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Aspergers have a natural talent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 1 of 36 03 October 2007 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know about left handers or bi-polars but I believe people with Aspergers have an advantage in learning languages.
Asperger syndrome is a mild form of autism and people with Aspergers are inclined to have above average IQ and are more single-minded in their pursuits and interests. They generally have above-average memories. Daniel Tammet has a form of Aspergers and has had a television documentary made about him. He learnt Icelandic in 7 days for the program and was interviewed on Icelandic television. Because of our pursuit for learning languages I believe it is probable that many of us on the forum have Asperger syndrome. I have a mild form and I believe it has benefited me. In fact, if there were a cure I wouldn't take it. People with Aspergers are more likely to work in areas of science, mathematics and computer programming. They are often socially inept but can also be very outgoing. Einstein, Isaac Asimov and Bill Gates are three famous people who are believed to have had Aspergers. They also like to work on their own. Many have made important discoveries because of their single-mindedness. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6653 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 2 of 36 03 October 2007 at 9:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Single-mindedness is key to learning quickly. I have no doubt that's a good part of it.
Intelligence probably helps make connections quicker. Those are good qualities for a learner of any kind, I would think. On the other hand, one could argue that with fewer social skills, learning the intricacies of the "give-and-take" involved in conversations would be more difficult for a person with Aspergers. I don't know because I don't suffer/enjoy this syndrome. Oh, wait, aren't I obligated to say "Waaah!! I don't have Aspergers so I should just give it all up!" Just kidding! ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| risby Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6341 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 36 03 October 2007 at 9:35am | IP Logged | ||
Daniel Tammet is a remarkable exception to the rule that learning Icelandic is damnably hard work. The fact that he is exceptional and that he is just one case rather rules him out as a datum for your belief. Do you have any data or is your belief simply wishful thinking? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6653 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 4 of 36 03 October 2007 at 10:01am | IP Logged | ||
It is a bit of a stretch to use Daniel Tammet (he of the "22500+ digits of pi" fame) as anything more than a "shining example." Aspergers, though, is a fairly well-studied syndrome (moreso than most cases of autism, since those "afflicted" can self-report much easier. I'm much too lazy to dig through my old grad school stuff, but, at least according to the educational research I've read, what fanatic says is true. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 36 03 October 2007 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
Learning Icelandic is not damnable hard word. There is more morphology to learn than in English, but it is absolutely not an insurmountable task. For Anglophones it may seem worse than for instance German because people have had less exposure to the language and less learning materials, but that doesn't mean that the language in itself is exceptionally difficult. However learning any language in a week is an amazing feat. By the way I do think that there is something to the hypothesis that Aspergers ('aspies') have some traits that can help them learn languages, such as singlemindedness, patience and independence. On the other hand they may have problems learning through direct interaction with natives, and maybe even getting into situations where they have such interactions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 6 of 36 03 October 2007 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am skeptical. To learn a foreign language or languages, you need to interact socially with other people - precisely what people with this syndrome have difficulty doing, and sometimes great difficulty is experienced. If some aspects of Aspergers are helpful, other aspects are not, and I think this balances it out, so overall I think it makes no difference.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6336 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 7 of 36 03 October 2007 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
It can be helpful when it comes to the passive knowledge (reading, listening to others, watch tv...) or even writing, but that other component of the language that involves social interaction would not be benefitted by having this syndrome. Anyways, mastering icelandic, or the passive part of it, it's a great job. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 36 03 October 2007 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've never formally been diagnosed with Aspergers, but I've gotten armchair diagnoses of it a few times, including from people with relevant training to diagnose it.
I have an above-average memory for some things (mainly mathematics, really: I don't think my memory for language is particularly spectacular, especially for words before I've gotten the hang of the sound system of a language - though on the other hand, I find myself memorizing whole Assimil dialogs in a -lot- less repetitions than some people recommend using for them on these forums, without even trying to, just via shadowing, listening, and understanding.) My IQ is somewhat above average, especially in regards to language. I can definitely be single-minded; I've been programming for over 8 years, and have a degree in informatics. Social situations often baffle me to various degrees: this probably isn't much worse for me in languages in which I'm not fluent than in ones in which I am. I definitely don't pick up body language naturally though: it takes dedicated focus, and I tend to tune it out entirely unless I'm trying extremely hard, or have previously read about whatever particular aspect/action is involved, though I'm slowly improving with age. In other words: I fit the above profile rather closely. Strangely enough, I have a lot of quirks in my own body language and reactions which are charateristically Japanese, and these predate any significant exposure to Japanese culture (and some have gotten me into minor social trouble in both North America and Europe). Conversely, I just learned a major local gesture last week, after an American explained it to me: I'd not picked it up in 9 years of living here. I honestly don't know if (possibly) having Aspergers has been helpful for language learning. On one hand, I've spent quite a few hours on solitary pursuits involving languages I don't know particularly well, such as listening to the radio in them and reading parallel texts, and I've made a fairly decent amount of progress given the inefficiency of the methods involved. On the other, I definitely haven't had success at a level comparable to fanatic, much less Daniel Tammet. One problem I have is that I can extremely easily 'memorize' things that seem trivial to me in the short/medium term, and -because- they were so easy, they don't stick: this happens to me in subjects other than language learning as well. The lack of being able to logically derive many properties of languages gives me a comparative weakness here: working from a small set of axioms and deriving all kinds of results quickly is how I seem to work best. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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