Flashback: Language issues and listening pleasures

Originally posted 30 October, 2014

When my brain broke, or probably more accurately about 6 months later when things got worse, the bit in my brain that deals with language and communication got hit badly.

There have been a number of times when I’ve been unable to speak – knew what I wanted to say and just physically couldn’t say it. And there have been times when the opposite has happened, and I could speak fine, but was talking word salad gibberish. There was a long period when I didn’t seem to have full use of my vocabulary – it came back like someone flicking a switch. I had trouble reading and writing in a separate long period of blah.

And there are many days when reading exhausts me, my speech is slurred, or I struggle to find words… in other words the less dramatic minor inconveniences along the same lines. But I have accepted this long ago as just part of my new reality.

My foreign languages got slammed. Both my Hebrew and German reverted to a very basic state – I can understand some words, common phrases, but I can’t comprehend when people are speaking to me or hold a conversation. My Latin is *all* gone as is my Japanese, but to be fair I hadn’t used either of those for a fair while and they were both nowhere near fluent. Trying to relearn languages (I started with Hebrew, but have dabbled with them all to test out) caused severe headaches and didn’t really work – it just doesn’t want to stay in anymore.

Recently I have been getting back in to music more, and had a bash at reading music again. It seems to be affected like my Hebrew and German – I can still read the notes, but slowly – not at anywhere near fast enough pace to play anything. Which is fine, given I don’t have a piano here and my flute is buried in a box somewhere. It would probably be a decent therapy exercise to try and play again, but I’m quite sure my neighbours wouldn’t enjoy it.

Interestingly, I can still pick the key or follow a concerto I know well – as opposed to watching a German movie and not being able to keep up. Particularly the instrumental tracks but also lyrics. And most interestingly, I can follow a song in Hebrew or German far better than other conversation or media, but it still gives me a headache.

So, I’m listening to a lot of music, mostly stuff I’ve not heard before,which is a great pleasure :). It’s almost like being back in radio with the stack of new singles to listen to each week! Feel free to make a recommendation of something I should listen to.