Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I woke up unable to speak English

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 105 posts

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#91

Post by drdeadringer »

I experienced something a bit similar during a migraine episode whilst in University.

Normal day occurs and I rent a movie from the school library; 'M' [1931] starring Peter Lorre. German spoken, English subtitles. I functionally don't know German; English is my native language. All is well.

Partway through the film I notice my migraine symptoms coming on [grey-green soup-static eating into my vision from my optical peripheral, tingly numbness spreading up from my fingers, &c]. I know I'm screwed for the night, the best I can do is take pills and hope to "sleep it off" at this point. I decide to trooper it out and keep going with the movie 'cause I'm at a loss either way and I know this dance.

But then I realize that I could no longer understand the English subtitles, a new symptom for me at the time. I could read the subtitles, I knew they were English, I knew I knew I should be able to understand them, but I couldn't take their meaning. So here I am watching a movie where I don't understand the spoken or written language at all. All I had was my enjoyment of Peter Lorre, my appreciation of film noir, my love of film, and the inherent fundamental understanding of body language and facial expression.

About 75% through the film, one of my roommates comes in and sits down. "So, what're you watching?"

I swear he thought I was drunk.

Me: "This guy ... kill kids ... whistle. People ... not like guy."

Him: "Take your time."

Me: "This ... the people. Police ... no nothing. People ... this! ... these! ... people ... get guy."

Him: "OK."

Me: "The town... guy on trial. No police. Him! Bad guy. Whistles. Dead ... kids. City people ... guy on trial. No police."

Him: "I think I understand. Are you ok? Had too much?"

Me: "OK. Migraine. Watching movie. See? This ... Peter L-L-Lorre. Buggy eyes. Actor. Like a bug."

Him: "... yes. He's in this movie."

Me: "Famous actor! Now ... guilty from ... mob. The city. Death no police but ... dead whistling."

Him: "OK. Sounds like a good movie. See you tomorrow."

Me: "Yes. Tomorrow good ... movie."

=-0-=-0-=

I'm not kidding, I actually did talk like a drunken over-acted dramatization of Shatner. My actual language skills were out the window that night. I can't tell you how many times I dropped my Imitrex pills onto the floor before dropping myself into bed.

Yes, I'm better now against the migraines so I have little worries there on that matter but back then it was a going concern.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#92

Post by wpietri »

novaleaf wrote: post #48
gspetr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b) they aren't designed It does seem like a reasonable statement, but when you take a bit of time to think about it, billions of people disagree with it. A sobering thought. > so there's no expectation that they should make sense under the hood What doesn't make sense is that at first you deny a religious explanation, then without skipping a beat you ascribe (what can ironically be described as divine) mysteriousne…

actually, if you believe in natural evolution, brains are designed. just because there isn't any intelligence involved, doesn't mean that the brain isn't a meticulously crafted piece of perfection.

If there isn't intelligence involved, then it definitely isn't designed. Or crafted, for that matter.

I suppose it could be perfect, by some particular criteria. But it seems unlikely. And in the case of the human brain, it's definitely untrue. The selection criteria for the human brain have been shifting wildly over the last few million years, so it's guaranteed not to be perfect.

Note, for example the long list of cognitive biases that we've so far discovered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#93

Post by posterboy »

tcbawo wrote: post #67
wpietri wrote: post #2

This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…

Someone I know had a father-in-law with brain cancer that destroyed his ability to speak -- but he could still sing. So, that's how he communicated up until the end.

So, is tonal language a basic layer below ..?

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#94

Post by posterboy »

zn02 wrote: post #31
cestith wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you search around the 'net you'll find a number of cases in which a person's principle language has changed after a traumatic brain injury. Some people have even become fluent in a language they only recalled a pidgin vocabulary from before. Perhaps more common, but still quite rare at about one person per year worldwide, is something called foreign accent syndrome. In which a head injury causes someone with one r…

> Some people have even become fluent in a language they only recalled a pidgin vocabulary from before. I wonder if could use this to learn languages more effectively. This kind of changes after a trauma shows that we remember more than we think.

We actively inhibit mixing the different parts of language we know. You can just as well remember actively without destroying another part. What's damaged in most examples here is production, not recollection, anyhow. It helps to talk to people who do not understand your native tongue to actively inhibit production in it.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#95

Post by posterboy »

Waterluvian wrote: post #32
wpietri wrote: post #2

This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…

My mental model is that the brain is a black box and unlike so many other human components, we can't break it open and learn how it works on a mechanical level. We're left with feeding it inputs and seeing what the outputs are as a way to understand how it works. This means that at best we can have a cause-effect understanding of the brain. Until we can describe the mechanics of the brain with a strong enough model w…

That's a false dilemma. It is the same with any process. On a functional level, input output correlation is defining. On a mechanical level, we may recognize a structure equal to another black box. Indeed, dividing a structure into separate components is the key technique of learning. The problem is just how highly complex the brain is and that the "output" here is rather different from that of a blood cell or a dna strand. In fact, being based on and perhaps even interacting with those and other building blocks, is what makes the brain so abstract. So speech modeled as the output of dna is necessairly higher up the chain of abstraction than a microscopic ribose enzyme or what. But it appears to as us macro precisely because we don't understand all of it. You have effect and cause reversed.

If we knew where to look better, it wouldn't be a problem. Chances are experts know way better, but there are really few who know enough to see a bigger picture and can guide the search. I'm trying to say they are breaking it open, inserting probes and imaging it working. But as far as the "output" is concerned, everyone is naturally aspiring to be an expert. A lot of unguided superficial theorizing may be informative as well, to great length as it concerns psychology and related fields.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#96

Post by posterboy »

RIMR wrote: post #53
meijer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that such an API exists. It even understands natural language!

Wildly different localized standards though, and nobody can write a transform that actually works.

Wrappers upon wrappers and glue code ...

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#97

Post by posterboy »

xster wrote: post #73

I only knew Noam Chomsky from his political thoughts and knew he dabbled in linguistics but never knew what exactly he contributed to in this field. I only found out recently (while reading The Story of Human Language) that he's actually huge[ly disruptive] in the field and came up with this line of thinking. That language isn't just an expression of culture or of general intelligence but is genetic. His justificatio…

This is a very lame summary of Chomsky's position. Genetics is not at the core at all. The minimalist program and universal grammar are the key search terms for it. The idea was cleverly paraphrased to be rather unspecific.

The term grammar is rather formulaic, but the problem is broader, if language ability is seen as an important factor for intelligence.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#98

Post by posterboy »

drdeadringer wrote: post #91

I experienced something a bit similar during a migraine episode whilst in University. Normal day occurs and I rent a movie from the school library; 'M' [1931] starring Peter Lorre. German spoken, English subtitles. I functionally don't know German; English is my native language. All is well. Partway through the film I notice my migraine symptoms coming on [grey-green soup-static eating into my vision from my optical…

Since the symptoms are similar to a stroke, I'd be careful about going on, if there's the slightest chance that it can cause damage.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#99

Post by socceroos »

rconti wrote: post #68
bostonpete wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't say he took a sabbatical to re-teach her English -- it says he took the sabbatical to support her. It also doesn't say he didn't work on improving his German during that time.

I worked from home for 12 weeks to help my wife recover from a surgery. She initially needed help moving around the house, for her safety, and slept most of the day. Brain injuries are EXTREMELY difficult and time consuming to recover from, far more so than more typical injuries. The woman in the article was almost certainly going through a massive adjustment and needed tons of help. It's not a simple matter of a bum…

I take ~3 weeks off to help my wife post-baby for the same reasons.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#100

Post by hanniabu »

tcbawo wrote: post #67
wpietri wrote: post #2

This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…

Someone I know had a father-in-law with brain cancer that destroyed his ability to speak -- but he could still sing. So, that's how he communicated up until the end.

This is similar to Ozzy Osbourne where he stutters when speaking normally, but has no issues when singing. I've seen reports of this situation with many people.
Post reply on HN