Diary

Sheila Hale

This sociable stranger with the donnish manner would like to know who you are and what interests you. He will listen attentively and respond enthusiastically. Whether you speak English, Italian, French or German you will have no doubt that he follows your meaning. The trouble is that however hard you try you will not be able to understand a single word he is saying. He is speaking some language – that’s obvious from the pitch and rhythm of his voice – but what language? Listen closely and you will hear that it is a language without words and with an extremely limited phonetic range, relying mostly on the syllables da and wals – dwals for short.

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[*] Talking about Aphasia: Living with Loss of Language after Stroke by Susie Parr, Sally Byng and Sue Gilpin, with Chris Ireland. Open University, 160 pp., £45 and £12.99, 14 October 1997, 0 335 19937 2.