Happy Friday,

tldr: For the multilingual among us, is it easier for you to “hear” a language, or are you better with reading/writing/speaking?

A week or so ago, I made a post regarding linguistics and enjoyed hearing how many of you enjoy the subject.

With autism, it is known that we tend to process oral instructions differently than neurotypicals. In my own experience, written instructions are crucial for my understanding of a task. It also helps to have a paper trail.

For me, most oral communication sounds a bit “underwater”. It depends on the person’s degree of articulation, the noise in the room my level of anxiety, and a slough of other factors. Some days there is no “noise”, but on days when my brain just isn’t processing correctly, it makes it difficult to want to ask the person “what”? 3 times, or even ask when I misunderstood the phrasing or intention behind their utterances.

Whenever I’ve searched “Can read and write a language, but not understand it”, there are no results on the first search page. But rather, those who can understand a language and cannot write it. Movies are helpful when there are subtitles, as I can help build associations by “seeing” the symbols of the written language when it is spoken. When I did this as a teenager with Russian, I suddenly was able to understand people. As I could “think” in how they were producing the phonetics.

Certainly, the degree of familiarity with the language helps tremendously. When I lived in Germany, despite speaking the language most of my life, it was a different ballgame hearing people use it in real life, rather than in a quiet room with headphones on talking with people whom I am already acquainted. Don’t get me started on how loud Lidl/Rewe were, and Swabian/Saxon dialects could influence my foreigner’s conception of the language.

Spanish and Russian are similar for me, as I’ve used them for A LONG TIME, so I’d imagine the phonetics have crystallized in my head compared to languages I’m still getting used to.

Hindi, Telugu, and Bengali have been a bit difficult for my ear to adjust to. This underwater feeling resurfaces a lot. It’s not unique to foreign languages though…

Sometimes I’ll figure out that a song I’ve heard in department stores or just walking about is actually in ENGLISH! When it just sounded like a bunch of pots and pans bashing together or only the instrumental comes to mind.

Because of motor-mouth tendencies, I have found that I am able to speak, read, and write a language… But not quick to comprehend what another person is saying to me. This may be due to phrasing, difference in accent, or a straight up garbling of the sounds when they reach my ear. Maybe my brain just “demodulates” the signal wrong? Or perhaps I’m just a bad listener.

Looking forward to reading your comments.

Cheers,

-G