16-year-old high school sophomore, Reuben Nsemoh, ended up in a coma last month after another player kicked him in the head during a game.
When he woke up from the three-day coma in the ICU, he began to speak Spanish like a native.
His parents said he could speak a little bit but was not fluent until after the coma.
Reuben did say that he had a lot of Spanish-speaking friends, who speak the language when he is around. He believes this might have had something to do with the strange episode.
Although it is reported that he is slowly loosing the Spanish fluency as his English returns.
Ever since he suffered a concussion in the soccer game, the suburban Atlanta teen is worried about why it’s so hard for him to concentrate as his seizures have not stopped, and he’s fretted over whether he’ll ever get to play his favorite sport.
His parents say it’s his fourth concussion but Nsemoh has said he hopes to return to the field and has no intention of wearing a helmet.
Foreign accent syndrome is an extremely rare condition in which brain injuries change a person’s speech patterns, giving them a different accent.
The first known case was reported in 1941, when a Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel injuries to the brain during a German bombing run, and started speaking with a German accent.
Since then there have been a few dozen reported cases.
“It’s an impairment of motor control,” Dr. Karen Croot, one of the few experts in foreign accent syndrome, told CNN a few years ago.
“Speech is one of the most complicated things we do, and there are a lot of brain centers involved in coordinating a lot of moving parts. If one or more of them are damaged, that can affect the timing, melody and tension of their speech.”
Source: USA Today/CNN