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A language is a system of symbols, usually words, which are used to express ideas. We begin to learn the words we need to express ourselves when we are less than a year old and store them in our brains in a ‘mental dictionary’. In this way we can understand words when we hear them and say them when we need to. We also learn the rules for putting words together into sentences and how to use letters to write them down. All this information about language is stored and organised by specially adapted parts of the brain, usually on the left side.

When the specialised parts of the brain that we use to learn language are affected by brain damage, language becomes disrupted. The term given to the loss or disruption of language due to brain damage is aphasia or dysphasia. Both terms mean the same thing, so for ease the term aphasia will be used in this booklet.