Aphasia - What's the Toughest Challenge for You?

Transcript:

Aphasia aphasia.

On March 30th. 2022.

Bruce Willis' family announced that he had been diagnosed with aphasia. A disorder that damages the area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension.

I want to dedicate this episode to Bruce Willis. A great actor. And we are gonna take a closer look at the word. Aphasia



So actually they wanted to award Bruce Willis with a golden raspberry award. Which is kind of a parody award. That wants to honoring actors with the worst cinematic under achievements.

Because apparently Bruce Willis acted in several really bad movies and 2021, I think. And that's why they wanted to award him. But then they got away with the idea to giving him this award because they said it was in appropriate to award a golden raspberry to someone whose performance. Was affected by a medical condition.



They knew what they wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out that scientifically, we call that an expressive aphasia.



So originally the word aphasia was put together of two words using the Greek word part. A. Meaning not or without. And then the second word part was phasis. Meaning utterance or statement. So actually, so it came from the Greek verb, meaning to say, or to speak. aphasia

And at that point I knew that she was still in there and there were certain words too. Didn't she surprise you with words, what chicken, chicken. Chicken. Yeah, that was it for the first like month. That was the extent of Gabby's vocabulary. For some reason, she, she has aphasia, which is is a difficulty with communication.

She latched onto the word chicken. Which isn't the best, but certainly is not the worst. And we were actually worried. It could have been, it could have been a lot worse than that. Yeah. But what's been the toughest challenge for you during this recovery? Um, talking really hard really? Yeah. With, with aphasia. Gabby knows what she wants to say.

Just can't get it, get it out, understands everything. But the communication is just very difficult. You know, when you look at the picture, the part of your brain, uh, where those communication centers are, are on the left side of your head, which is where the bullet passed through. So you have to do a very dangerous thing, speak for wife.

I do. That might be some of the most dangerous things I've ever done. Yeah, they are. You optimistic about your continuing recovery, walking, talking, being able to move your arm and then I'm optimistic. It will be a long, hard haul, but I'm optimistic.





And at this point, I kind of feel like I want to make remember everyone that we should really be thankful. that we are able to learn English or other languages. Um, we shouldn't take it for granted. That we can do so.

So one definition of aphasia is loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words. Usually resulting from brain damage. As from a stroke, head injury or infection.

So the first part of aphasia.

Is actually a prefix. And as I mentioned before, a comes from the Greek and means not or without. So with the help of the prefix a. We can guess a lot of other words, which will support us in our language journey. So I will give you some examples.

asocial.

Yeah, there are so many, I mean, really, probably the biggest or maybe the most fundamental is the idea that introverts are somehow asocial or anti-social, you know, that these are people who don't really like people and there's not it at all. It's such a misunderstanding. Asoscial describes a person who is not social. So the person is not really interested in hanging out with other people.

Or an apolitical person is not interested in political issues at all. And therefore is not going to vote. I guess. An atheist is someone who is not believing.

In. A Supreme power or something like that. So.

Another word is atom and when that word was coined, It was considered to be the smallest possible particle of matter.

And therefore could not be cut.

So with the prefix a you can guess a lot of other words.

And this may help you in your journey as I mentioned before.

And this works really well with other prefixes as well. So the Vocab Man recommends learning prefixes. It's really valuable and powerful.

So this episode was a bit different than usually. I hope you liked it a lot and if you want to help the Vocab Man, please share, subscribe and tell your friends about the podcast. This will help the podcast grow and therefore I will be able to produce more episodes. Bye