I am losing my ability to find words when I speak. Awkward hesitations haunt my daily speech. Consequently, I am loath to contribute. The other day, while talking about the fact that Israel was surrounded by Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah and the possibility of them losing a war with Iran, I said, "Remember the 6 day war? 50 million arabs against 2 million.........hesitation..." I could not think of the word "Israelis", so I quickly substituted "Jews". I am afraid that substitution did not make me sound too scholarly.
I googled the condition and found the following:
"Speech is about expressing ideas via the use of language. Language is a cognitive ability that can be present even when you cannot speak. In the case of people with PD, they may exhibit word-finding difficulties and grammatical difficulties. They tend, for example, to use simplified sentence structures with an increase in the ratio of open-class items (nouns, verbs, adjectives) to closed-class items (determiners, auxiliaries, prepositions, etc.), as well as an increase in the frequency and duration of hesitations and pauses." (Patrick McNamara, Ph.D.)
I my case, I find that misused words generate misleading generalities. The solution is to remain silent and be thought a fool rather than opening my mouth and removing any doubt as to my intellectual ability.
Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-hats all folks....(Porky Pig)
Au contraire, mon ami ! (too the contrary, my friend) for the Word of God reminds us in Proverbs 17:28 "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."
ReplyDeleteMost of us should take your lead and just find joy in developing our skills for 'listening'. You get my vote.