fluency

I had an oral interview with one of my Spanish prof's the other day. He talked with me for a little while about my fluency. I pause a lot when I'm speaking, and he assumed that I am concentrating too much on my pronunciation, and told me not to worry so much about it,that my pronunciation is fine. But it's not that - It's that I just can't get the word I want to come out of my mouth when I want it to. It's like I start speaking and my brain freezes on me.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a hard time accessing the words that I want to say, and getting them on the conveyor belt through my brain to my mouth. Over the past 5-10 years, I've made some impressive progress in that area, in English. There have been many times when I felt a sense of gratitude toward someone talking with me, patiently straining to listen as I stalled and hemmed during a simple sentence. It's not a stutter in the mouth, but something like that in my head. I see, think, and feel the words I want to communicate, but they refuse to make the transition from thought to audible meaning. But recently I haven't had such a hard time with it...at least when speaking in my native tongue.


With Spanish, on the other hand, it's the same old story. I know what I want to say, and have a great point to make, but I'll open my mouth and after about 3 words, I can't make them come to my tongue anymore. The mental rolodex file of vocabulary spins and offers occasional words that don't quite fit, but it won't pull up the one I'm asking for. Sometimes it comes in English but, often, just doesn't present itself at all, and I have to go with one that just doesn't quite fit what I want to say, but is accessible.

Maybe this is just normal, but I wonder if it's mild form of aphasia?