What’s happening when someone wakes up from surgery/a coma/head injury and knows a different language? How would it be possible for someone to materialize knowledge of all that vocabulary, and sentence structure?
In: Biology
What usually happens is that the person speaks a particular language natively, for example Spanish but also speaks English. The knock on the head causes them to only be able to speak one of those languages.
They already know the language they just aren’t able to translate or speak the other one anymore.
That doesn’t actually happen.
Those stories are creations of TV shows or tabloid magazines.
Knowing a different language after head injury isn’t a thing.
However, there’s a REALLY rare phenomenon where people suddenly develop a new accent after a neurological event. It’s called Foreign Accent Syndrome.
My understanding is this has happened in rare incidents, however the person is already bilingual. Damage to some areas of the brain cause them to not be able to speak one of them. They do not suddenly gain an entire language, but sever brain damage makes them Lose one.
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