I am an American living in Norway. I am 38 years old my wife is Norwegian and I have been here for just over 2 years. For that entire time I have been taking Norwegian language classes and can now read write and speak some Norwegian. However I can't for the life of my understand much of anything. In class I seem to be the one that does much of the talking yet at the same time the other students seem to understand what the teacher is saying while I have to kinda look around or ask the person next to me what the teacher just said. Just about everyone I speak to says that my problem should be the other way around. I should be able to comprehend much more than I can speak. I had this same issue while studying Spanish in high school and German in university. I get most of the grammar rules and can figure out what I'm reading and speak some but rarely get what any native speaker is saying to me. Growing up I needed some special help in school because I couldn't say certain words that had Rs and Ls in them like "pure" "cure" and "blue". Also then as well as now if someone says something to me and I am doing something else I don't catch some of what they say. I have to be looking and focused on the person who is speaking to me to get 100% of what they are saying and even then there seems to be some sort of "slight delay" as my brain processes what they are saying. I get the sense that my delay is much greater than others. The last thing I would say that I can not speak too quickly if I do I almost always end up stuttering a little or mispronouncing words that I should know as well as even mangling the grammatical structure of my sentence. I must take my time and "measure my words". While I come across as someone that does not have a learning disability and probably sound quite "normal" to 99% of the population I am wondering if I do have a learning disability? Thanks for the help.
2015-02-03 05:31:40
What you describe clearly relates to auditory attention and processing ability. While it is true that children typically begin to understand language before they can speak it it is not the case for adults as they acquire languages through a different mechanism. Nevertheless you noticed some differences between your learning and that of your classmates and these differences seem to be consistent across languages and ages at which you learned them. At the very least they suggest that you have a learning st
2015-02-03 05:32:11
