Bilingualism and autism

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Is anyone on here bilingual?

I am and I think my speech (development) took some damage by this.
I speak German and English; I have learned German first, then English. Sadly, I have little exercise in English in my everyday life. I prefer that language nonetheless

I know some other bilingual speakers and none of them appears to have quite the same problems as I. I often mix up languages when talking without meaning to. This morning I talked to my mother and somehow managed to put English words in my German sentences by accident. I also don't know the exact translation of many words which is very awkward at times.

I'm not sure whether this has to do with autism or not. I'm diagnosed with AS, but it seems likely I had classical autism as a child. My speech development was normal and I often have trouble with language - I mix up the word order in sentences in one language, I mispronounce and use the wrong words, sometimes I can't find a word at all.
Maybe that too is because I'm bilingual?

Arabic and English, mainly because I spent eight years or so in the Gulf doing contract work. Next step is to learn Hungarian and become tri-lingual.

Ed Almos

I am not, but I have learned bits and pieces of other languages. Unfortunately my attention often diverts to another language before I can actually learn anything all that useful. Vietnamese, Spanish, and French were my most recent interests... I'd love to learn Japanese.

I remember an old joke about bi lingualism

what do you call a person that speaks two languages?

bi lingual


what do you call a person that speaks three languages

tri lingual or multi lingual


what do you call someone that only speaks one language??

wait for it!

wait for it!

an AMERICAN!!

(north american/ United States, that is!)

Merle

I know Arabic (main language ) , French and English.

My main language is English (obviously), but I know a little Spanish, and I am taking French in college.

Tim

I tried learning a foreign language like French, Hebrew and Russian in school, but I failed horribly at it no matter how hard I tried. I think I'm unable to learn a foreign language. It's so weird.

My first language is English, and I took French in school. Unfortunately, most of the teaching method involved using it in conversations with other students. As you might guess, French was not my best subject. I have enough trouble maintaining small talk in my first language.

Yeah, I have been thinking about learning arabic. ALSO, I know some hindi, and want to get fairly fluent in it. If I learn arabic script, I can say I know urdu!! !! That would be my seventh language.

BTW Sora your problem is always a fear of mine but, happily, I somehow KNOW which language is which. I guess that isn't an AS problem.

I ALSO don't mispronounce.(This DOES get a bit hard though as, for example, most languages pronounce A a certain way, and Danish pronounces it differently. English can pronounce it either way. That is just an example. "Hans Christian Anderson", for example is pronounced by most americans in a very non european way. Believe it or not, that is how a DANE would pronounce it! GO FIGURE!) My grammer HAS suffered a bit, but not to a real obvious degree.

There are probably 4 different distinct types of grammer, 3 major language groups, 2 major alphabets(Danish, German, Spanish, French, English have substantially similar alphabets), and yet THAT is easy to keep straight. It is vocabulary, and trying to think in the language that is hard, at least for me.

I had three years of college French, did immersion weekends, got all A's, sang songs in it, etc. I can still pick out words when I read it, somewhat, but can't speak it nor understand it when it is spoken to me.

I lived in Hawai'i and learned Hawai'ian. . not pidgen, though I learned "DaKine" too. . .but I haven't a clue how it goes now. . . my mind is like a sieve, actually. . .


Merle

English is the only language that I know.

I tried learning Spanish many times over the years. In Junior High, High School and even in College. I could not do it. I managed to pass and get good grades though. I even took French for a brief period in Elementary School.

I'm very bad with pronuncing words and names in other languages. My oral comprehension is bad too.

English is my primary language, I did French Immersion in school from Grade 7 to 12 and first started learning French in Grade 3. But I haven't used much french in years but likely will re-learn as my youngest son will be starting in French Immersion from Grade Primary to 12 next year.

am able to speak some english,and cat [have no idea what am saying to them though],makaton and thats it,find own language difficult enough both verbally and the meanings of.

Spanish is my native language, and my mother put me in a bilingual school since i was a toddler.
When I was about 6 years, the teachers at my school said i couldn't learn English and advised my mom to take me out and put me in another school. My mother refused and made me stay there. Then something happened, i don't really know what, maybe a supportive teacher i had, but from that time and on, i had absolutely no problem with english. So much so, that after some time I didn't even had to study, i just passed english tests. In highschool i had the highest level of English of my generation.

I think we aspies are just blocked sometimes, but i don't think we might have any problem learning two, three or whatever languages if we put our mind to it.

nope just english. i dont think you could torture me with a stick to learn a new language, its useless.