Losing Language

British Art Critic Tom Lubbock, who made his living with words, was diagnosed in 2008 with a brain tumor that is growing in his centers of speech and language. He has been keeping a journal of his decline, and The Guardian has a long account:

I can still voice words.

But I am now pre-computer again – no thesaurus, no email, no newspapers, no radio, not now even a pen.

But I find my brain is still busy, moving, thinking. I am surprised.

My language to describe things in the world is very small, limited.

My thoughts when I look at the world are vast, limitless and normal, same as they ever were.

My experience of the world is not made less by lack of language but is essentially unchanged.

This is curious.

"Would it be imaginable that people should never speak an audible language, but should still say things to themselves in the imagination?" Ludwig Wittgenstein

One way, but not the other way, but sometimes in both ways.