The most bizarre thing happened to a 16-year-old Nigerian soccer player who spent three days in a coma, he woke up randomly speaking fluent Spanish!
“It started flowing out,” the teen told TIME. “I felt like it was like second nature for me. I wasn’t speaking my English right, and every time I tried to speak it I would have a seizure.”
According to Time, Reuben Nsemoh, had suffered a severe concussion after another soccer player had accidentally kicked him in the head. He began having seizures after going into shock and had to be airlifted to a hospital.
Well apparently after finally waking up, Nsemoh motioned for food before he saying, “Tengo hambre,” (which means “I am hungry” in Spanish), surprising his mother who says he has never spoken Spanish so fluently before.
“I was very shocked. That’s something he’s never done before. When he got up and he started speaking Spanish, I was confused,” his mother said.
Even though this instance is very rare, it has happened before. Diagnosed as Foreign Accent Syndrome, people can randomly start speaking other languages after suffering Traumatic Brain Injury.
Reports of FAS have dated back to the 1940s, when a Norwegian woman was left with a German accent after suffering brain injury during a bombing in Germany. More recently, a woman from Texas was left with a British accent after having surgery on her jaw earlier this year.
“It’s an impairment of motor control,” Dr. Karen Croot, one of the few experts in foreign accent syndrome, told CNN a few years ago. “Speech is one of the most complicated things we do, and there are a lot of brain centers involved in coordinating a lot of moving parts. If one or more of them are damaged, that can affect the timing, melody and tension of their speech.”
Either way, Reuben’s mother is just happy that her son is alive and is expected to make a full recovery.
“Definitely, it’s a miracle,” Nsemoh said. “My son is awake, I don’t care what language he’s speaking. Whatever went on, he’s alive today and I believe 100 percent in recovery.”
She has since created a GoFundMe page to help raise $25k which would go towards paying his medical bills.
TSR STAFF: Debra Oh! @The_Ebony_Issue on Ig!
Sources:
http://time.com/4542967/teen-coma-fluent-spanish-georgia/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/24/health/teen-spanish-new-language-trnd/
