English-speaking Man Wakes Up from Coma Speaking Fluent in Mandarin

When Ben McMahon went into a coma after a car crash, he spoke English; when he woke up, he spoke only fluent Mandarin. Although the Australian man had taken Mandarin in high school, he was never fluent, and doctors are still trying to figure out exactly why he completely lost the ability to speak his native language—his English skills did eventually return—and suddenly became the "best non-native speaker" his Mandarin pals had ever heard, the Independent Journal Review reports.

I find this case fascinating and I am not buying the official explanation. I would think recall of a language from a past life is more likely, but then again I believe in reincarnation. I am not asking anyone to buy my explanation, but what do you think? How does someone wake up with FLUENCY in a language they have limited to no knowledge of?

Source

a reply to: Metallicus
The how is easy.
His spirit remembered a language it once understood and spoke.
The why is a mystery

a reply to: Metallicus

Thanks for the interesting find.

Another one of "these cases."

It points to more ways for information to flow than consensus now allows.

True, he might have just had his Mandarin memories stimulated, but there are so many cases of information acquisition through non obvious ways that formerly "woo" ideas, like esp, noosphere, past life memory, etc., are gradually being considered.

And that's a good thing... because it's a real phenomena.

A few world cups ago I saw a video of people kicking penalty goals on camara, the research was to see how the brain operates under pressure, they were filming the whole time but after some kicks they told the participants they were goin to be filmed and most of them fluke the kick.

It appears you use a part of your brain to learn, and once its learned another part of the brain is what makes the respective action over and over, under stress it seems the learning part of the brain takes control and the action is not as smooth as if it was already learned.

So you may know a thing, but depending on some factors a part of the brain is used or not changing your performance, perhaps something like this happened to the guy.

You have no idea how much information you storage but don't have real access to it, even what you see is bein simplified by your brain to ignore some things and focus on others but you still see what you ignore, learning a language halfway does not mean you were not exposed more to it.

Fascinating story!

Our brains are truly a wondrous thing.

Let me get a hammer and see if I can learn Russian.

a reply to: Metallicus

Funny that he took Mandarin in high school and has Mandarin friends...not buying it...

I saw this on tv a few weeks ago, too see how easilly he speaks the language and other people that speak it fluently saying that he speaks it better than most people they know that have spoke it their whole lives makes me find it very hard to believe that it just came back to him from learning it in school the official explanation sounds dodgy maybe little bits but how could he have learnt the entire language at school

ETA this is what i watched on tv on a show called the project, i cant embed on my phone sorry! Youtube video

a reply to: Metallicus

This is absolutely evidence for that and supports what I believe, that our consciousnesses are actually the frequency of energy that our nervous systems produce and partially capture, rather than our consciousness being a creation of such...

The evidence (when all evidence is concerned and not selectively applied) actually bares this out.

He is not the same person, that he was. At least it is not the same consciousness. When severe changes occur in the brain people often showcase vastly different personalities and some amnesia.

I believe that this is because it is a different person who is not acclimated to that physical being.

Memories are stored in the brain and can eventually be imprinted on the consciousness. Personalities OTOH are ingrained for the most part and this is why changes in personality tend to be permanent in these situations.

Jaden

originally posted by: chrismarco
a reply to: Metallicus

Funny that he took Mandarin in high school and has Mandarin friends...not buying it...

Which Mandarin-fluent doctors verified that he spoke fluent Mandarin?

It must have been 1982 when mycdad came home home from work in Brazi where he had been for 3 months. We lived in Northern Europe (Holland) so Portugese wasn't a language my dad mastered. He was allways very tired from long trips so slept a lot the first week after comming home.
One night he fell a sleep very early and he started talking in his sleep. It was in fluent Portugese.
To this day he hasn't been able to reproduce this feat being awake.

originally posted by: Daalder
It must have been 1982 when mycdad came home home from work in Brazi where he had been for 3 months. We lived in Northern Europe (Holland) so Portugese wasn't a language my dad mastered. He was allways very tired from long trips so slept a lot the first week after comming home.
One night he fell a sleep very early and he started talking in his sleep. It was in fluent Portugese.
To this day he hasn't been able to reproduce this feat being awake.

Who was with him while he was sleeping who spoke and recognized fluent Portuguese?

a reply to: Tangerine

The whole family did :-) My mother scrambled us so we could witness.
He had been there three years earlier, we also had some of his colleagues over from Brazil and well...let's say I lived in a very multilingual environment. (Due to work for a multinational company). And there was the records he imported from there. So yes...I think I was able to distinguish the language as being fluent.
To us it was fluent Portugese.

To bad we didn't have a camera.

Perhaps the doctors and nurses were speaking Chinese while he was in a coma, and his basic knowledge of Mandarin was enough to allow his brain to fill in the gaps?

a reply to: Metallicus

Just go back to the story of Babel. All of the world spoke one language, then God broke them into groups. Language is a thought frequency. Once, man used one frequency, but now there are a variety.

a reply to: stormcell

Well considering the first thing he saw upon waking was an Asian nurse then that could be plasuible!

a reply to: Metallicus

I find these stories FASCINATING!! I truly believe in reincarnation and think that when this happens that it's that persons past life coming through. I could be completely wrong but how does one wake up knowing a language fluently they previously did not know? I know I've joked about wishing I could wake up speaking French fluently.

I love reading these cases. The mind truly is amazing! I wonder what he will do with his new found skill.

I actually believe this is possible, if not probable. Not that my opinion counts for a damn thing but I've heard of this before.
There are stories throughout history of this happening. I often wonder if the biblical account of the Tower of Babel was an actual event that changed our brains somehow. Look again at the story and then look at what happened to the desciples of Jesus at Pentecost in the New Testament book of Acts. All religion and BS aside, it's a pretty remarkable account of this very thing.

a reply to: Metallicus

A brain injury could account for it except that he "took mandarin in high school" probably wouldn't expose him to enough of the language to make him fluent. My school started us on French in the second grade (very small school with grades k-12 all in the same building), and I had those French classes until I was a Junior in high school. Even then I don't think I was even exposed to enough French to be fluent if I remembered every noun, conjugated verb and nuance of syntax and accent.

It's weird. I'd go with a past life as a good an explanation as any.

Think he must have spent a past life speaking Mandarin. Possibly what drew him to take it to begin with.

I'm mates with the guy, but I don't find this close to being 100% accurate. Went to high school with him and found out about his accident on my 20th birthday.

One of the nicest and most genuine guys you'll ever meet. His family the same.

Ben had just came back from china after teaching English to school kids. He was pretty bloody good at mandarin before the accident, chatting to the Chinese students at school daily in mandarin.
I spoke to him last year about it and he said once he woke up from the coma (about a week) he had no recollection of returning to Australia and the first nurse he say was Asian. Naturally, from waking up in a coma, he thought he was still in china so he started to speak in mandarin. His mum said she freaked out pretty heavily from it.

I don't doubt he might've seemed like he spoke incredibly fluently (after thinking he's still over there) but waking up to be suddenly be able to speak fluent mandarin is pretty bull#. He had been learning to speak it since 2005 (I was in the same class as him for it).

Take what you want from that, by he's definitely the nicest guy you come across if you ever get to meet him.

Link.

Don't get how this story was written in this manner.