101–105 of 105 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ..?
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…
Absolutely agreed. Brains are bizarre. My mother-in-law once had what we (and her primary physician) believed was a serious flu. The moment we realized that it was much worse than that was when she started calmly speaking total nonsense. She appeared to think it was normal English, but each word was unintelligible, though it used plausible parts of speech. At that moment I picked her up and drove her to the E.R., aft…
Analysis shows: This follows all the patterns of a regular natural language, yet we can't crack it.
An old friend and his family came over from the US to the Netherlands. The daughter would speak in her sleep. Always German. When awoke she would not remember, nor be able to reproduce it. The German was often close to real German words, the accent close to perfect. It was like the brain was rewiring itself for Germanic languages.
I came back from a summer intensive course in French. Although I was already fluent in German, for a week after returning, every time I opened my mouth to speak German, French came out.
Was German your second language? I had a similar 'displacement' experience while learning a third language - my brain would offer phrases in my second language instead! I suspect it was defaulting to "how do I say this, but not in my first language" and whichever language is more readily available is served up.
I was fine after that first week. During it, I'd just gone from intensive French (zero to third-year college level conversational and academic proficiency/placement in seven weeks) to a German class, with a week or two in between the one ending and the other starting.
In all my secondary language learning, I've worked hard to leave other languages behind/alone and just function, including mentally, in the target language. I wanted to express an idea, and it came out in French. Not words or phrases; my brain was simply in "French mode".
That's what I'd been doing for a couple of months (in Vermont, not even in another country), and it took a while to regain some flexibility in that pattern.
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.
But yes, look out for strokes. "FAST" ... Facial drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulties and Time to call emergency services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAST_(stroke)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lost not all but a good portion of my sense of smell, and it never came fully back. That was over twenty years ago.
A co-worker of mine got some kind of nasal surgery and got back some long lost part of his sense of smell. You mind consider looking into that. I have had a poor sence of smell my whole life, it seems, and have considered looking into why and how it might be fixed.