r/ADHDโ€ข
night-elemental

Anyone struggling with finding words, be it in a foreign or native tongue?

Discussion

I'd say I'm pretty fluent in English when it comes to understanding, I know pretty much every word I read and I understand spoken english without problems. But when it comes to speaking or writing... I often don't remember the fitting words or idioms and there's some typically English phrases like "I can't sing to save my life" which I actually know pretty well but sometimes they just don't come to mind and then I paraphrase it more like "I can't sing even if I try a lot" which sounds very clumsy.

The weird thing is it also happens in my native tongue. I sound crude because I use a lot of simple words to describe the word I can't access right now (at least in spoken words).

I feel like the words are there but abstractly. The meaning is in my head, but I have trouble translating it from thought into language.

In written text that's a very different story. I can be very eloquent because I have time to think about the words and I'm also on a quest to find the most concise words that fit my meaning.

Does that sound familiar? Anyone have remedies for that? I keep losing people's attention because I cAn'T sPeAk To sAvE mY LiFe (haha used did it, see?).

Oh and out if curiosity: When reading this text, is it noticeably that I'm not a native speaker? I'm kinda curious how weird I actually sound ๐Ÿ˜… does anything stand out? Feel free to correct me on every weird thing I said ๐Ÿ˜Œ

Posted May 12, 2026, 8:23 AM UTC

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