Language is important in development of any society. Expressing your needs and wants; communicating with others to build communities, it all starts with words as we learned in Lesson 11. My grandma is currently in the hospital, originally for late onset of diabetes but now she is still there because she is losing her ability to speak. My grandmother is a strong woman but in the last 5 years she has been admitted into the hospital 5 times because she becomes comatose and looses her ability to communicate with the people around her. Before I continue my grandma has never had brain damage. Her Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area are still in tact. As for why she looses the ability to talk we believe it’s more psychological, due to her previous depressive states and her continuous battle with the disease.
What’s unique about my grandma though is she fights to speak. It may not be clear or loud at times but knowing her 22 years and my mom knowing her 49 we are able to use certain syllables and sounds to figure out what she is saying. Immediately this reminded me of phonemes and morphemes. The slightest sound in a word can change the entire meaning. Morphemes, being the smallest unit of language, allowed for my mother and I to understand my grandma. When she communicates she tends to stress the beginning of words and the ends trail off. The smaller the word, the better we understand. Which explains why she loves telling me “no” and “food” a lot. Part of me still thinks that’s her being bossy and greedy.
When my grandmother communicates some morphemes are easy to detect such as prefixes like a, ex, post and un. For example when she wants us to change her we can usually make out underwear or when we ask if she wants to tell us she wants more sauce or ketchup for her food we can make out extra. But, when she wants to say some words of hold conversations on the phone it’s hard to make out what she is saying and some words sound alike. That’s where phonemes come into place. Some words sound exactly the same, but the stress on a certain letter (sound) allows for us to better understand what is being asked. For example nap, cat or hat; my grandma can say either or but until we see her in person all we can use are context clues to guess which word she was saying.
That made me think of the video showing the McGurk effect where he said ‘va’, ‘da’, and ‘ba’ and when said together made the same sound. But, when you looked at his lips you could hear the individual sounds. With the absence of language, you learn how intricate the English language is and how different combinations of letters and sounds can change an entire meaning of a word. Especially learning that when we read our brain doesn’t process the whole word but part of the word and we fill it in.
My grandma’s decline in health is taxing and sad on me and my family but, understanding her and using this experience to help me understand more about what I’m learning is interesting and helpful. I may not fully know why she isn’t able to talk properly, but getting better and understanding what she is trying to say and the importance of watching her mouth to determine the difference between certain words is helpful and makes me feel closer to her. She’s my last living grandparent and staying close to her is important to me.