bilingual aphasia
Google that, lots of strange tales. I've even read one case where post brain
injury the person would involuntarily switch to his native tongue around
sunset. .
"Mimi_s_Mum" <mimi-s-mum at earthling.net (remove minuses)> wrote in message
news:nj83u09hbh4sgjll2t9rvk0k8oc9f45qpp at 4ax.com...
> Hi there
> I'm a RN working on a neurosurgical ward. We have this patient who
> has presented us with a difficulty in expressive verbal communication.
>> This gentleman is a native speaker of English but also a fluent
> speaker of chinese and had taught English in China. He suffered a
> cerebral bleed in L) hemisphere (probably in front-parietal region
> but, not sure excatly where it is, sorry), has severe weakness in L0
> limbs and has had difficulty speaking in English. He appeared to have
> no difficulty comprehending either language and also appeared to be
> conversing freely in Chinese, and in fact his Chinese friends said
> there is no flaw in his Chinese. However he has been answering
> English questions in Chinese (,which his chinese friends said made
> perfect senses) and manages to speak only brief English sentenses,
> admitting he can't get correct English words out. When he manages,
> his English expressions seem sometimes quite odd, outlandish, even.
> Eg he said he had a problem with his body heat, or something like
> that, but said yes, when asked whether he was hot.
>> My question is; is there special term for this condition? I've read
> several neuroscience books for general public written by O Sacks, WH
> Calvin, VS Ramachandran and AR Damasio, etc, familier with terms like
> Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, and vaguely remember conditions like
> this case were mentined in their books. The neuro nurse colleages
> seemed to categorise his condition as 'expressive dysphasia' and
> doccument as such. But I wonder if there is a better term to discribe
> his condition. Hope some of you can help me.
>> Regards
> Masaki
>> PS
> I'm a fluent bilingual speaker myself and probably that's the reason
> why I'm particularly interested in this case. I myself experience
> difficulties in switching between two languages when speaking, but
> never have problem comprehending. Why is that?
