Every so often we get a news story about someone who wakes up from a coma and suddenly they're

speaking a different language, one that they did not know before their injury, or sometimes

they wake up speaking only in some strange foreign accent.

That's the way these stories are reported by the popular press, but when we point the

skeptical eye at them, we find out that whatever is going on is something else entirely.

Learning languages from brain injuries is up next on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Learning languages from brain injuries.

Today we're going to dive into one of those urban legends that we've all heard about many times

and see just how much truth there is to it. It's the claim that some people

upon waking up from a coma or after having a stroke suddenly speak a whole new language,

often one they did not speak before or perhaps it only been just beginning to learn.

It seems unaccountable. Is it possible that we overhear just enough random snippets of foreign

languages that our brain stores them away well enough that it can construct a whole new

speaking ability to replace the one lost due to the stroke or other brain injury?

Today we're going to point the skeptical eye at these cases and see exactly what's really going on.

One reason we've all heard about these cases is that they're reported in the news all the time.

In 2010, a popular news story claimed that a teen aged Croatian girl,

woke from a coma, understanding only Croatian, but speaking only German, as fluently as a native,

despite only having just begun to learn German in school. A German translator had to be brought in

so she could communicate with her own family. In 2014, it was widely reported that a 25-year-old man

who had suffered a head injury and was put into an induced coma, a woke with a new found ability

...