Robert Chase, an American, suffered an injury requiring surgery when he was nineteen. Surgery went well, but everyone was astonished when he woke up speaking fluent Spanish, despite only having learned the basics at school. He spoke to everyone in Spanish for about twenty minutes before returning to his native English.
Since then, Robert had several other surgeries, and each time he woke up speaking excellent Spanish until the anaesthetic fully wore off. The funny thing was that he did not even realise he was doing it!
Although he only ever studied elementary Spanish, Robert grew up in an area that was also home to a lot of native speakers of Spanish. As a child, his best friend was a Spanish-speaker, and Robert often heard Spanish spoken in his home on playdates. It appears that, subconsciously, he absorbed the language. He has subsequently spent time living in Chile, a Spanish-speaking country, so now he can speak it when he is fully awake, too.
Robert’s case is an outlier, but it gives tantalising glimpses of how children acquire language, and what parts of the brain are activated in different circumstances.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/surgeons-performing-procedure-in-operating-room–f5lWIvMkHQ
