Tag: language

Dear #actuallyautistic and #askanautistic

watchkeyphone:

Talk to me about your experiences with being temporarily and/or partially nonverbal?

I still can’t figure out if I’ve ever experienced it. A lot of the ‘official’ information (e.g. books) about autism doesn’t seem to mention it as a thing that sometimes happens to people who can usually speak – but it seems like the vast majority of usually-speaking autistic people mention it as a personal experience.

The closest thing I can think of that I have experienced is a few different thing:

1. When I get kind of ‘hyper-verbal’ when I’m overloaded, and my speech is very garbled and quick, and isn’t really communicating anything I want to say. E.g. I respond to a question quickly without realising and I say something that is the opposite of my actual opinion.

2. There are sometimes times when I have trouble putting a thought into words or working out how to respond to something (e.g. a vague question), but this doesn’t seem to fit the usual descriptions of being nonverbal? Because it’s normally due to the context and specific to the thing that I’m trying to say (e.g. I can’t explain one specific thing, but I can easily tell the other person that I can’t explain it), rather than a ‘global’ inability to speak.

3. Times when i am very reluctant to speak and it feels like a bit struggle to get words out. In this case its more often to do with the person I’m speaking to- usually when I’m socially tired and I really don’t want to spend the energy on interacting. But it’s not impossible for me to speak – I usually just keep my responses brief to try and stop the interaction from lasting a long time (and I can get irritable if people try to keep going).

So. Tell me about how it feels when you become nonverbal? Are you ever ‘partly’ nonverbal in any of the ways I describe? Would you consider them ‘types’ of nonverbal-ness, or just other facets of autistic communication differences? Is it possible/plausible that I’ve never been ‘fully’ nonverbal? Is it possible to have been nonverbal and not noticed? (infodumps greatly appreciated – reblogs/asks/submissions welcome)

The times I have actually experienced this are:

1. When I’m overloaded/having a meltdown/super frustrated or emotional. It’s like a ‘block’. The words are in my head, or, at least the feeling of what I want to communicate is, but I can’t make my mouth move to say them or translate what I’m feeling and force it out. When the overload or whatever passes, it eases off and talking becomes possible again, though fully unhindered speech may take time.

2. During sex, to a lesser degree. Rather than impossible, I often find forming words really hard when I’ve got all that sensory input, and taking the focus off enjoying myself and putting it into co-ordinating speech is kind of annoying, so I don’t tend to try unless I have to (i’m uncomfortable/in pain, i’m oversensitive, etc), or I’ve been asked a direct question that needs answering, like, ‘am I hurting you?’, ‘do you need more lube?’ or, ‘what do you need? (if something’s not doing it for me)’.

spiralstreesandcupsoftea:

raiining:

“So I’ve decided fandom will forever be confused about Natasha’s name. Not, uh, coincidentally, comics writers have been confused about it for even longer. The tricky bit is this: Natalia and Natasha are both forms of the Russian name Наталья. The Natalia/Natasha equivalency doesn’t exist in English, leading to all kinds of tail-chasing confusion re: which is real and which is fake. Natasha is a diminutive form of Natalia the same way Bill is for William. “Natalia” is not more authentic or more Russian, it’s just a bit more formal. And “Natasha Romanoff” is not an alias the way “Nadine Roman” or “Nancy Rushman” are. The Romanoff/Romanova issue is just a question of transliteration. The Russian surname is Рома́нов, which is written as Romanoff or Romanov depending on your history book. Traditionally, Russian ladies take feminine endings to match their grammatical gender— Ivan Belov becomes Yelena Belova, Aleksandr Belinsky becomes Aleksandra Belinskaya. But the feminine endings often get dropped in English translation, e.g. Nastia Liukin, not Nastia Liukina. It’s a matter of preference. If that’s too confusing, don’t worry, until about 1998 the comics had no idea what they were doing either. Natasha’s name has been Natasha since her very first appearance, where she and her partner Boris Turgenev were the butt of the obvious joke. Her last name wasn’t revealed until the early 1970s. Yeah, she went through a whole solo series without getting a last name. Weird, but it took dozens of issues for Hawkeye to get a first name. Romanoff: a name no one knows or knew. At the time, Natasha was being written as an aristocratic jet-setter, a glamorous countess. Since Romanov is the most famous Russian surname, and superhero stuff isn’t codenamed subtlety, I figure Gerry Conway just went with what he knew. And so Natasha Romanoff was her name through the 1970s. Instead of “Miss” or the Danvers-ian “Ms.”, Natasha used “Madame”, contributing to that Old World mystique and invoking feelings of a boudoir. By 1983 someone on staff realized that Romanova might be more technically correct. (Might being operative, here, the best way of translating the feminine endings is still debated.) Anyway, her Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe page listed her as Natasha “Romanoff” Romanova. The next big change would occur when someone, and I’m thinking it was Chris Claremont, realized she was missing a patronym. A full Russian name has three parts: the given (first) name, the patronym, and the family (last) name. For example, Grand Duchess Anastasia, the one who had that Bluth film, would be formally called Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, or Anastasia “Daughter of Nicholas” Romanoff. Her brother, the Tsarevich Alexei, was Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, or Alexei “Son of Nicholas” Romanoff. Basically: everyone in Russia has a middle name, and it is their father’s. I think it was Claremont who realized Nat’s was lacking because he is a phonetic accent wizard and an expert on Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin da tovarisch. Also, because the first time I could find a patronym for Natasha was in a 1992 issue of X-men that he wrote. The weird thing about Alianovna is that it would mean her father’s name was Alia or Alian or something else not really common. Maybe that’s why Kurt Busiek, continuity repair man, pretended it was something else in his Heroes Return Iron Man run. Ivanovna, or daughter of Ivan, is a much more common patronym and also meshes with her backstory. But it didn’t stick. Everyone and the guidebook uses Alianovna. What did stick was Natalia. Yeah, this is the first comic I could find that uses Natalia, and you can tell by context that Busiek’s using it to emphasize formality. When talking to Tony, she calls herself Natasha, when declaring her total identity before an epic beatdown, she takes the “my name is Inigo Montoya” route. From the late nineties forward Natalia started popping up with some frequency, usually in formal or impersonal contexts. Yelena speaks of “Natalia Romanova” as the Red Room’s greatest legend, Natasha demands that the he-was-evil-all-along Ivan Petrovich address her without the diminutive. There are exceptions. I figure some writers check wikipedia, see her name listed as “Natalia” and decide they’ve done their homework. Daniel Way has Logan refer to Natalia, his surrogate daughter, completely bizarre for the quasi-familial relationship and for the nickname-happy Wolverine. Brubaker had Bucky refer to her as Natalia, at first— an odd distancing from a previously intimate relationship. Since they’ve gotten back together, though, he uses Natasha, or Nat, or ‘Tasha, or in any case, he’s dropped the formality.”

— Fuck Yeah, Black Widow: The Name Game  (via eppypeninc)

interesting!

actuallyclintbarton:

actuallyclintbarton:

lowspark13:

I really want to start communicating through text more often, except it wouldn’t make me more comfortable since I can barely stand reading things I’ve written. It gives me the same feeling i get when I listen to my voice on a tape recorder.

Also I’ve…

Yeah I mean. ASL would be nice and helpful, but not necessarily any more helpful than AAC. It’s…

Okay to be perfectly honest? Part of it is I don’t feel like I deserve it but most of it is not even that I’m afraid to use it but I am petrified of using it and then someone who saw me use it hearing me talk with Birdie or someone I’m comfortable talking with at the time and judging me for it.

Which is stupid because it’s not just for completely 100% 24/7 nonverbal people and I know that, and usually I couldn’t give a rats ass what some random person would think, but I’m honestly kind of afraid some off-their-gourd allistic is gonna start something when I’m least capable of handling it.

At least with ASL I can just say that I’m hard of hearing and it’s easier in louder spaces to sign sometimes. (Which would both be and not be a lie).

And that is a compromise and it’s OKAY to compromise and do what’s most likely to cause you the minimum of stress which INCLUDES avoiding stupid questions by random strangers. Okay, this probably doesn’t connect (in my head, it does, but that doesn’t always translate), but here goes. I use the word lesbian to refer to myself. It encompasses the fact that I’m in a long-term,committed monogamous relationship with a woman. People sort of get it. It’s shorthand. But honestly? I don’t consider myself a lesbian. I’m ambivalent about the word bisexual, though that’s closer to the mark. Queer probably comes closest, because it’s a general term. The reality is ‘I fall in love with people’ tends to result in a hell of a lot of blank looks, confusion, and demands for clarification, even in the queer community. If I added ‘sometimes I like sex, sometimes I just want cuddles and scritches and petting, and sometimes I really don’t want to be touched at all’, there would be even more confusion. So I use lesbian even though I don’t really click with it because it gives people a label they can understand (even if they’re homophobic, they know what a lesbian is), and they’re happy that they’ve categorised me and can move on.

The point I’m making is this – people, even people who work with autistic people, even some autistic people themselves, JUST DON’T GET that sometimes, some autistic people can’t use verbal language all the time, or at times, it’s so stressful and hard it’s exhausting, or leads us into a meltdown. And to explain all that, when you’re on the edge of a meltdown or exhaustion, is TOO MUCH. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be too exhausted to be the perfect information resource/soapbox advocate. You’re allowed to think of your autistic manifestations as being disabling. That doesn’t make you a bad autistic person. And if using ASL, or home sign, or signed english means you can use the excuse, “I’m Deaf/HoH, and it’s easier to sign in this situation/when I’m tired/when I’m having trouble keeping up”, then that’s fine, even if the real reason you’re signing isn’t completely to do with the fact that you’re Deaf/HoH. YOU DON’T HAVE TO JUSTIFY YOURSELF HONESTLY AND COMPLETELY. You are under no obligation to. And if the short explanation you give isn’t enough for them to accept and leave you alone, then they’re a rude asshole anyway.

Hawkeye 19 link and ASL translation!

takingthegreyhound:

One upon a time, I had a deaf friend that I learned basic ASL to be able to communicate with. Hawkeye 19 is right up my ally, so I figured I’d post this for people that want to know what’s being said in this issue.

Here’s a download link to the comic via my Dropbox.

PLEASE READ THE ISSUE WITHOUT THE TRANSLATION FIRST! Matt Fraction stated that he wanted readers to feel the sense of confusion and loss along with Clint, so read it as it is first, then go back with the translation. ASL translation is under the cut.

Read More

actuallyclintbarton:

melbourneonmymind:

suzysuzysue:

deardeerling:

do you ever just use an emoticon or phrase ONCE and then all of a sudden it makes up 99% of your daily vocabulary

I CANNOT stop saying ‘seems legit’. It’s a plague.

I never used to use the word ‘bro’. Then I went to New Zealand for two weeks. Eight months later, I still can’t stop. 

It’s true. (is what I say all the time, more in person than online I think, but I use it so much that my ex-boyfriend asked one of our interpreters how to say it in Russian so he could tell me, when we were in Ukraine like 10 years ago, sooooo… yeah.)

Re: the ‘bro’ thing, that’s why when I read Fraction’s Hawkeye, the tracksuit mafia all have Kiwi accents in my head. If Fraction ever writes any of them saying ‘choice’, it’ll be incontrovertible.

actuallyclintbarton:

mj-irl:

Here’s Hawkeye holding up the ASL sign for ‘I love you’ while he looks back over his shoulder. 

I love Hawkeye and can’t wait to see more of him in the next Avenger’s movie. I also am looking forward to the Hawkeye comic that is suppose to be coming out featuring the use of ASL, I hope it comes out soon we’ve been patiently waiting.

If you like the image and have some disposable income consider supporting the artist and buying a print or card or sticker here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/mjfitz/works/12270819-hawk-love

EEEEE, this is so cute!

And the ASL issue of Hawkeye comes out on the 30th, iirc.  ROCK THAT ASL, BARTON!

Autism language politics and history

realsocialskills:

Some people emphatically prefer to be called people with autism. Others get very offended. Some people empathically prefer to be called autistic people. Others get very offended. There are reasons for all of that.

They have to do with the history of the intellectual and developmental disability community, the autism parent community, and the specific autistic self advocacy community.

For intellectual and developmental disability:

  • Most self advocates have a very strong preference for person-first language
  • Person-first language in this concept means “I am a PERSON, and I am not going to allow you to treat me as a disability case study, nor am I going to tolerate your diagnostic overshadowing.”

Autism is a developmental disability. There is a highly visible and destructive community of parents who consider themselves to be afflicted with their child’s autism. There is an autistic self advocacy community that developed in part specifically due to the need to counteract the harm being done by autism parents. The language someone prefers will often depend on which of these facts seems most important at a given time.

Regarding developmental disability.

  • Folks who are primarily involved in the IDD self advocacy community usually prefer to be called people with autism
  • This is for the same reasons people with any sort of developmental disability usually prefer person first language
  • In that context, “person with autism” means “I am a PERSON, and you are not going to treat me like an autistic specimen.”

Regarding the destructive autism parent community:

  • This parent community pushes the agenda of parents who believe that their child’s autism is a horrible tragedy that befell their parents and family
  • They call themselves the autism community, but they consistently refuse to include or listen to autistic self advocates (especially adult self advocates). They only care about neurotypical parent perspectives (and only from parents who think autism is horrifying)
  • They promote things like intense behavioral therapy for young children, institutionalization, group homes, sheltered workshops and genetic research aimed at developing prenatal testing. They do not listen to autistic self advocates who object to these things.
  • They don’t care about the priorities of autistic self advocates. They do not do any work on issues such as self-directed adult services, enforcing the Olmstead mandate to provide services in the community rather than institutions, or research into skills for listening to people whose communication is atypical
  • These parents have an emphatic preference for person first language. They say “people with autism.”
  • What they mean by this is “Autism is NOT a part of who my child is, it’s an evil brain slug attached to their head, and I want to remove it at all costs.”

There is also an autistic self advocacy community. It developed in significant part to counteract the harm done by the autism parent community:

  • A lot of the agenda of the autistic self advocacy community is the same as the IDD community and pursued in cooperation with the IDD community
  • But there is also a lot of work that’s specifically about countering the harm that has been done by the autism parent community
  • Much of the worst harm done by the parent community comes from the cultural consensus that autism is like an evil brain slug, and that any amount of brutality is a good thing if it might mean that the slug shrinks or dies
  • For this reason, participants in the autistic self advocacy community generally have a very strong objection to person first language
  • They call themselves autistic or Autistic.
  • In this context, “autistic person” means “Autism is part of who I am. I’m ok. Stop trying to get me to hate myself. You do not need to remove autism to make me into a full person. We are already people. Stop physically and emotionally mutilating people in the name of treatment.”

Neither set of self advocates are wrong. Both positions are legitimate and important to be aware of. In order to know what someone means by their language choices, you have to consider the context. 

arcanewinter:

huntersonahotelbed:

oh my fucking god

so i’m reading this harry potter fic

and every now and then there are words like “arseented” and “marseaging” and “arseistance” and i was trying to figure out what the hell is going on

finally i got to the word “parse” and figured it out

they’re american so after they wrote it they did a find and replace to change every “ass” to “arse”

i can’t stop laughing omg

“Word has made 436 replacements.”

“That sounds right.”

This is a thing of beauty. Terrible, wonderful beauty.

takemetothedungeons:

wnnbdarklord:

Thor, I love you to bits, but we need to talk about your definition of ‘in my youth’: 

The Jotuns must pay for what they have done. March into Jotunheim as you once did. Teach them a lesson. Break their spirits so they’ll never dare to try to cross our borders again.

#I remain intrigued by this quote#because like many of the films statements about time and asgardians it makes no goddam logical sense#but meta to the rescue:#I like the idea that this is how the aesir experience time#not as a progression#as we do#where yesterday is recent#last year a while ago#and ten years ago a long time ago#but in epochs and eras#marked by changes in themselves#they don’t age much#not like we do#whether you think they are young for the same-ish time we are and in their prime longer#or if they are still kids at 300+ years old#either way#for them time is purely relative#and nothing changes much#not technology not culture not the people around you#so you judge time by internal markers#thor judges his own maturity as beginning on the day he regained mjolnir and lost loki#so before then he was a youth for all he thought himself a man#for only a youth would court war#and now he knows himself a man#though still battle-hungry#(because it’s THOR c’mon)#but not war hungry#and there is a difference#and it’s about putting others wants and needs and safety before your own#which is what he was lacking in thor 2011 ( amberfox17 )

Can I offer a suggestion? I think that Thor’s style of formal, antiquated language here is the key to deciphering this line, and I think that what Thor is saying here isn’t referring to his youth as a long time ago, like Asgardian time is different, or that he’s lived a lifetime since, but that the phrase in my youth, I courted war is Thor talking about his own immaturity from the point of view of experience. He’s saying, I was/am immature, and fighting was something I sought. The comma is really important, it makes the sentence meaning shift. In terms of a comparison, think of the phrase, ‘in my ignorance, I made an error’.