Language Loss

[Del24]

My wife was born in the EU and came to live in this country over 50 years ago.
It is becoming clear she is having problems with her native language when using Skype and watching foreign films etc.
Her main language is English.
Has anyone had this problem.

 

[Grannie G]

My husband was Indian and I was prepared for him to revert back to his mother tongue as his dementia progressed. He too had been un the UK for over 50 years.

What happened was confusion between the two languages and he started to speak to me in Hindi or Bengali ,which was hopeless.

Luckily we managed to keep him speaking English by discouraging well meaning carers from speaking the Indian languages with him.

 

[Amy in the US]

I can't speak from personal experience about language loss in a person with multiple language fluency, although I've seen reports here on TP that a person will often be able to communicate only in the first language they learned, as time goes on.

Language problems of different types are common with dementia, I'm afraid: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=130

 

[Zana]

My husband has now almost entirely lost the language he has spoken for 25 years.

His English is starting to suffer too, its not so bad if he watches Tv or hears actual UK English but any accent esp American confuses him and causes a great deal of frustration.

 

[technotronic]

My wife is English born n 73 years old and only speaks English, but her language has deteriorated so badly that she doesn't say proper words any more its all what you prob call gobblegook now n only way I can tell if when she speaks to me an asks me something if I've answered yes or no correctly is by way she reacts to my answer, if she gets upset I know that I've answered wrongly n need to calm her n stop her getting upset further.
It's been like that for almost a year now, it's rare to hear her say any proper words now


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