A 16-year-old boy went into coma after a soccer injury. When he woke up, he was speaking a new language

Reuben Nsemoh, a teenager in suburban Atlanta, was playing soccer when he suffered a concussion. Studying in Gwinnett County, Georgia, the 16-year-old sophomore landed in a coma after a fellow player kicked him in the head, causing him to stop breathing several times. "That was in shock and panic, right? Then he would come back, and then he would start throwing up — it was a sequence of things I have never seen; it was bad," said Bruno Kalonji, his coach, who thought he might "lose [Nsemoh] there." The teenager was airlifted to Atlanta Medical, where he remained in a coma for several days.

Upon waking up, Nsemoh wondered if he would still be able to play his favorite sport, given that an injury, irrespective of its severity, might have a player benched. While this question dominated his mind for quite some time, it was soon replaced by something far more strange and pressing — his sudden ability to speak fluent Spanish like a native. Given the severity of his brain trauma, his family was expecting some change, some delayed response, but the monolingual English speaker surprised them by fluently rambling in Spanish. Upon being asked for clarification, the family soon realized that Nsemoh had forgotten how to speak English altogether! Although he had learned some basic Spanish by listening to his brother and friends, his grasp of the language had been way below average. How, then, was he suddenly fluent in a foreign tongue?

Foreign accent syndrome happens to be a rare condition where a brain injury can manipulate a person’s speech patterns. The first time this condition was ever reported happened in 1941 when a Norwegian woman who had withstood shrapnel injuries to her brain started speaking in a fluent German accent. Ever since, about two dozen such cases have been registered, including one from a Navy vet who woke up speaking Swedish, devoid of any memory from the life he had lived up until then.

Dr. Karen Croot, one of the rare experts on this condition, told CNN, “It’s an impairment of motor control. 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.” Dr. Croot denied that the condition was a "communication impairment" because the patient could make themselves understood — albeit in a different language. 

Neurolinguistics expert Michel Paradis told the Inquirer that bilingual speakers often recover only one language after such incidents. However, it was shocking that he had somehow achieved fluency in a language he had been incompetent in. The answer may be found in how the memory of languages is stored in the brain, where, with the right trigger, one can unlock any memory one wants access to. The common feeling of knowing a word but being unable to recall it at the moment is known as “the tip of the tongue phenomenon.” However, there are also memories stored in inaccessible locations where one's consciousness cannot get to them.

How can any of this happen? Well, in a brain injury, a portion of brain cells die, which excites certain areas in the brain, thereby forging new neural pathways and an awakening of dormant brain circuits. This was Nsemoh's third concussion while playing soccer, and his parents have spent a significant time since then advocating for concussion safety. "Our life has changed through this process," sighed the teen's mother, Dorah Nsemoh, while the teen's coach reiterated, "Everybody is waiting [for] that big thing [to] happen before they start wearing [a] mask."

As Nsemoh's fluency in Spanish faded with time, his English started to come back —welcome news for family and friends who hadn't been able to converse with him until that point. His mother shared that their medical bill had already surpassed "at least $200,000," while his friends arranged a GoFundMe site, "trying to raise some money." Viewers expressed sympathy and shock, with most starting a hilarious meme fest. @kabatakim wrote, "Before coma: ? After coma: ¿" @officialjonas9163 wrote, "Looks like he accidentally changed the language settings when he woke up." @rhcp1212rhcp wrote, "The guy who kicked him in the head was Spanish: he downloaded it into his hard drive during the impact, it's called telekinetkick."