The Language Twilight Zone II
Part 2 of strange, mind-blowing cases that will baffle and disturb your views about language.
Further to our first list of stories from the Language Twilight Zone, we bring you some more cases that will baffle, befuddle and make you question your own beliefs about how language is learned, acquired, remembered, retained and expressed. The last one, is one that I’m afflicted with and know intimately!
Let us know which one(s) hit home for you!
1. Sarah Colwill overnight starts speaking with a Chinese accent.
Foreign Accent Syndrome. A definite “strange” thing that is fruitful for all language teachers / researchers to ponder. Overnight, after some medical aliment, individuals begin speaking in with a foreign accent!
Take the case of Sarah Colwill who after acute migraines began speaking with a strong Chinese accent. Or think about these other cases? What does it suggest about how language works “in us”?
2. Danielle – a modern feral child
Feral children are the strange and horrific cases of children being raised without any or little contact with humans or human language. Many times they are raised by and with animals – like Oxana the Dog Child of Ukraine. Here is a nice documentation of some famous historic cases, most not fully documented and unproven as “true”. But the case of “Dani”is true and her own development of language afterward, revealing to us language teachers.
3. Matej Kus – Xenoglossy
This Czech teenager after a car crash was able to speak fluent English with a British accent. Prior to the accident he’d started learning English but was definitely a beginner. Xenoglossy is a very rare condition where after brain trauma, the person wakes speaking another language, fluently. Very strange but it does occur – what’s happening here? The case of Orlando Serrell, hit with a baseball and then showing unbelievable “savant like”abilities is a similar type of case. This video below has a doctor recounting how he got a Chinese woman speaking English while under hypnosis. Hmmmmm.
4. Speaking in tongues – Glossolalia.
Practiced mainly in the Pentacostal religion, “Speaking in tongues”is where believers enter a trance like state and speak in unknown phrases and sentences. They deem these to be not “babble” but a form of a sacred language. There have been a number of comprehensive linguistic studies on this phenomena and they report that the speech does have definite language like qualities. It is yet determined if this is innate, a learned behavior or what the actual triggers are.
5. Christopher Taylor – Language Savant
Last time I wrote about Daniel Tammet and how in one week, he learned to speak fluent Icelandic. Christopher Taylor also displays extraordinary language ability. Reading and writing in dozens of languages. He can tell you what language is written, almost without fault. What’s interesting is he can’t speak these languages and his own communication is mono syllabic. He translates word for word but has no sense of grammar at all.
6. Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
On the face of it, you might not think Helen Keller learning a language is “strange”, the story is so common and known. However, just thinking about what she did with the help of her remarkable teacher Anne Sullivan is indeed to venture into a realm where we have to question altogether our very ideas and thoughts about what language is.
7. Me,myself and I. Foerster’s Syndrome
I’ve always had an acute sensitivity to language – her sounds and rhythm. This shows in my own lifelong writing of poetry but also in how my own brain works. I’m constantly producing puns and word associations when speaking, writing or thinking. This is known as Forerster’s Syndrome and can be severe enough so that a person can only speak in a series of puns, jokes and word associations. My own version is quite light but still, I’ve had to work over the years to create a filter and have the ability to control it. Strange but true!