This is a really, really important article by Amanda Baggs about how some autistic people lose abilities at various points and not just when
Just reminded of this one again. Because I really don't think my language learning abilities have actually gone downhill since I started learning German as a kid (with a lot fewer resources available then, beyond formal education).
I think it's more of the kind of situation Mel was talking about making this frustratingly slower and harder. Along with so many other things in life. Years of rolling burnout and physical health problems really haven't been helping, and I have definitely been spending the past couple of years since we moved to Sweden in its own subset of this. Thankfully nowhere as severe and frankly life-threatening as the 10 years before that, when I really couldn't see any good way through everything.
Beyond that (if such a thing makes sense), it doesn't seem like the less-usual ways my brain approaches language have really changed that much since I was picking up English to begin with. That doesn't even really feel like my native language, though I did pretty quickly bootstrap my way into being a surface-hyperverbal little shit who has rarely shut up since then.
The usual assertions about learning this stuff being so much easier for kid brains has never made much sense from the way my own seems to want to behave in general. But, a lot of that does indeed seem to be unusual, including the susceptibilities toward burnout.
