To be curious about MIL after learning she doesn't know the English alphabet

[kookykalki]

MIL was born and raised in Kenya and came to England in the 70s. She speaks English perfectly fine and raised both her children who both speak English perfectly. Neither child actually speaks Swahili and also don't understand it as MIL and FIL only ever spoke English to them.

Yesterday I was on a videocall with MIL as I am on mat leave and she likes to see DC as she can't visit very regularly. She was singing the alphabet and said 'A B C D' paused for a few seconds and sang 'E F G' and then paused and then laughed and said 'granny doesn't know ABCs'. All of this was addressed to DC and I was sitting nearby. I didn't say anything as I didn't want to embarrass her..

She is 66 and generally healthy but could this be an early sign of dementia?
I don't actually know much about growing up in Kenya and how much English is taught in their schools so it could be that she doesn't actually know it? She was a very traditional housewife by the sounds of it and I feel like it might be plausible she doesn't know her alphabet because sometimes I hear DH tell her things like how far away a country is, like you might explain it to a little child or for example how she will need to leave the house at 1pm if she wants to arrive at ours for 2pm because it's an hour away etc. I suspect she could be ND sometimes. I've tried to speak to DH about that in the past but I think he feels a bit offended by it..

Back to the dementia suspicion. I could be wrong. But also DH is so avoidant and I feel like MIL is very anti-healthcare (she thinks the NHS make money by killing people) and I think it's important to deal with these things.

I can't say the alphabet in other languages I've learnt, not off by heart. I probably could if I thought really hard, but it's rusty in them all, and I expect I'd make (lots of) mistakes. And I've definitely done exercises where you have to spell out your name and stuff like that in all of them.

All the languages I've learnt use the Roman alphabet, and if I see a character written, I think of its English name, so ABC is ay bee see. If I'm looking something up in the dictionary, it still works. (Although Welsh, with its mutations at the beginning of words, does add an extra challenge for learners when looking things up...)

In the same way, while I can count fine in those languages, if I see the numbers written in numerals, like 7644, in my head it's seven thousand six hundred and forty four, not whatever language it should be.

I know the alphabet and the phonetic alphabet off by heart, but I couldn't tell you what the 10th or 19th letter is, or can I recite the alphabet backwards. I literally had this conversation with my mum 2 weeks ago and she can apparently.

Lol I don't know the English alphabet!! And it's my first language!! Obviously I know all the letters... but I couldn't recite the alphabet in order.
I struggle with patterns like that.. don't know any of my times tables either.
But I'm an avid reader.
It's basically just a rhyme you learn by rote in school... unless you are an archivist or librarian or something like that it doesn't really matter at all! It's no indicator or intelligence or even how well you can speak the language.
I've never been good at rote learning. I don't know any of my times tables yet I got an A* in a level mathematics... I got an A in English for that matter despite not knowing the alphabet...
Some people find learning these things off by heart easier than others..

I just don't see the issue!

Sounds like English is her second language, even though she's fluent etc

As an aside for the LMNOP problem - use another tune (Auld Lang Syne works well) where the individual letters can be pronounced more clearly.

Having said that I repeat it has no bearing on being able to read and write only on using a dictionary or filing.

I wonder how long she might have been in education for. Kenyans pick up second and third languages extremely well but girls in particular aren't always send to school for very long. If it were me, I'd be asking her loads about her history and her former country, what it was like to grow up in Kenya and so on. But then, I am just nosey and entirely in love with Kenya.

I‘m fluent in Urdu, its my first language, I don’t know the alphabet anymore, i speak pretty good Swedish and I can read it if I know the word, I couldn’t sing the alphabet. I only really learned the English alphabet order when our son was little, I hadn’t been taught it, and never needed to know the order for work etc.