Croatian girl switches to speaking in German after waking from coma

reply to post by damwel


Na speaking in tongues is like something is speaking through you like channeling. Learning a language is not tongues.

reply to post by andy1033


Speaking in tongues was used so no matter which land the Apostles went, they could speak the vernacular and spread the word of Jesus. Learning a language is not speaking in tongues. Being able to speak a language without learning it is.

[edit on 12-4-2010 by DaMod]

I also have a hard time understanding how someone can have a rudimentary grasp of a foreign language, then via whatever trauma, all of a sudden have fluency in said language.

It's not like German's entire vocabulary was in her brain. If she had one year of German, maybe she had a lot more skill than you'd think she did (that her brain knew - even if she didn't (think she did)), but if she's never seen or learned certain words, how could they be accessible to her brain now ... which would seem to be necessary for "fluency?"

But I love stories like this because if it's true, it's mind blowing. Perhaps there's even enough to infer, as some scientists have, that language tools are inherent to humans and since humans presumable created all languages, in some way, the knowledge of many languages is in our brain/dna (and perhaps the framework for all languages).

Still have a hard time with this, though. I question her fluency. I mean, surely she doesn't know the German for every word she knew from her previous language.

We all know that in some criminal cases the police puts witnesses under
hypnosis to aid their brains to produce details that have subconsciously
been imprinted in the grey matter.

She may have been perusing the whole language guide without memorizing
it yet and thus the whole content was photographically imprinted in her
brain to only be released through some faulty command by other parts
of the brain.

God to his team of developers:
"Got that damn bug again in human's operating system - past-life memory leaking during coma. I want that fixed asap!"

Ko3

They dont know what caused the coma also. How very odd to go into a sudden coma and then come out so changed.

What if it was like this:

She knew a little german from school,then when in a coma one of her doctors/nurses were German,and spoke the lingo in the room,then the girl poished up on her Geman.

Like those language courses you can get to listen to when you sleep.

Just my boring take on the subject,carry on.

The simplest answer is usually right. I bet its just bad reporting, and some3 want to belive, and some ignorance. Some Croatian doctors who don't speak German hear this girl speaking German with a good accent and think, "OMG, she speaks German fluently!" When she'[s the same bad german student she was before, though now maybe her accent sounds better and she is more confident because she lost her inhabitions or something. and mayube the foreign accent syndrome somebody just posted about is helping. But i don't believe for a moment this girl now speaks german like a pro. no way!!

Paul

reply to post by paulism


Although you are most likely correct it is still fun to think of the alternative.

I mean crazier things have happened, and what we are finding out recently in many cases fact is much stranger than fiction.

First,daMod is correct, speaking in tongues is the ability to speak a foreign language fluently and instantly. I do not know if this girl was given this gift, but I would initially think not as she lost all other (ie her previous language ability).

What strikes me as odd is that I know I have heard of this before, yet when I goggle it, I find no reference. I do not recall what context I heard of it in, could have been a novel for all I remember but I know this is not a brand new theory (at least). Even wiki coma's page lists books and movies with a person in a coma plays a prominent role, and nothing no mention.

I'll keep looking but hopefully other's can gather some info as well.

I do not think it is foreign accent syndrome because the people around her would still know she was saying she simply wouldn't sound like a native speaker any longer, as opposed to saying actual German words.

Just another take. Perhaps it's a case of possession? A dead German happened to be nearby and found a body with a vacancy sigh out?

Just a thought.

Originally posted by kiwifoot



G'day ATS!

If any weird story that I've heard in the last few days belongs on ATS, then this is it!

How the heck could this happen?

There are a few possible explanations as I see it:

1) HOAX
2) Past life
3) Her sub-concious has learned how to speak German

This is very cool, I can understand 'forgetting' her own language after a coma, but learning a new one, that blows my mind!

Hope you find this interesting ATS!

All the best, Kiwi

www.mirror.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

There's actually a simple reason this is the case.

We are not OUR bodies. We are a frequency of energy that gets partially trapped when our brains generate a specific frequency of energy.

When we get certain types of brain damage or our brain chemistry changes enough to generate a different frequency, we are literally a different person because who we were is no longer in the body.

Jaden

Originally posted by togetherwestand
you guys are not thinking logical

they say she just begun studying german at school
so what happened was her brain after the stroke was rewired or changed in some manner that restructured and accelerated her language center of her brain therefor she is now able to speak fluently after the trauma.

It may be that when we read a writen page or anything that a possible record is kept in the brain like scanning a document on a copy mechine. Anything that passes into the eyes to the brain by light.

Naturaly a more complete integration must be made with this info and other parts of the brain for use or recall but certainly the mind keeps a record of every thing that come into the ears and eyes.

You'd get a lot of better answers to this in the Psychology, Philosophy & Metaphysics forums. Whether or not you all want to believe it, she experienced something spiritual - she may not even know she has. NO I am not calling in religion here, I'm calling in spirituality.

However, I am willing to admit that it's also possible this has nothing to do with spirituality, and that there are something about the brain we don't know and therefore cannot explain. One day we will be able to take advantage of these sort of things and you'll be able to scan a book into your brain

That would sure as hell make movies really boring... "Hey did you see that new movie with Megan Fox?" - "No, hold on. Oh wow, that was a good movie." ...

But seriously, this is either a spiritual matter, or a brain matter we have yet to understand. I don't doubt this happened at all. What I find most interesting is that she has forgotten her native tongue but have gained a totally new language. How is she going to speak to her family, unless they speak enough German to talk to her?

And those of you saying it's some Croatians blowing this out of proportion "Oh they probably heard some German and automatically assumed she was fluent!" How ignorant can you get, seriously?

Originally posted by Udo Hohnekamp Lux.

She may have been perusing the whole language guide without memorizing
it yet and thus the whole content was photographically imprinted in her
brain to only be released through some faulty command by other parts
of the brain.

Wow dude, I didnt read this before making the above post. Like minds.

reply to post by togetherwestand


It may be that you've hit the nail on the head. She had already started studying German and would have had at least a basic grasp of the language. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if her brain "rewired" (for lack of a better word) to a certain extent and allowed her to connect the dots and grasp the language fully. It seems like the foundation for the language was already there.

This is always fascinating, I've heard of cases like this before.

However, I should let you know that as a person who was born and raised in Croatia before coming to the USA, I can tell you that German is the most commonly spoken language in Croatia after our native language. In certain parts of the country it is rare for people not to have at least basic knowledge of German language. We watch German television, have German tourists all the time, teach German in schools as commonly as we do English and our neighboring country is German speaking Austria. People have been leaving Croatia for years to go work in Germany every since WWII, coming back every once in a while to visit their family and friends still in Croatia.

If she had started speaking Arabic or Portuguese I'd be more shocked, but the sheer exposure of every Croatian to German language, makes this less of an interest for me than people speaking languages they've never been exposed to.

Still fascinating though, what our brains are capable of.


Kharron

reply to post by kiwifoot

If this is true then great, that's fascinating.

But really, why on earth would you use the Mirror as a source? I wouldn't wipe my ass on it.

Honestly, and I'm not hating on our brothers and sisters from this part of the world, but crazy medical news from Eastern Europe like this is generally proven to be a hoax or extremely exagerated within 12 months after some "news" source reports it.

Reliable and proven experts in the medical field end up making a trip and conducting research on the subject. Generally they find that people were lying, that the girl's fluency is limited to 100 words or that somehow the subject's miraculous condition is no longer present.

I'm not trying to say this case is a load of garbage, as that would be ignorant without all the facts. I would advise that people await confirmation before buying into a story like this. Look at the source....

[edit on 13-4-2010 by Shark VA84]

reply to post by kiwifoot


Are you people serious?

She was taking German. All it would take is for a bored school kid to glance through the pages of her German book on a lonely day, and as long as her brain processed and stored all that information, it would just be sitting there waiting for her to pay attention to it... something a coma could do to a person.

If there is a logical explanation, there's no need to make things complicated people. Occam would slap you all