Aphasia can generally be described as expressive or receptive. People with expressive aphasia have difficulty speaking with others, whereas people with receptive aphasia have difficulty understanding written or oral communication. Expressive and receptive aphasia often occur simultaneously.

Some physicians may also describe aphasia as either fluent or non-fluent. Aphasia may be described as fluent if the patient is able to speak at a volume, speed and intonation that is similar to normal speech. If the patient has problems producing sentences or words, the aphasia may be described as non-fluent.

Aphasia may be further categorized according to the area of the brain that is damaged, such as:

• Broca’s aphasia. Caused by damage to a part of the frontal lobe called Broca’s area. People with Broca’s aphasia may retain certain language skills, but are unable to speak in complete sentences or express complex thoughts. Thus, it may be considered a type of non-fluent aphasia. People with Broca’s aphasia often omit small words that connect larger thoughts, such as “and,” “is” or “the.” For example, “Go store” could mean “I want to go to the store,” “You need to go to the store” or “Jimmy will go to the store.”
  
  Broca’s aphasia tends to be expressive rather than receptive, which means that people with Broca’s aphasia may be able to understand language much better than they can express themselves with it. People with Broca’s aphasia may also have weakness or paralysis on the right side of their body because the frontal lobe is also associated with body movement. Broca’s aphasia is also sometimes referred to as motor aphasia or anterior aphasia.
  
  
• Wernicke’s aphasia. Caused by damage to a part of the temporal lobe called Wernicke’s area. People with Wernicke’s aphasia tend to speak in long, fluent sentences, but may use nonsense words interspersed with real words. Thus, Wernicke’s aphasia may also be considered a type of expressive aphasia. People with this type of aphasia may produce sentences such as “I wanted to walk the weedle but didn’t like before.”
  
  Unlike people with Broca’s aphasia, people with Wernicke’s aphasia also often have difficulty understanding the speech of other people (receptive aphasia), and may be unaware of their own speech problems. There is usually no body weakness in people with this type of aphasia. Wernicke’s aphasia is also sometimes referred to as sensory aphasia or posterior aphasia.

Patients may have some but not all elements of either Broca’s aphasia or Wernicke’s aphasia. Some patients may have certain elements of both types.

Additionally, aphasia may be described as mild or severe. A mild form of aphasia is amnesia aphasia (also known as anomic aphasia). People with this type of aphasia may have difficulty remembering the correct words for certain objects, although they recognize and understand what the object is. This type of aphasia is common, especially in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and following head trauma.

The most severe form of aphasia is global aphasia, which may occur after damage to several parts of the brain associated with language. This typically involves a loss of almost all language function. It includes receptive and expressive aphasia. Global aphasia also involves difficulty with written communication (both reading and writing).