At home, the family spoke Mixtec, an indigenous language; at school, Ignacio learned to speak Spanish. He was the only one in his family who went to school past the primary grades.
And he's spent about half his life in the US with extremely limited ability to interact at all and probably mostly hearing English.
What language do you think he's supposed to be capable of responding to? One of the two he grew up with, but hasn't actually used in half a lifetime?
There are documented cases of people with head injuries losing the use of one language they knew but not another.
I have a serious medical condition and I grew up in a bilingual home. I've had incidents where I was exhausted and stressed out and could not speak English for an hour or more, only German, though I'm not especially fluent in it.
I don't care what language you use with Ignacio. He's probably not mentally fluent in any of them anymore, having nothing to do per se with how impaired his brain is and everything to do with the fact that he's probably mostly not heard either Mixtec or Spanish for half his life and has instead been immersed an English-speaking environment with which he mostly couldn't interact.
And he's spent about half his life in the US with extremely limited ability to interact at all and probably mostly hearing English.
What language do you think he's supposed to be capable of responding to? One of the two he grew up with, but hasn't actually used in half a lifetime?
There are documented cases of people with head injuries losing the use of one language they knew but not another.
I have a serious medical condition and I grew up in a bilingual home. I've had incidents where I was exhausted and stressed out and could not speak English for an hour or more, only German, though I'm not especially fluent in it.
I don't care what language you use with Ignacio. He's probably not mentally fluent in any of them anymore, having nothing to do per se with how impaired his brain is and everything to do with the fact that he's probably mostly not heard either Mixtec or Spanish for half his life and has instead been immersed an English-speaking environment with which he mostly couldn't interact.