Un-PC Question: Does anyone get sensory overload when talking to a person whose English is bad?

[AspiePie]

I have had several experiences in Miami in which I have had people talking and unable to understand 20% of what they said because they weren't the best speaker of English and as you get them to repeat it over and over again you listen less and less... I believe it because of tendency to when people repeat something for me to ignore it by the 3rd or 4th time. This is bad for me cuase I already have to deal with people who don't wait for me to respond due to everyone has gotten into the idea that I am rude and stupid. People constant S*** on me then when there is someone nice they can't speak English and I end up s***ing on them?

 

[Tankgirlboy77]

haha. yes this is familiar, but I've never put it down to AS before. I thought I was just inadvertently xenophobic or something. I feel really bad when I can't talk easily to people with accents. What they're saying just gets lost for me, and i have to ask them to repeat. Then if I still don't get it, I do that stupid thing of nodding and smiling as if I've understood. It's painfully obvious to them that I haven't and then there's the awkward pause. Horrible!

If it is an AS thing i guess it would be that we're putting so much effort into attempting to read everything that's being said both verbally and non-verbally that if you then introduce one little difficulty the whole system falls apart, while NTs might have a bit of difficulty but can piece it together because they're not knackered from working on all the extra stuff that just comes naturally to them.

 

[AGXStarseed]

I remember comedian Michael McIntyre made a joke about this before when someone says their name and you mishear them.

---

Michael: "Hello, what's your name?"
Person: "My name is (Zizazibar)"
Michael: "Sorry?"
Person: "(Zizazibar)"
Michael: "Sorry?"
Person: "(Zizazibar)"
Michael: "Sorry?"

- At this point, you basically have to go with whatever you heard -

Person: "(Zizazibar)"
Michael: "...Nice to meet you, Zizazibar".

 

[Judge]

I have had several experiences in Miami in which I have had people talking and unable to understand 20% of what they said because they weren't the best speaker of English and as you get them to repeat it over and over again you listen less and less... I believe it because of tendency to when people repeat something for me to ignore it by the 3rd or 4th time. This is bad for me cuase I already have to deal with people who don't wait for me to respond due to everyone has gotten into the idea that I am rude and stupid. People constant S*** on me then when there is someone nice they can't speak English and I end up s***ing on them?

Clearly you aren't alone on this, however it decidedly doesn't appear to have anything to do with neurology so much as demography. Like it or not, it's more likely they are expecting you to respond to them in Spanish- not English.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/29/miamis-spanish-speaking-p_n_104047.html

 

[watersprite]

Yes AspiePie same here, I have to have someone else talk and listen for me - especially with supposed customer service who I cannot understand and I get more and more upset.

 

[unsurewhattoname]

Sounds more like impatience and frustration than senses overloading.

 

[zurb]

Its not uncommon even for NTs - everyone makes a judgement call on whether its worth the effort, especially as the skill level drops or accent increases. It may be harder for aspies however due to sensory issues, particularly the inability to 'tune-in' to them alone. On the other hand aspies may persist longer due to their stubbornness and nonjudgementalism.
Judge also has a good point. We joke a lot about times where we spoke and they didn't understand because "I don't understand English". So they call a friend to to translate, and I say exactly the same, and they repeat exactly what I said without change. The first person didn't understand because they expected me as a foreigner to speak English.

 

[gonzerd]

I remember comedian Michael McIntyre made a joke about this before when someone says their name and you mishear them.

---

Michael: "Hello, what's your name?"
Person: "My name is (Zizazibar)"
Michael: "Sorry?"
Person: "(Zizazibar)"
Michael: "Sorry?"
Person: "(Zizazibar)"
Michael: "Sorry?"

- At this point, you basically have to go with whatever you heard -

Person: "(Zizazibar)"
Michael: "...Nice to meet you, Zizazibar".

Ha! I'm usually (read: always) on the other side of the this. My name's pretty rare, especially round these parts, and people never get it right, no matter how many times I repeat it. Back in school I'd often have to show ID to teachers, because they thought I was joking around, last year the vet wrote an entirely different (more common) name on my cats' passport thingie, even though I spelled it out to her and a few weeks ago even the bloody cops wrote it down wrong, even though they copied it from my ID card. It's incredibly frustrating...but at least my name's not Michael (Not that there's anything wrong with that; I'm just not a 'Michael'.)

Anyway, that's just some personal off topic venting. I'd say it's got more to do with frustration and lack of patience, as mentioned before, perhaps aggravated by personal anxieties.

Maybe it's because of my name thing, but I generally like those interactions. Earlier this year I met some foreign fellows on the train (no idea where they came from; doesn't matter) who had gotten on the wrong one and it was actually quite fun to guide them along, trying to explain which one to get, which platform to go to, what time and all that, partly because we didn't have any shared languages among us.

Another thing to keep in mind is that we all have the capacity to be intelligible to others. We all make mistakes, in language or otherwise. When put in chronological order, English is the 4th language I learned, so I'm sure I write down way more errors than I'll ever be able to discern. Other people might be dyslexic for example. There are quite a few mistakes in your own posts too. Yet we look past that and concentrate on the message for the sake of communication. Patience and mutual understanding are your friends; use them.

 

[AspergerianYogi]

I have had several experiences in Miami in which I have had people talking and unable to understand 20% of what they said because they weren't the best speaker of English and as you get them to repeat it over and over again you listen less and less... I believe it because of tendency to when people repeat something for me to ignore it by the 3rd or 4th time. This is bad for me cuase I already have to deal with people who don't wait for me to respond due to everyone has gotten into the idea that I am rude and stupid. People constant S*** on me then when there is someone nice they can't speak English and I end up s***ing on them?

Not at all - that reaction makes you HUMAN. I wouldn't sweat over it.

If you are considering learning Spanish just so you can have some basics, I highly recommend using Duolingo! At least that will give you the ability to show you're putting in the effort to try to meet them half-way. I had to do that for my job, because I work in an inner-city area at a high school and parents often don't speak English. But whenever I responded with something very basic in Spanish, they were always at least a little more willing to either try to communicate in English or at least make it clear to me they understood what I was saying but just didn't have the expressive language to respond.

 

[metalminx24]

The people I struggle with are not those for whom english is a second language. If they have made the effort to learn/speak another language they're already deserving of some degree of respect. That's not to say a job in telesales/customer service is appropriate however!! The people who really bug me are those for whom english is their first language and they're just too lazy to use it properly.
People who say "we was going, they was doing" or say "like" 5 times per sentence really make me want to punch them in the mush!

I agree with Asperianyogi, Duolingo is a great app. (You can even trade the coins you earn to buy the little owl dude smart outfits )

 

[unsurewhattoname]

I'm guilty of "like". I use it as a filler sometimes because I can't think fast enough. Punch me.

 

[Progster]

I teach EFL - English as a foreign language. I don't get sensory overload through other people's bad language, but I do get extremely frustrated when I correct a student and they continue to make the same mistake, or to me something seems obvious and easy, but no matter how many times I explain they still don't get it. As a teacher, I must hide my frustration and remain calm, but this gets extremely hard at times.

 

[pax]

Some accents really do my head in,heavy South African and NZ particularly . And ""Bogan"" whether the speaker is Australian or American, I can't stand it.

h. and Israelis. Like fingers on a blackboard.

 

[metalminx24]

I'm guilty of "like". I use it as a filler sometimes because I can't think fast enough. Punch me.

*thwack! One smack in the mouth duly delivered. Hee heeee!! [emoji6]

 

[Beverly]

Yes, that is the one thing about my ASD I would pay a small fortune to cure, not the whole thing, just that non native English with a very thick accent overload.

My career requires a lot of travel and, dealing with a lot of countries where nearly everyone I have to speak with has less than perfect English and, very thick accents. Five minutes of that and my internal overload warning buzzers are going off. By fifteen minutes, I'm doing my best not to make it obvious that I'm looking for an escape. At 30 Minutes, my mind is beginning to shut down, after an hour of it, I'm nodding and mumbling, full shutdown and just doing what I was taught to do to pass for half way paying attention.

It isn't sensory overload, it's processing overload, I try to tear each syllable apart, figure out what it might be, put them back into words I can understand, all while trying the hear and remember subsequent words when I haven't managed to process the first ten, and I've got 50-500 of them to sort before I get the first ten figured out.

 

[AspiePie]

I'm guilty of "like". I use it as a filler sometimes because I can't think fast enough. Punch me.

I don't know what to cal it but any time something is verbally repeated more then 2 times I lose focus!

 

[wanderer03]

I have had several experiences in Miami in which I have had people talking and unable to understand 20% of what they said because they weren't the best speaker of English and as you get them to repeat it over and over again you listen less and less... I believe it because of tendency to when people repeat something for me to ignore it by the 3rd or 4th time. This is bad for me cuase I already have to deal with people who don't wait for me to respond due to everyone has gotten into the idea that I am rude and stupid. People constant S*** on me then when there is someone nice they can't speak English and I end up s***ing on them?

Yes, I do too. Then it's hard to conventrate and I might get every 3rd or 4th word they say. It doesn't help that I have an auditory processing problem and some hearing loss.

 

[Myway]

Yes. I do. Mostly because I can't focus. They are speaking so I don't understand and it makes it hard for me to communicate. I know that their English is bad right when I meet them normally, but sometimes they have ways of hiding it until they start speaking to me in something that I call nonsense.

 

[Tom]

No. I just use my aspie super focus powers to try and understand as much as I can.

 

[OrSomething]

I think auditory processing problems are common in ASDs.