Fluent In English, She Abruptly Stopped Speaking The Language. Here's Why

NDTV

27-05-2025

A Chinese woman, who was fluent in English, inexplicably lost her ability to speak the language after a cerebral haemorrhage. The 24-year-old's inability to speak the language after experiencing a strange medical ailment left the Chinese doctors handling the case perplexed and in disbelief.
Wan Feng, the director of the neurosurgery department at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital in Guangzhou, China, said the young lady suddenly experienced a very rare symptom after falling sick in class, Oddity Central reported.
Following the incident, she could no longer speak English despite being once fluent in it. She could only speak Mandarin and Cantonese.
For some reason, the young woman could still read and write it flawlessly.
She was eventually hospitalised at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital's Department of Neurosurgery to seek medical attention. Doctors initially thought her brain's ability to speak might have been impacted by a brain tumour.
An MRI revealed she experienced a cerebral haemorrhage in the left motor part of her brain, which was in charge of communication, particularly affecting her ability to speak English.
The woman reportedly underwent brain surgery to release the pressure in her brain. Soon after, she regained her English-speaking ability, the report added.
In what was a completely opposite case 10 years ago, an elderly Chinese woman, who slipped into a coma for two weeks, woke up and spoke perfect English. But she couldn't speak a word of her native language, according to a report in the Business Standard.
Liu Jieyu, 90, who worked as an English teacher but had not spoken the language for over 30 years, mysteriously acquired the ability to speak the language perfectly and forgot how to communicate in Chinese.