morphemes, words and phrases that can form a grammatical sentence according to the current rules (slang or otherwise) of the language.

In other words, every day you create new combinations of words never before heard in conjunction, which are nevertheless grammatical according to this recursive, and thus infinite system. Every child learns this instinctively. Theoretically, a sentence may be infinitely long, infinitely continued by conjunctions and rules, yet physically is constrained by biological constraints such as memory and breath, time.

When I hear a new word, I hear it in a question, process, memorize, and reprocess to re-use this bit of information in a new observation never before heard, utilizing the infinite and recursive property of language to create my own utterances. An element of echolalia intrinsically exists in the need to learn before creative use, yet it is not echolalia. It is not a product of the limbic system, which is taught a word and when to say it subconsciously (when in pain, when surprised). It is a conscious re-manipulation.

When people from other countries tell me their name, they often say that I'm the only English person who can pronounce it properly.

I think it's about the way Aspies can only focus on one thing at a time. Most people are simultaneously taking in the meaning and the non-literal meaning and all that, so their main focus is the message. Whereas for me, I take in one thing at a time, starting with the small details. So I can analyse the exact sound of something, totally detached from any meaning. Once I master the sound, I can then concentrate on meaning, but it's always one at a time.

I also could accurately do phonetic transcription immediately once I learnt the IPA, whereas with most people it takes a lot of practice, because they are simultaneously thinking about the spelling of a word and getting distracted by that.

I don't understand music at all, and can't read it, but I can imitate a song, and get the tune and the accent and voice quirks of the singer.

I must be the only one on here who is TERRIBLE with languages. I have a lot of trouble mimicking people. I can't get an accent down pat. I've been studying Japanese now for like 5 years and I can barely speak. I don't know what my problem is.

Yep. When I studied high school linguistics ( sort of pre-languages subject about sentence structure, etc) they got us in one lesson to read foreign phrases, and everyone else was stumbling over pronunciation , but I was blitzing both the pronunciation and the accent, and they're all going " how do you DO that?" " umm I don't know..." I have also picked up accents after being in a foreign country for a matter of days, or in some cases after talking to someone with an accent.

However if I hear myself played back on a cassette or someone's answering machine, I cringe, as I sound like someone talking under water, in fact someone English talking under water.

Yep. I hate the sound of my voice...

this is how i pronounce foreign languages.
just click "play lo-fi" if you are bothered to hear it.
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9292525