|
 |
Brain injured wakes up speaking German | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mspen1018 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5331 days ago 36 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English, German, Sign Language Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 9 of 15 21 April 2010 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||
|
if I go without sleep for a couple of nights I start speaking English and switch back and forth to German in the
middle of sentences... I will get called on in lectures at school sometimes and my answer ends up in involuntary Denglish... I have always spoke both languages, and I butcher both of them and can speak proper English and German and prefer to when it is necessary but when it isn't I speak with the motherload of slang and the good thing about the Bavarian dialect is that I have yet to meet an American who understands it and I can talk to my family on the cell phone and know that even most Germans who live in my area are from Berlin and think I sound like a redneck but they can barely understand me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5593 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 10 of 15 21 April 2010 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||
|
I believe the papers reported a case a few years back where a woman involved in some sort
of accident woke up with a jamaican accent - she was English and lived in Newcastle - about as far away in accent as you can get. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hvorki_ne Groupie Joined 5386 days ago 72 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 11 of 15 21 April 2010 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
|
There was an American who was in an accident and woke up with a british accent.
I wonder if it's possible to study that sort of thing, maybe find a way to speed ability to gain fluency. It seems like the girl has the ability to speak fluent German right now, she just can't for whatever reason without, well, what happened. It seems like there might be something to that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5645 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 12 of 15 21 April 2010 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I have a theory; maybe the brains ability to store data and ability is stronger and faster than we normally think but it can't do it with everything otherwise it would overload. So the brain just keeps and analyses the stuff it deems as important, one of way of deciding this would be the stuff that is used or experienced the most i.e. heard or read the most / spoken or written. Maybe the brain injury moved a bunch of stuff from the short term memory into the "important section" i.e. native languages section and thus the brain decoded all the recent input and thus got fluency.
Maybe a bit far fetched and I'm sure there are loads of holes in it but I just thought it fits; and I've heard of similar cases before. I've read about a similar news story about someone who was learning French. She had been learning it for two or three months and had had some native input and after the accident spoke perfect French and no English for several hours. Less than a day after the accident however she switched back. Maybe the brain reorganised the stuff afterwards and deleting the stuff that was moved back into the "unimportant" section? It would also kinda make sense with some of the abilities autistic savants have; an ability to analyse some things at a seemingly impossible speed while struggling hugely in others e.g. social interaction. Maybe this is because the brain is overloaded from all the other details that it's saving and analysing or maybe autistic savants' brains choose importance in a different way. What do you guys think of my theory based on nothing but wishy washy logic? :P Haha show me all the wholes in my theory resulting in an almost zero knowledge of the brain ^^ Edited by WillH on 21 April 2010 at 8:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 13 of 15 21 April 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I wouldn't take these stories for true. Journalists may simply have asked the locals, since they couldn't visit the sick people in question, and just retell the gossips and exaggerations, amplifying them tenfold to make a sensation.
Brain damage and losing some language skills are plausible, but the Jamaica and the British accent stories sound like fairy tales. Edited by Siberiano on 22 April 2010 at 8:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 14 of 15 21 April 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Ah, no. When someone shows you the gaps in your knowledge it results in more knowledge -- being wrong is good if it means you learn. Here's two important models in the study of thought: Excitations and inhibitions Parallel evaluation of multiple solutions. The neurons into the brain feed into each other. As a chain of cause-and-effect, Furry + big + growling = RUUUUUN!!!! They add together and "excite" the neurons controlling the flight response (flight from fleeing, ie running away). But then another part of your brain kicks in and says "it hasn't seen you -- don't move a muscle. This inhibits the flight response. The temptation to run, the desire to run, the itch to run -- that's the excitation of neurons. The brain doesn't switch off all the components. Theoretically, the part of the brain producing Serbian could be having an inhibitive action on the part of the brain that speaks German. Switch off the German and you switch off the inhibition. Now, parallel evaluation of multiple solutions. A computer processor can only do one calculation at a time (on a basic level -- I'm a geek, I know about multiple cores, pipelines etc), but every cell in the brain can be working at once. This means that different sections of the brain can be working out different solutions, but in the end, they've got to come together and one has to be chosen to be acted upon. This model doesn't require inhibitions -- the end result is that when trying to say a sentence, the Serbian normally gets a higher "score" than the German, so the Serbian "wins". When the number 1 athlete isn't in a race, number 2 wins. The lesson to be learned from this case isn't as clear as some would like. A) It shows that school teaching genuinely does train the brain in the language -- Krashen's claim that it only teaches "knowledge about language" is shaky. B) It shows that continuing on the school route does not lead a student to fluent production -- this girl essentially already knew it, so working through the rules again wasn't needed. She was at the stage where all she needed was "activation" -- bringing what she already knew into active use. So neither the grammar or immersion schools win, because it suggests that conscious grammar works as a start and immersion follows. They should stop fighting and slagging each other off, and recognise that their techniques are mutually complementary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5645 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 15 of 15 21 April 2010 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Thank you for the post! And you're right trying and then making mistakes does help me learn =)
I think you're right about the whole school of languages thing, I used to be an immersion school of thought guy but I think that arguing any one method as being the only way to achieve ANYTHING is pretty damm unlikely. Both ways take you to the same place in the end, so people should just do whichever they enjoy and mix and match to their hearts content ^^ The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that learning languages takes time, so I guess people might as well just go for the methods they like the most; and mix, match and experiment when they don't get the results they like =) 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
